The Heartfelt Cynicism of “The Sopranos”
The highway is perhaps the enduring symbol of modern America. The American consciousness was formally defined by the frontier, by the limitlessness of geography and by extension possibility. As that geography and that possibility was reigned in over the last one hundred years, the highway emerged as its antithesis. Representative not of virgin land to be won but of sullied land to be experienced. The highway system is a closed loop of enterprise and adventure, suffocating rather than conquering the country it emerges from.
It is fitting then that the opening sequence to “The Sopranos,” the most darkly and poignantly American of television shows, occurs on a highway. We begin in a moving vehicle. The iridescent ceiling tiles of the Lincoln Tunnel blur past above. We emerge at the end, yes to daylight, but more importantly to endless exit signs, endless construction - an endless commercial landscape.
Everything you need to know about “The Sopranos,” both the razor cynicism and the moral clarity, is contained in this opening sequence. Both in what we see and in what we do not. This originally weekly, if streaming hourly, passage to the Soprano home is an achievement in itself. Bleak, in that subtle way all great pop culture is, but also intoxicating and uneasily relevant.
What we do see is a slowly dying empire - crumbling but unrepentant. Beyond the Jersey Turnpike tractor trailers navigate a succession of bridges. Their beds presumably laden with goods, the trucks are juxtaposed with factories vacant for decades. Smokestacks billow and the Sunaco sign beckons, yet the pedestrians merely amble, out of focus, at clear remove from the rapacious energy which powers modern life. Houses, churches, and cemeteries, at varying stages of decay, shuffle jarringly, presented not as suburban safety but rather, in their starkness, as varying stages of tomb. The plastic lumberyard mascot, the business it embodies long since replaced by a Home Depot or a Lowes, glowers sheepishly in cracked plaid.
Through the rusted scenery of northern New Jersey we see the history of a nation. A post industrial graveyard, layered on top of a brief postwar boom, itself layered on top of a gilded age of exploitative industry. An expansion mythos so insane that it can only be rendered in pieces, in strangled marshes buttressed by concrete and iron. Through it all runs the highway, the intra and inter state, that broadlimbed wonder of fifties ingenuity. Just as Americans of the past eagerly embarked on the westward wagon trails, willfully ignorant of coming moral reckonings (genocide, civil war, depression), Americans of the present, from Eisenhower to today, merge onto their local two to four lane stretch, perhaps more jaded and certainly less open to notions of destiny, but with the same defiant obliviousness.
In what the opening does show us, the cynicism of “The Sopranos” is revealed. This is a show that begins Season One with a deceptively sympathetic Tony lamenting the absence of ducks from his swimming pool (neatly psychologized as worry for his family), and ends with the same Tony, more corpulent and far more revolting, profiting from waste dumps in a wetlands area. The surface humanity of the characters, their relatable, often hilarious gesturing in regards to love and responsibility, masks a disturbing emptiness. Similarly, the experience of the highway, with its high speeds and surmountable vistas, promises a freedom that the driver, momentarily enraptured, knows better than to actually believe. The 5 and 95 are not all that disparate, and they both lead, ultimately, to familiar American homes with familiar American problems. The cynicism of both the highway and the show is that of charade, of knowingly and perhaps successfully pantomiming the spark of life, aware of but unwilling to confront the vacancy beneath.
Tony, heart to heart with his daughter after strangling a former associate, embodies this charade. The highway he confidently navigates beforehand each week, packed with drivers likely experiencing a similar muted thrill, begs the question of viewer complicity. Outright criminals? Not exactly. But in our defense mechanisms, in our crafted and calculated ignorance behind the familiar wheel each day, there is certainly a degree of overlap.
This all to make one half of my point, that “The Sopranos” is an uncompromisingly cynical program and the opening sequence effectively encapsulates this cynicism. The bleakness is such that it turns many people off. The show’s fanbase, in my experience, tends to skew male, which makes sense. The female lead characters are especially risible, well developed but often lacking the amusing quirks of their male counterparts. Carmela is as deeply drawn a character as Tony, but on the surface he’s got swagger and she’s a hypocritical nag. For the converted, this is the show questioning the legitimacy of that swagger’s appeal, after all it’s the men on the show who do the most killing, but I can sympathize with a woman writing the show off as yet more masculine entertainment masquerading as existential exploration.
“The Sopranos” has a heart, it’s just hard to find. Unlike some dark prestige shows, “The Wire” or “Mad Men” for instance, the show is not concerned with politics and cultural trends. While critical of institutions at almost every opportunity, the show does not posit social reform as a remedy. Zellman, the corrupt Newark councilman Tony conspires with in Season Four, is corrupt because he is an uncaring and greedy person. Institutional and social failure is indicative of him, rather than the reverse.
Nor does the show find salvation in sentiment. Since the show’s release, the idea of the antihero as a man who has great potential for both love and cruelty has become a common TV trope. “Breaking Bad” is perhaps the most successful example. Walter White becomes a bad man, a morally reprehensible man, but the viewer knows, at his core, there is a redemptive love. When he admits, in the final episode, that he committed his crimes for himself, this is both an admission of guilt and absolution. For Walter to know he acted selfishly implies an understanding of the opposite. Somewhere inside, he genuinely loves his family, and his crimes can be forgiven as a sad and bizarre permutation of that love.
“The Sopranos” offers no such out. From the beginning, we know Tony loves his family. The love is ingrained in his often probed subconscious. Gandolphini’s face, at those times when Tony processes another’s misery (typically harm to a child or an animal) displays a clear capacity for empathy. Perhaps a clearer empathy than that of the average person, given the criminal’s need to efficiently emote and compartmentalize. Chris and Adriana have a deep, chaotic bond. Johnny Sac’s devotion to Ginny is sweet. Paulie’s love for “ma” is unconditional. The show, for the most part, does not portray this endearing humanity through character arcs. The instances are there from the beginning and diffuse for each character throughout the show’s run, interspersed, of course, with all the greed, apathy, infidelity, and violence.
This tension, between the characters’ attractive potential for goodness and their insurmountable moral shortcomings, forms the heart of “The Sopranos.” It is a sinewy, harshly moral heart, atypical of any show before or since. In the end, and understandably so, viewers want to be reminded that however dark a series delves, there remains some salvation in ordinary human love and affection. We want hang our collective hats on the ameliorating quality of the passions and relationships we’ve developed, whatever the moral sum of our lives. “The Sopranos” contends, emphatically, that this is not possible. Tony does everything for his family. He is a prisoner of blood and tradition. He is a seeker of eros in a stifling world. He embodies our collective justifications and yet we know, if we are honest, that this excuses nothing.
To return to the opening sequence, what is visually fascinating is that a full shot of Tony is never allowed. We see his gorilla arm, accepting a toll ticket. We see his smoldering cigar and his expensive watch. We catch glimpses of his dominant profile through his SUV’s rear view mirror. We surmise something of his attitude by his manner of driving. But until the very end, when the camera pans to his inscrutable countenance as he steps out onto his driveway, we experience Tony only in pieces.
“The Sopranos,” as this opening sequence subtly suggests, sets a high standard for humanity. To be human in the moral sense, to deserve the full, unbroken camera shot, entails more than simply living out instances of humanity, however myriad and deeply felt. Certain pieces of ourselves can be suggestive of who we are, or who we would like to be, but individually they do not tell a sufficient story. There must be some connective moral tissue, however frustrating and constraining. It is easy to sob at your daughter’s recital, to volunteer for the church diaper drive if you have the time and money, to forgive your wife for her struggles with her diet. It’s when the choice to be good comes without an obvious payoff, external or internal, that morality actually occurs. We laugh at Vito, rejecting love because a real job is hard, and scorn Jackie Jr., dropping out of college because strip clubs are more exciting. But they illustrate a phenomenon, seemingly cognizant people choosing what feels good over what is difficult but right, which underpins modern society.
“The Sopranos” rarely shows morality as sexy, appealing, or even emotionally rewarding. That is the point. The indisputably good characters receive largely masochistic screen time. The cop in season 3 who writes Tony the traffic ticket, ignoring the don’s subtle attempts at intimidation, has his hours cut as a result of Tony’s connections. He resorts to working a second job at a garden store and must endure a slightly regretful Tony’s wadded attempt at restitution. He keeps only his dignity. When we do the right thing, we want to be like Tony, beneficent but above it all. Here, by way of the honest cop in his clerk’s apron, cringing at the casually proffered bills, the limits of that qualification are clear. For most of us, morality requires authenticity within the limits of the system, a far less alluring proposition.
Similarly, Caitlin, the Columbia roommate in Season 3, emits a fragile honesty which is jarring when compared not only with the criminals back in New Jersey, but also with Meadow and her new boyfriend Noah. Caitlin commits the cardinal sin not only of mobsters, but also apparently of upwardly mobile university students, when she is unabashedly overwhelmed by the inequities and temptations of 21st century New York City. In the episode “University,” Caitlin is subtly contrasted with Tracee, a stripper at the Bing who has a similar innocence about her. Tracee wants to be friends with Tony, correctly intuiting his sensitivity in comparison to the Bing’s other regulars but oblivious to his callousness. Tracee is with the vile yet hilarious Ralph, who eventually kills her in a “Gladiator” and cocaine fueled mania. Caitlin, it is implied in a later episode, commits suicide for an unnamed reason.
Upon first viewing, I took the easy way out, writing off both Caitlin and Tracee as victims of a cruel world. Neither are perfect. Caitlin takes to partying and likely slept with Noah. Tracee abused her son. Subsequent viewings brought me closer to the point, that this jaded, the-world-is-a-cruel-place interpretation mirrors the cognitive dissonance the characters involved employee to sleep at night. Both women are, in fact, the victims of cruel people, of cynical ivy leaguers and hyper-masculine champagne room patrons who have mastered the art of bystanding, of diluting moral imperative with an exact mixture of sentiment and ennui. Caitlin and Tracee possess an awkward but palpable goodness. They can be dismissed as pathetic, their downfalls inevitable, only if moral agency is reduced to sighing passivity.
Tony and Meadow do just enough not to be implicated directly. Meadow consoles and cajoles Caitlin from a superior distance, wanting to appear benevolent but unwilling to take seriously Caitlyn’s unvarnished horror at the tragedy of homelessness, at the pedestrian cruelty of the carnivore on the subway spitting out his chicken bones. Tony deigned Tracee worthy of kindness on his terms, i.e. being a good sport to her friendly overtures and reacting to her murder with his usual process of rageful indignation followed by self pity. Both daughter and father are highly intelligent. They are more aware than most that the world is a dark, sucker crushing place and what can you do? The truly good, those seemingly incapable of calculation, are victims of a collective malice which of course renders individuals inculpable. Better to cling to what reflects well on you, to “remember the good times,” to construct a false but manageable self from this selectivity.
The best example of “The Sopranos” morality is Charmaine Bucco, Tony’s high school flame and the wife of his best friend, bumbling chef Artie (“Arr-thuh”). Charmaine, desired by the varsity lettered Tony during his wavy locked heyday, has a comfortable future of squeal inducing jewelry within her reach. But she rejects this, choosing a life of toil running a middling Italian restaurant with her hapless but well intentioned husband, a man deficient in scruples but lacking the predatory instinct of the mobsters and their unpaid tabs. In Season One, the Buccos cater a dinner at The Soprano home and Carmela is condescending towards Charmaine. To Carmela’s chagrin, the next day Charmaine is upfront to her both about having been with Tony and also the realization that “it wasn’t for me.” This is one of our first glimpses into the extent of Carmela’s denial.
Charmaine is the one semi-regular character who remains uncorrupted by the criminal element which surrounds her. She is also, and this is clearly intentional, the least superficially charming of the shows parade of wives and girlfriends. Carmela and Rosalie can be warm and witty. Adrianna is a tri-state area femme fetale. Gabby is competently pert and Ginny is sweetly dull. Even Janice has an “earthy” draw to her. Charmaine, in comparison, is a squawking killjoy, pitied by the women and and tolerated by the men only for her bustline. Stripped of the aura of the mafia and replaced with mundane struggle, the accent and abrasiveness of North Jersey Italian culture quickly loses its cool factor. Charmaine serves as a fitting complement to Tony. Just as the show demands the viewer take a moral stand in regards to its protagonist, oscillating between instances of his charismatic soul searching and his destructive venality, the show demands we make a decision about Charmaine. Is she an aggravating shrew deserving of derision or a strong, beleaguered woman meant to be admired, warts and all? That this is a question speaks to the show’s dark perceptiveness.
Charmaine is important because in Season Six, when a comatose Tony enters subconscious purgatory, she is his wife in this sans mafia alternate reality. The coma arc, which spans multiple episodes, depicts the life a competent, magnetic man like Tony might have had, where his values different. Charmaine, who Tony pined for during his separation from Carmela a season earlier, represents the type of woman he believes he deserves. Extended, she represents the narcissism of the morally deluded. Tony’s actions in the dream world, which include an immediate though not consummated attempt at infidelity, make clear that Charmaine, and by extension salvation, is an impossibility. Tony’s spiritual self, his eternal whole (“Finnerty”-infinity-get it?), is a person who would, according to the inarguable logic of the dream world, scam a monastery before the gentle small talk with his wife.
Pieces of Tony, his charm, intelligence, and interpersonal lucidity, would work with a woman like Charmaine. His full self would not. Tony’s attraction to Charmaine reemerges immediately after Dr. Melfi, his then ex therapist, rebuffs his romantic advances by telling him, after much uncomfortable deflection, that his values render a relationship impossible. Melfi quickly morphs into a “fucking cunt” and Charmaine, who is actually more morally severe than Melfi (though less superficially so) becomes the new paragon. But, as Tony’s brief journey to the outskirts of perdition makes clear, it his whole, deeply flawed self which is up for judgement, a whole incompatible with Charmaine’s goodness. The beloved voice of his daughter may resuscitate him, but he is far from a decent man.
Many fans contend the opening sequence of “The Sopranos” is their favorite part of the show. I hope the above demonstrates it is, at the very least, an effective entry point for an exploration of the series’ edge and soul. There is an undeniable exhilaration to our vicarious ride in the white Suburban. From a vantage of wasteful luxury we traverse, coolly but inexorably, an illustrative choke point of the modern American enterprise. There is a rush of ego, of possible transcendence, in all those passing, familiar glances- the lazy traffic, the generic local eateries, the seemingly infinite stretches of residence. Tony, like the viewer, is not such a bad guy. It’s this world that brings us down, senseless but somehow so mundane. Yet, despite his hands on the wheel and his foot on the pedal, despite the regrets he is surely mulling no matter how intently he drives, we cannot see him in his totality. Which, of course, begs the question- can we see ourselves?
