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In honor of the great James Gandolfini, 1961-2013, who brought a timeless character to life.
"I got the world by the balls and yet I can't stop feeling that I am a loser." Tony Soprano, "The Happy Wanderer"
It could sure seem like Tony Soprano, the main character of HBO's The Sopranos, had got it all. He wants money? Other people have money? He takes it for himself. He wants a family but girlfriends too? He makes it happen. And the mystery we want to address: why despite all that he has attained, does Tony feel like a loser? In the show, we look to Tony's therapist Dr. Melfi to explain what is wrong with Tony. But what would Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans have to say about the happiness of a self-described "fat crook from Jersey"? A lot, I think.
Tony on Happiness
Tony, for all of his blustery anti-intellectualism, shows signs of having thought a bit about happiness. He seems to have discerned three different approaches to happiness, that of the "whiners," the "happy wanderers", and the "Gary Cooper" types. His therapist Dr. Melfi's aim, as he sees it, is make him a "whiner," to get him to blame others (his parents) for his unhappiness and make him "feel like a victim" ("The Happy Wanderer"). If she succeeded, Tony thinks he would be like the "f***ing Americans nowadays" who he describes as "crying, complaining, confessing."

Tony distains the "whiners", but it is animosity he feels for the "happy wanderers." These "assholes" don't need therapy and move through life cheerily oblivious to its trials and setbacks. Now, Tony would rather be a "happy wanderer" than a "whiner" but expresses this with the following:

"Sometimes, if I see a guy with a clear head, you know the type, always whistling like the Happy F***ing Wanderer. I see this and... I wanna walk up to him and rip his f***ing' throat open. For no reason at all. Just go up to him and f***ing pummel him." (The Happy Wanderer).

Despite being able to imagine this diatribe including that these types get their kicks from doing things like visiting zoos, Tony quite enjoyed acting the "happy wanderer" on the day he was made giddy by a new girlfriend and zoo visit.

It is Gary Cooper that attracts Tony the most, however.

"First day I came here (to therapy) first f***ing day I said how Gary Cooper was a man. Strong. Silent." (The Happy Wanderer).

Of course, what it is that "Gary Cooper" has is elusive to Tony, who is not even clear on what he understands to be "Gary Cooper"-like. He idealizes his father by putting him in the "Gary Cooper" category: his dad ran his own crew back when the mob had "values". Yet at the same time Tony acknowledges that his mother "wore [his father] down to a little nub. He was a squeaking gerbil when he died." (Pilot).
Does it seem far-fetched to suggest that ancient Greek philosophy can help clear up Tony's confusion about happiness?
Perhaps it ought not, not even within the context of the show. The show's writers have Tony read the following quotation in Bowdoin College's Admissions Building (College):

"No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."

The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was undoubtedly inspired by the work of ancient thinkers when he composed this line. It reflects the ideas first put forward by Plato. In The Republic Plato has Socrates explain that happiness is a matter of organizing a harmony between the parts of one's self. We ought to make ourselves a "perfect unity, rather than a plurality, self-disciplined and internally attuned." And our actions must be consistent with this aim, so that we "preserve and promote" an internal harmony (Plato, Republic, book 4, 443c-d).
The Ancients on Happiness and Tony and the Rest of Us
Despite his extraordinary talent for satisfying his more immediate desires, in the following respect Tony is not so different from the rest of us. We, like Tony, tend to think of happiness as a matter of having certain things in our lives. We expect to be happy once we get to college, or get our degree, or have a family and settle down. Or, if we have these things and get asked if we are happy, we respond with a list what we have and ask back "Who could ask for anything more?"

According to Aristotle, people in ancient Greece were confused in the same way as we are today on the subject of happiness. Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, summarizes what was a matter of general agreement at the time. What seems, then, to have been a matter of ancient "common sense" is the suggestion that happiness is a matter of achieving a list of things: a good family, lots of friends, wealth, reputation, honor, old age...

But the ancient ethicists explain that happiness is not a matter of merely having things. The Stoics, in response to a list like that in Aristotle's Rhetoric, write that "not even an abundance of these goods... makes a difference to the happiness, desirability, or value of one's life." The Epicureans believe that if we think deeply enough about happiness we will come to realize that good birth, wealth, reputation, honor and even a good old age do not directly contribute to our happiness.
What is Happiness?
There are two components to the difficulty of happiness, according to the ancient Greeks.

First, happiness is a matter of activity-not acquisition. As Aristotle writes, "activities are what give life its character." We cannot merely pursue and attain a good family, lots of friends, wealth, reputation, honor, and old age and expect to be happy. (How much easier if we could, huh?)

Second, happiness is not something we can stumble into, despite Tony's suspicions about the "happy wanderers".

To live a happy life requires a conscious effort to revise and integrate the goals we have picked up from a common sense understanding of what makes life good. The aims we have, before thinking philosophically about our lives, inevitably conflict. This is demonstrated in a spectacular way by Tony Soprano, who aims to be both a loving father and a murderer. Hawthorne's quotation seems readily applicable to Tony, but it applies just as readily to the rest of us.
What does it take to be happy?

The idea is rather simple, actually. We must reflect upon, and then revise, what it is we are really after when it comes to our pursuits. Doing this successfully, however, is not easy. It usually does not occur to the unsatisfied politician that he is aiming, above all, for glory. It is hard for habitually irresponsible to realize that they are living for pleasure and that this is the problem. But once we come to recognize what motivates us, either as a whole or in regard to particular aspects of our lives, the ancient imperative is to continue to pursue only those things whose motivation is one that can integrate all of our pursuits.
What does this mean?
If we realize we take jobs with higher salaries for the sake of how powerful this makes us feel, we have to recognize that power is not what motivates us to care for our families. In the case of Tony, his reasons for murdering are not the same as the ones he has for attempting to set a good example for his children. His adultery is not motivated by the same motivation he has for loving his wife. Living the way Tony does creates the sort of internal schism that Hawthorne describes. But the rest of us might also be making choices that are inconsistent when considered together.
An exhausted body
The consequence of this is a fractured personality. Though James Gandolfini's portrayal of Tony is perhaps the most memorable representation of this, Plato describes the fractured personality as being in a "civil war" with itself. He has us imagine that, if we fail to reconcile our motivations to one another, parts of ourselves "bite each other, fight and try to eat each other." (Plato, Republic, 589a)

We all experience this inner conflict, but the situation worsens if you live a life like Tony Soprano's. In the Republic, Plato imagines what would happen to a person who gets put into a position of power over others, having not yet integrated his motivations for even the typical activities of a life. This exacerbates the already disorganized condition of a person, and, despite the public appearance of "having it all", the potential is for such a person to be more unhappy than any of us. They have, in addition to more common tensions, worries about enemies and usurpers. Plato writes that such a person is like "an exhausted body" which "is compelled to compete and fight with other bodies all its life." (Plato, Republic, 579c-d) The situation renders one friendless and terrified.

So it is no wonder that Tony does not feel well.
The advice Plato would give Tony?
Leave the mob immediately. (In the show, we hear the Platonic line come from Dr. Krakower, Carmela's once-visted psychiatrist.)

When Dr. Melfi suggests that behavior therapy might help Tony to control his anger trigers, Tony stops to consider the possibility. Without these triggers, "then how do you get people to do what you want?" (Employee of the Month). Tony has traded in self-control for the ability to manipulate those around him. This should make us rethink our assessment of Tony Soprano. He doesn't really have the world "by the balls." That is only the illusion, perpetuated by our own misunderstandings of happiness. It is the other way round, the world has that grip on Tony. Tony knows this. If he only also knew this: a happy man in the ancient sense attempts to control not the world but himself.

This is no fool's errand, which makes it unlike so many of the errands of Tony Soprano.

Abbreviated summary of "The Unhappiness of Tony Soprano: An Ancient Analysis"
Philosophy and the Sopranos, Open Court Press

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In honor of the great James Gandolfini, 1961-2013, who brought a timeless character to life. "I got the world by the balls and yet I can't stop feeling that I am a loser." Tony Soprano, "The Happy Wanderer" It could sure seem like Tony Soprano, the main character of HBO's The Sopranos, had got it all.

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xoJane: Women's Lifestyle & Community Site - xoJane

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James Gandolfini passed away at 51 yesterday in Italy, stunning and saddening the world. While he was nothing like Tony Soprano, it is this role for which he will be most remembered.

For me, it was the love story between Tony and Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), who humanized and challenged the antihero, that first came to mind on news of his passing. I watched clips, combed quotes online, read IMDB and came up with my favorite 12 exchanges between the two characters over the course of six seasons (with the last season broken down into two parts).

1. Tony Soprano: I had a dream I fucked your brains out. Right on that desk, and you loved it. Dr. Melfi: Well, you threw that at me like a rock.

2. Tony Soprano: It's in his blood, this miserable fuckin' existence. My rotten, fuckin' putrid genes have infected my kid's soul. That's my gift to my son. Dr. Melfi: I know all this is difficult but I'm very glad we're having this discussion. Tony Soprano: Really, really? 'Cause I gotta be honest, I think it fuckin' sucks. Dr. Melfi: What does? Tony Soprano: This. Therapy. I HATE this fuckin' shit! Seriously, we're both adults here, right? So after all is said and done, after all the complainin' and the cryin' and all the fuckin' bullshit... Is this all there is?

3. ( Tony urges Dr. Melfi to get out of town for a while.)Dr. Melfi: I have patients who are suicidal! Tony Soprano: Well, they're not gonna feel any better about their life if you get clipped.

4. ( Tony describes a dream he had about Jean Cusamano.)Tony Soprano: I'm doing her doggy-style, and I finish, you know. And her big ass is... Look, we don't have time for this shit. Dr. Melfi: It's interesting that you would say a big ass, 'cause Jean is quite slender. Tony Soprano: We've got bigger things to talk about than Jean Cusamano's ass. Dr. Melfi: Like feelings of worthlessness sparked by your mother's plot to have you killed?

5. Dr. Melfi:(about Jackie's condition) From what you're telling me it doesn't sound very good. Tony Soprano: From what I'm telling you? Well, what the fuck do I know? I'm not a doctor. Dr. Melfi: You're angry. Who with? Tony Soprano: Let me tell you something. This man has had chemo every day for three fuckin' weeks and he still has every last hair on his head. Every last hair on his head and he's got a beautiful head of hair. So don't tell me about how it sounds because you don't know him and you don't know me and you don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about! Dr. Melfi: What's happening is we're getting closer to your confronting your true feelings about what's really going on here. Dr. Melfi: Wait a minute, wait a minute. I just told you my true feelings. So why don't you tell me what's really goin' on. Dr. Melfi: The tree in the painting rotted out, you said. There's nothing in that picture to indicate that. Tony Soprano: The fucking painting. I knew that painting was a scam. I knew that painting was a fuckin' scam! Dr. Melfi: You remember your dream? The ducks? It took on another meaning. What happens to a tree that's rotted out? Tony Soprano: Trees, ducks. What the fuck are you, Ranger Rick? I'll tell you, some job you shrinks got! You think everybody is lying to you while you're pulling scams on them! Fuck you!

6. Dr. Melfi: How are things? Tony Soprano: Good. I had a real good week. Friend of mine's in the hospital. That's never pleasant, but... Otherwise I'm having a good week. Dr. Melfi: What's he in for? Tony Soprano: First they thought it was an ulcer. You know, then this and that. Dr. Melfi: You worried about him? Tony Soprano: Jackie? Jackie's so fucking mean, he'll scare that cancer away.

7. Dr. Melfi: Listen, Anthony. I'm not going to go out with you, and it's not because you're unattractive or I don't think I would have a good time. It's just something I'm not going to do. I would like you to respect my decision, and just try to feel that I know what's right for me. Okay? Tony Soprano: It's not just the doctor-patient ethics thing, is it? Dr. Melfi: I want to preserve the option for you that you could always come back to our work, if you wish, and that we could pick up where we've left off. Tony Soprano: I don't think you get this. I want you! Dr. Melfi: That's very flattering to me. Tony Soprano: I'm not interested in flattering you. Dr. Melfi: I know you're not. Tony Soprano: Alright, then what is it? Just help me understand it. Dr. Melfi: You know, Anthony, during our work I never judged you, or your behavior. It's not the place of a therapist to do so. Tony Soprano: Alright, I get all this. Go, go. Dr. Melfi: In a personal relationship, I don't think I could sit silent. Tony Soprano: About what? Dr. Melfi: Our values are... just very different. Tony Soprano: You don't like my values. Dr. Melfi: Honestly? Tony Soprano: Yeah. Dr. Melfi: No. Tony Soprano: OK. Like what? Dr. Melfi: It's getting late. Tony Soprano: No, no. Come on. It's okay. Dr. Melfi: Well... You're not a truthful person. You're not respectful of women. You're not really respectful of people. Tony Soprano: I don't love people? Dr. Melfi: Maybe you love them, I don't know. You take what you want from them by force, or the threat of force. I couldn't live like that. I couldn't bear witness to violence. Tony Soprano: FUCK YOU! You fucking cunt!

8. Tony Soprano: I'm havin' second thoughts. Dr. Melfi: About? Tony Soprano: This whole thing. This whole arrangement. Security. I mean I come here, I tell you things, I don't know how safe it is. Dr. Melfi: I understand your concerns. But I told you what the ground rules are. As long as I don't hear anything incriminating. Tony Soprano: You don't fuckin' get it. Bein' here incriminates me. Somebody sees me, they tell somebody else. All of a sudden, I'm a celebrity.

9. Tony Soprano: You know what they say: Revenge is like serving cold cuts. Dr. Melfi: I think it's, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Tony Soprano: What did I say?

10. ( Tony and Carmela are arguing during their joint therapy session.)Dr. Melfi: You're both very angry. Tony Soprano: Yeah, you must have been at the top of your fuckin' class.

11. Dr. Melfi: What was it like sitting sitting there with Fran? Tony Soprano: It was a little weird at first. Here I am comforting my father's mistress, my mother's lyin' there dead. Dr. Melfi: Are you attracted to her? Tony Soprano: Come on, she's old enough to be my mother. (Dr. Melfi shrugs.)Tony Soprano: Oh, Jesus Christ, it's an expression. Don't cream yourself. I did not want to fuck my mother! You should have seen her in her housedress with that hairnet. This conversation would be over in two seconds.

12. Tony Soprano: You know, there's this Russian woman. She told me something that's very true. She said, only here, in America, do we expect to be happy. I mean this woman, she had a terrible leg disease since she was 9. She was dirt poor. She's getting on with her life. I mean, over here, we come and we bitch to shrinks. I mean, what the fuck? Dr. Melfi: Well, part of that may be true. But, who said that after getting out of the dirt and the poverty, do we have to stop looking for pain and truth? Tony Soprano: Pain and truth? Come on, I'm a fat fucking crook from New Jersey.

***
Find Mandy long-form at http://tinyurl.com/stadtmiller.

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12 Unforgettable Exchanges Between Tony Soprano And Dr. Melfi In Memory Of James Gandolfini

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James Gandolfini passed away at 51 yesterday in Italy, stunning and saddening the world. While he was nothing like Tony Soprano, it is this role for which he will be most remembered. For me, it was the love story between Tony and Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), who humanized and challenged the antihero, that first came to mind on news of his passing.

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A the following is a list of deaths from The Sopranos. Over the course of the series, 92 human characters died.

Statistics Edit

Season 2 and Season 3 feature numerous imaginary death sequences such as Tony dreaming of Paulie Walnuts lighting Tony on fire after he pours gasoline over himself; Tony dreaming of randomly shooting Paulie in the chest; Dr. Melfi dreams of her rapist getting mauled to death by stray dogs; and Silvio Dante imagining "Big Pussy" dying in mysterious stripper wardrobe in a nightmare he had.

As of the end of season 6 in 2007, there were 92 deaths in total and 62 of them were human murders.

Season 6 had the most deaths, followed by Season 5.

Season 6 had the most human murders, followed by Seasons 5 and 1.

Season 4 had the fewest deaths.

Paulie Walnuts committed nine known murders, Tony Soprano and Christopher Moltisanti committed eight on-screen murders each. Silvio Dante was involved with five murders, then Mikey Palmice and Tony Blundetto. each with three murders. Other notables are Pussy Bonpensiero, Benny Fazio, and Vito Spatafore, with two apiece.

Four animals were killed through the course of the series:

Whitetail deer by Christopher Moltisanti: ("Pine Barrens")

Pie-O-My, put down after being badly burned in a stable fire; Tony suspected Ralph Cifaretto and it indirectly led to Ralph's death ("Whoever Did This")

Cosette, a maltese dog, by (accidentally) Christopher Moltisanti: ("The Strong, Silent Type")

Rabbit by Artie Bucco: episode 607 "Luxury Lounge"

In every season, at least two major characters have been killed off.

Season 1: Brendan Filone, Mikey Palmice, Jimmy Altieri, Vin Makazian

Season 2: Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, Richie Aprile, Matthew Bevilaqua, Sean Gismonte

Season 3: Jackie Aprile, Jr., Livia Soprano, Gigi Cestone

Season 4: Ralph Cifaretto, Gloria Trillo

Season 5: Carmine Lupertazzi, Adriana La Cerva, Tony Blundetto

Season 6A: Eugene Pontecorvo, Rusty Millio, Vito Spatafore

Season 6B: Johnny Sack, Christopher Moltisanti, Bobby Baccalieri, Phil Leotardo

Whenever major characters are to be murdered, David Chase tells the actors far in advance to prepare them for the scene.

The cast made it a tradition to take cast members who were killed off on the show to Il Cortile, a restaurant in Little Italy, Manhattan, for a farewell dinner.

The fact that any cast member could be killed off at any time was referred to as the "Big Pussy Rule" (coined by Steven R. Schirripa).

Joe Pantoliano knew in 2001 when he signed on to play the role of Ralph Cifaretto that he would only last two seasons and that his demise would not be a pretty one.

One common bond that ties each of the seasons together is the so-called "Aprile Curse", where during the season at least one member of the Aprile crew or family dies.

Of all the characters, Christopher had most brushes with death. He had at least one in each season until his eventual demise in part two of Season 6.

Season 1: The mock execution given on orders from Junior as punishment for his truck hijackings alongside Brendan Filone. "Fred Peters" points a gun at Tony as he is escorting a drunk Meadow into the hotel during college visits.

Season 2: In a bungled assassination attempt, Christopher was shot by Sean Gismonte and Matt Bevilaqua, which left him in a coma.

Season 3: Shot at by Jackie Aprile, Jr. during an attempted robbery of Eugene's card game.

Season 4: Car jacked and beaten up by a Latin gang while trying to purchase heroin. Tony told Chris later that his drug addiction could get him whacked (which turned out to be true).

Season 5: Almost murdered by Tony over the (untrue) rumor about Tony and Adriana. Threatened by and on the lam from Phil Leotardo, because of Tony Soprano's reluctance to hand over Tony Blundetto to Phil for Billy Leotardo's murder.

Season 6a: Shot at while fleeing after robbing bikers of crates of wine - who in turn were robbing an establishment.

Season 6b: After a car accident caused by his drug taking, Tony pinched Christopher's nostrils together, suffocating him on his own blood.

Tony had the second-most brushes with death.

Season 1: Shot in the ear by a hitman, during the hit on him ordered by Uncle Junior.

Season 3: Patsy pointed a gun at Tony, intending to kill him for murdering his brother, but reconsidered and urinated in the Sopranos' pool instead.

Season 4: Furio considered pushing a drunk Tony into a helicopter rotor blade, but changed his mind.

Season6a: Shot and left in a coma by a senile Uncle Junior, who mistook Tony for his old enemy Pussy Malanga

External links Edit

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A the following is a list of deaths from The Sopranos . Over the course of the series, 92 human characters died.

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Once again, we're tackling another show in TV Blend's weekly series "___'s Best Episode." Each week a different writer will pick out a different episode of a TV show and argue why it is definitively, absolutely the best thing the show ever did. Arguments will be started, tears may be shed, but we're here to start some conversations and make some arguments for really, really good TV. This week Doug takes a whack at The Sopranos by making a case for the intense "Long Term Parking" episode from Season 5. Read below, argue with us in the comments.

In the annals of pop culture, The Sopranos sits up there with some of the greats. Its role in the zeitgeist, its impact on the public consciousness and its "branding" is something few other shows have (or will ever) achieve. The Sopranos set a significant tone for how television has been made since and created a high-water mark to which other shows would strive (and mostly fail) to achieve. The show, even with its flaws, was a deeply beautiful and artistic show containing a singular, rather uncompromising vision. And so picking its best episode was no easy task.

Many TV critics (more influential and well read than yours truly) have weighed in here and their consensus is the first season's "College" ranks as the mountain top for the HBO series. Tony and Meadow's trip to visit schools, wrapped in with his happening upon a mafioso-turned-rat is a universal favorite. Other episodes like "Pine Barrens" or even the Pilot ranked up there too. And I thought each of these episodes was brilliant.

But in examining the series as a whole, the story it tried to tell, the characters it created, its woven nightmare of "family" and its greater plot lines I think a certain episode stands out among the rest. "Long Term Parking" signifies a "moment" for the series, a talking point in the greater "water cooler" scoreboard and a perfect microcosm of all the painful ways the mafia affected each and every character on the show .

There is one strike against this episode and I'll chuck it in right now to get it out of the way. The episode doesn't involve Dr. Melfi at all. She was one of the show's lynchpins and to not have her included sucks, but hey it happens.

"Long Term Parking" is the penultimate episode of the penultimate season. It picks up with the DiMeo family at odds with the greater New York faction (which is at war with itself) because of Steve Buscemi's Tony B having gunned down Phil Leotardo's brother and injuring Phil in the process. The warring factions, encapsulated by Little Carmine's hilarious and accurate assessment, "Retaliations," counter attacks. We're in a fucking stagmire," is the kind of mafioso give and take many viewers used as the show's guilty pleasure. This episode offered many of the small details about mafia life down to the shady Brooklyn sitdowns replete with expensive suits, cigarette smoking and overt threats of "getting whacked" and "retribution." It's just the kind of thing the mafia-as-entertainment lovers can get behind.

The episode also deals with the war at home, specifically Tony and Carmela's marriage as they begin their reconciliation process, which is effectively a bargaining session having little to do with love and more grounded in convenience. If The Sopranos was about family, this episode encapsulated much of the dysfunction. Carmela and Tony see one another as means to their particular ends, with Carmela needing Tony's money to fund a building project, and Tony wanting to maintain the facade of "happy family" life to be the complete boss. It's this kind of relationship defectiveness that really was at the core of the show and this episode was a perfect summation of everything right and wrong with Tony and Carm's marriage.

But the real story here is with Christopher and Adriana. The Sopranos was about a lot of things but at its core, the show always seemed to go back to how Tony's sociopathic and narcissistic behavior destroyed everyone and everything in his wake. Christopher and Adriana are perfect examples of this with Christopher's quote to his longtime girlfriend, "That's the guy Adriana. My uncle Tony, the guy I'm going to hell for," spelling it out better than I ever could.

When the FBI learns a murder happened at Adriana's club they leverage that information, and her naiveté, to get make her an informant. In turn they want her to convince Christopher to accept a life outside of the mafia, in witness protection. As viewers we know this is the beginning of the end, but like the characters, are almost unwilling to accept that hard truth.

The final act of the episode, from the time Adriana tells Christopher she's been compromised by the FBI is television at its best, most compelling and most difficult. Beginning with Christopher's reaction, which starts with quivering dread, turns into almost homicidal rage (he practically strangles Adriana to death), moves into tearful regret ("I fucking loved you!) and finally devolves into gut-wrenching sadness is the second hardest part of the episode, but maybe the best few minutes of the show's entire run.

And when Christopher leaves to "clear his head", and Adriana packs we are almost ready to believe things might turn out okay. But then the call comes from Tony that Christopher has attempted suicide, and Silvio is coming to pick up Adriana. It's here, again we as viewers, much like Adriana, know something is amiss and yet can't quite put our fingers on it. We even dream of being with Adriana as her mind takes her down 95, away from New Jersey, away from the mafia, away from the sadness and away from her own personal hell.

But, we are jarred out of this dream along with her, and see her in the car with Sil as they get off at an exit and roll through the woods (definitely nowhere in sight of a hospital). Eventually they come to stop off the beaten path, and we watch Tony's consigliere get out of the car, yank her out as she struggles for her life, chase her down as she crawls through the woods begging for her life, hear the gun shots ring out, and know it's over.

This scene, in my opinion, is among the most disturbing, haunting and sad in the history of television. I don't think that's an overstatement. And though one scene does not a great episode make, Adriana's death was the most jarring of the many deaths in The Sopranos run. Adriana was an innocent bystander, a childlike young lady guilty of nothing more than falling for the wrong guy and never having the wherewithal to leave. Her plight is the story of many side characters in the show. And though not all met their end like her, no one's life was better from having been associated with the mafia. Above all, I think this was David Chase's message and "Long Term Parking" hit that point home with crushing clarity.

The rest of the episode from Tony basically giving Johnny Sack and New York the middle finger (setting the stage for the final season) to Christopher dropping Adriana's car in the airport parking lot, to him getting high to deal with the pain (only to have Tony beat the crap out of him, fittingly consistent with Tony's ego) and ending with the image of Tony and Carmela taking a look at her new property, is a microcosm of the show. That even in the wake of the Adriana's devastating death, the mafia world trucks on destroying everyone in its path with Tony silently lamenting her loss while also coming to grips with how he must deal with his cousin. More death and pain is on the way.

Its sad and painful look at mafia life makes "Long Term Parking" The Sopranos ' best episode; its greatest achievement. The episode is, at times, laugh out loud hilarious, unapologetically devastating, brilliantly acted, flawlessly scripted and a perfect embodiment of the series as a whole. It is television at its very best.

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The Sopranos' Best Episode: Long Term Parking

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Its sad and painful look at mafia life makes "Long Term Parking" The Sopranos' best episode; its greatest achievement. The episode is, at times, laugh out loud hilarious, unapologetically devastating, brilliantly acted, flawlessly scripted and a perfect embodiment of the series as a whole. It is television at its very best.

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Tony Soprano is one of the most intriguing and enigmatic characters in the history of television. Understanding him psychologically is a difficult proposition, although many of the shows other characters have offered some ideas. In one early episode, Dr. Melfi's husband Richard refers to Tony as Alexithymic, the short definition being "the inability to talk about feelings due to a lack of emotional awareness." This seems to be a reasonable starting point, as Tony often reacts with rage during periods of confusion and frustration.

One key scene occurred when we flashback to Tony's first murder of a bookie named Willie Overall. We find out from Paulie that Tony "made his bones" with that murder, and how he became an official member of the mafia family through this murder on the order of his father. What does this scene tell us about how Johnny Soprano felt about his son Tony? That he was destined to be a murderer and gangster who shouldn't hesitate to use violence to solve problems? This would certainly appear to be the case.

Contrast this with Tony's own feelings about his son, and how he didn't want him involved with the family business. This seems an important development, as although Tony's own father thought making him a murderer was the best way to advance his career, Tony had very different ideas for his own son's development.

Tony's odd obsession with animals also demonstrates his inability to share emotions with other human beings, and again this behavior might have some its roots in the lack of love and support he received from his mother. Tony often projects feelings onto animals that he is unable to feel for human beings, and this trait shows how confusing and upset Tony gets when confronted by negative emotions.

In conclusion , Tony Soprano's life is one lived with little insight or mindfulness. This lack of insight has led to an external locus of control, where he views the bad things that happen to him as bad luck. His statements such as, "I can't catch a break" and "I'm like king Midas in reverse" are examples of this behavior, and these claims don't jibe with the many, many fortuitous events in Tony's life.

Which brings us to the highly controversial ending and the ongoing debate about Tony's potential death. In this context , it is interesting to consider that the man who may or may not have shot Tony in the final scene is credited as "Man in Member's Only Jacket." We recall the first episode of the sixth season is called "Member's Only" and some key things happened in that episode including Eugene's suicide, Ray Curto's death, and finally , the closing shot where Junior shoots Tony in the gut.

In the end, it is interesting to consider how close we as viewers felt to Tony considering his long history of anti-social activities. Why did we find it so easy to forgive him despite these continually violent and exploitative activities, and root for him to prevail against his enemies? Ultimately , I think it speaks to the brilliance of the writing and the show itself, and our ability to rationalize and forgive the actions of a character once we have become emotionally invested. David Chase himself referred to Tony in interviews as a "monster", but I believe it's fair to say that most of us viewers had a much more complicated and nuanced response to him.

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Tony Soprano is one of the most intriguing and enigmatic characters in the history of television. Understanding him psychologically is a difficult proposition, although many of the shows other characters have offered some ideas. In one early episode, Dr. Melfi's husband Richard refers to Tony as Alexithymic, the short definition being "the inability to talk about feelings due to a lack of emotional awareness."

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The world of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) was a complicated one, and as the head of two very different families, it was inevitable his life would be impacted by many different women over the years. From his loving wife and daughter, his incredibly patient therapist, and a handful of women from all walks of life who found themselves attracted to the power he wielded as the head of a criminal empire. Over the course of The Sopranos' six seasons (which are available to stream anytime on HBO Now), we saw how these vastly different women would come to affect his life. With Valentine's Day right around the corner, here's a look at the women who helped make Tony Soprano who he was, for better or for worse.

12. Fran Felstein

After running into his father's former mistress, Fran Felstein (Polly Bergen), at the cemetery, Tony spends some time platonically courting her, securing the inheritance she'd been promised, and even lying to his therapist about her appearance. While drawn to the insight into his father's past at first, Tony comes to resent his 'other woman,' who ends up reduced to some over-exaggerated anecdote he tells the guys sitting around the bar at the Bada Bing.

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Ranking The Most Important Women In Tony Soprano's Life

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The world of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) was a complicated one, and as the head of two very different families, it was inevitable his life would be impacted by many different women over the years.

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Tony Soprano is notoriously known for frequently being unfaithful to his wife, Carmela. He has had numerous affairs and one-night stands with gorgeous women. So he's totally a player... ...but who was the prettiest? This is your chance to share your opinion on the hottest woman tony soprano has slept with!

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HBO's serialized drama, "The Sopranos," is a sensation.For premium cable its audience is large- as of last year, over ten million viewers.But its fame transcends its popularity.A niche audience that includes many intellectuals accounts for serious articles in the New Yorker and the Nation, as well as front-page reviews in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other major metropolitan newspapers.Numerous Emmys and virtually total critical acclaim have put its creator, David Chase, in a position to name his own ticket in the entertainment business.

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To paraphrase the timeless words of Edward G. Robinson's Rico in Little Caesar, "Is this the end of Tony?" Well, that wouldn't be for me to say, and in any case, I don't know, what with plot points guarded as fiercely as the crown jewels. What does appear to be certain, however, is that the upcoming nine episodes, technically the second half of the show's sixth season, will finally spell the end of The Sopranos, 10 years after HBO bought the script for the pilot. This is a fact of life, the 800-pound gorilla that nobody on the show, the interiors of which are shot at Silvercup Studios, a former bread bakery in Long Island City, wants to acknowledge. Though it feels like just another day on the set as cast and crew work on a domestic scene in Janice Soprano's kitchen, the actors might as well be wearing sandwich boards reading, the end is nigh.

For most of them, it's been an unprecedented, nearly decade-long marriage to the show, which has meant a ready-made, close-knit surrogate family of artistic collaborators, not to mention a steady paycheck. And most of them aren't quite ready to hit the pavement. Says Tony Sirico, who plays Soprano capo Paulie Walnuts, "For the last three months now we've been doing a lot of reminiscing. We bring up the show ending, and then we stop right away, because we want to make believe that it's not happening. I want to block it out of my head. I'm heartbroken." According to Edie Falco, who plays Tony Soprano's wife, Carmela, "There are actors here who will never get an opportunity like this again. Having gotten scripts while we've been working on this, there's just nothing out there that's interesting. It scares the hell out of me." Little Steven Van Zandt, longtime guitarist of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and maestro of his own radio show, Little Steven's Underground Garage, had never acted before he landed the part of Tony's consigliere, Silvio Dante. Sighing, he says, "There's a fair chance I'll never act again."

The one exception to the pervasive melancholy is James Gandolfini himself, the actor who turned Tony Soprano into the Homer Simpson of live-action television, transformed the Jersey Mob boss into one of the great screen characters by investing him with an unprecedented physicality-his bulk, his 12 o'clock shadow, his labored breathing, even, which makes him sound just short of tubercular. No one will ever forget Tony's graceless shuffle down his driveway every morning to pick up the Newark Star-Ledger, or the slovenly way he bellies up to the kitchen counter to guzzle O.J. out of the container. At the same time, alongside Tony's signature menace, the actor gives him a winning sweetness, and is able to effortlessly slide from one to the other and back again, so that these traits don't seem like contradictions, but rather the fluid flow of personality. Gandolfini has started his own production company and has a deal to develop material for HBO. He's had enough of Tony. "It's been a great opportunity, but I don't have much trepidation about it ending. I think it's more than time. Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people. As much as I've explored this guy, I don't know what else to really do with him. I've been in one place for 10 years. That's enough. It's time for me to do other things."

Gandolfini might be the only person in America who feels that way. His performance helped transform HBO from a fights-and-features TV footnote into the Rolls-Royce of pay cable, a critical and commercial behemoth whose impact has recast American television-almost, or at least occasionally-into a medium for adults. In our culture of hype, the currency of praise has been so de-valued that no one credits it, even when deserved. The truth is, The Sopranos, whether in one-hour shots, 13-hour seasonal chunks, or the 86-hour long-form marathon-however you want to take it-is one of the masterpieces of American popular culture, on a par with the first two Godfathers, Mean Streets, and GoodFellas-the classics of Mob cinema-or even European epics such as Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, Bernardo Bertolucci's Novecento, or, as the late New York Times critic Vincent Canby first claimed, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's monumental 15½-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz, all of which The Sopranos dwarfs in terms of length, if not scope. New York's Museum of Modern Art honored The Sopranos in February 2001, when the senior film curator, Laurence Kardish, showed the first two seasons, along with a couple of films that influenced the show-including a Laurel and Hardy picture, Saps at Sea. This was the first time an American dramatic series for television had been shown at the museum. Kardish calls the show "an extraordinary blend of great psychological insight and social cartography, zany as well as poignant and resonant." No less an authority than Norman Mailer recently gave The Sopranos high praise indeed when he favorably compared the depth of its characterizations to that achieved in novels.

Chase, 61, is about six feet tall, slender, with thinning hair and a saturnine expression that matches a dark, savage sense of humor. He's Italian (the family name was DeCesare), but he's not given to the emotional flamboyance that we associate with Italians-and which is very much on display in the show-perhaps because he was raised as a Protestant. He's a watchful man, plays his cards close to the vest, lives very much in his head, listens as much as he speaks, except for abrupt and frequent explosions of laughter. Though he commands an enterprise that employs upwards of 300 people, he is not a cheerleader in the conventional sense. He is prone, during writers' meetings, to say things such as "God, I'm so fucking depressed. I hate this. I can't do another one." As executive producer Ilene S. Landress puts it, "If you're looking for a glass-half-full person, he's not it. The scary part is sometimes you think you're giving him good news and he turns it into bad news." Van Zandt describes Chase as a tortured soul. "Look at the show," the actor says, smiling. "He's not moody-he's always in a bad mood. He's very consistent." There are bits and pieces of Chase in many of the show's characters, but if he resembles any of them, it's probably Johnny Sack, the boss of the New York family who conducts himself with the aplomb of a dyspeptic chess master.

We're sitting together in the back of a car on a tour of New Jersey, where Chase grew up and where his show unfolds, having headed out of New York through the Lincoln Tunnel. The signs and sights flash by as they do in the show's opening-credits sequence, and I can almost hear the music that accompanies it as Chase points out the window to an area in Newark where his mother grew up, since obliterated by development. "That was the original Little Italy," he says. "The buildings were torn down, and large projects were built. And then those were torn down, and these smaller ones were built." Most of the places he remembers aren't there anymore, victims of relentless change. You can't go home again.

New Jersey is more than just the show's backdrop. The Sopranos is about guys who make their living on the wrong side of the Hudson River in Jersey's gray flatlands, skimming city contracts, hijacking semis full of booze or cigarettes, betting on sports, or feigning nine-to-five regularity in "waste management." Its Broadway is Bloomfield Avenue, a thoroughfare that runs from downtown Newark out to the nouveau suburbs, lined, for much of its length, with strip malls, single-story working-class bars, nail parlors, and Italian restaurants with names like Roma or DaVinci's, whose walls are hung with black velvet paintings. Which is to say, Jersey is not New York, and, despite Tony's robust cash flow and the big house on the cul-de-sac in North Caldwell, The Sopranos is more GoodFellas than Godfather; it's the Mob in the era of diminished expectations, when, as Tony points out, the big money goes to Enron. Good-bye, cashmere overcoats; hello, grungy bathrobes. North Jersey is the place that colors the fears and hopes of Chase's characters; it's the place from which he fled, but which-to everyone's surprise, including his own-proved fertile ground for his powers of invention.

A severely truncated version of Chase's career goes like this: When the idea for The Sopranos finally floated to the surface, he had been laboring in the vineyards of network television for some 20 years. He had come of age in the late 1960s and 1970s, and had grown up with the great films of that era, particularly those of Federico Fellini. He desperately wanted to write features. Television was a byway he fell into when, after graduating from film school, at Stanford, in 1971, he was cast onto the mean streets of Hollywood. He made his way through several unmemorable TV shows while laboring over feature scripts on the side, none of which sold. "I was learning writing," he says. "I didn't really know about story. To me, 8½ was a great story."

Chase bounced from development deal to development deal until, in 1993, he ended up, almost in spite of himself, in charge of a high-profile hit, Northern Exposure. There's a lot of money to be made in television, and by every standard but his own, he was successful. He and his family had a home in Santa Monica Canyon. Chase would come back from work, plop down on the floor, and play Barbies with his daughter Michele. But, according to Konner, "he turned it into Perp-Walk Barbie-District Attorney Barbie, Parole Officer Barbie.... I think he is a little obsessed with law and order. I think he gets angrier than most of us at the miscarriage of justice, at the injustice of the world."

"I Hate Television"

Chase was still miserable. "I could not cross that line, from TV to features, to save my ass," he says. Meanwhile, his years on the ground in network production had given him plenty of time to brood about the deficiencies of television. "Television is really an outgrowth of radio. And radio is just all yak-yak-yak-yak. And that's what television is: yak-yak-yak-yak. It's a prisoner of dialogue, film of people talking. Flashy words."

Still, by 1995, as he was turning 50, he was in a position to pick and choose. He chose the management company turned producers Brillstein-Grey, where he signed a development deal. The company had produced The Larry Sanders Show for HBO, which Chase admired. Brad Grey said to him at the time, "You know, we believe you have a great television series in you." Chase recalls, "It wasn't something I was really dying to hear, because my response in my head was: I don't give a fuck-I hate television. But I wasn't used to being talked to that way"-Grey had also said, "We don't want the kind of stuff they do on the networks"-"and it had an impact on me." Driving home that night, Chase remembered a feature idea that his agents had shot down a couple of years earlier. It was a comedy about a mobster with emotional problems rooted in his difficult relationship with his mother. He sees a therapist. It was way before Analyze This. Now Chase thought to himself, I wonder if that would make a good TV series? They like these things to have female appeal-and this would have his mother and his family.

The pilot script would be a highly personal story stitched together with bits and pieces of fabric from Chase's own life. "Network dramas have not been personal," he reflects. "I don't know very many writers who have been cops, doctors, judges, presidents, or any of that-and, yet, that's what everybody writes about: institutions. The courthouse, the schoolhouse, the precinct house, the White House. Even though it's a Mob show, The Sopranos is based on members of my family. It's about as personal as you can get."

An only child, Chase had a lot of "issues," as they say, with his parents. He grew up very much under their thumb, emotionally, in a garden apartment in Clifton, a working-class town. The complex, called Richfield Village, was a U-shaped brick unit overlooking a grass courtyard. "This was after the war," Chase recalls, "and it was filled with veterans and their children. I had a lot of fun there, felt very free." At the same time he could barely stand to be in the same room with his mother and father; their very proximity made him physically ill, put his stomach in knots. His father, who owned a hardware store, "was a very angry guy. If he had a problem with me, I got the silent treatment. He wouldn't speak to me for a week, two weeks. He'd go around the house with this sort of Mussolini pout." Henry Chase did his best to crush his son's spirit. He belittled him at every opportunity, even made fun of his physical appearance.

That said, it was Chase's mother, Norma, a telephone-book proofreader, who really left a mark. "His mother was a lunatic," says Chase's wife, Denise. The inspiration for Tony's mother, Livia, the North Jersey Medea, so indelibly rendered by the late Nancy Marchand, Norma Chase was a passive-aggressive drama queen, given to every sort of eccentricity. She wouldn't answer the phone after dark, wouldn't drive in the rain. When David was about 12, she threatened to put his eye out with a fork because he said he wanted a Hammond organ. Chase describes her as "a nervous woman who dominated any situation she was in by being so needy and always on the verge of hysteria. You walked on eggshells." (As Joe Pantoliano-a.k.a. "Joey Pants"-who in the show's third and fourth seasons inscribed the crew chief Ralphie Cifaretto in the Sopranos Hall of Fame, puts it, "All of us Italian-Americans had those dominant mothers. My mother hit me in the head with a high-heeled shoe. When I saw The Godfather, I went, They're always worried about him, but in my house everybody was worried about Mommy. Then somebody told me, 'Joey, Mario Puzo used the Godfather as a metaphor for his mother-he was actually writing about her.'")

Chase's mother had some virtues. "She could really make you laugh," Denise Chase recalls. "David picked up his sense of humor from her. She had a different take on everything, and he comes at things from a different angle, too. He also picked up her lack of inhibitions about saying things."

As a teenager, Chase was on speaking terms with depression. He graduated from high school in 1963, then spent two years at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which he detested. "I slept 18 hours a day," he says. He was suffering from "what's come to be known as normal, nagging, clinical depression. It was awful." Did he contemplate suicide? "Well, doesn't everybody?"

He finally switched to N.Y.U. and then announced that he wanted to go to film school, which didn't go over well at home. He recalls, "My father said, 'You can be a clown in the circus if you want-I don't care-but you gotta finish college first.' My mother used to say, 'My worst nightmare is that you're going to marry an Irish Catholic girl, move to California, and I'll never see you again,'" which turned out to be the case. After graduating from N.Y.U., he disappointed both parents in 1968 by marrying Denise Kelly, his high-school sweetheart, and moving to California-"to get away from them," she says.

Denise has been credited by friends with keeping Chase's head above water. Says Konner, "She is his emotional rock, let's say. She is the one he turns to in times of trouble." Chase started therapy in his early 30s at her urging, after her younger sister died at the age of 25 of a brain aneurysm. "We went back to New Jersey for the funeral," Chase recalls. "My father opened the front door of the house, and he went, 'I like everything you have on but your shoes.' Those were his first words: boom-let me find the negative. My parents were not speaking to me, because I was spending too much time with her family. When we came back on the plane, instead of focusing on my wife's loss, I was focused on my problems with my parents. They were in my head all the time. My wife said, 'This is absurd. You really need to be in therapy.'" Not only would seeing a shrink change Chase's life, the experience would eventually provide the spine for The Sopranos.

When it came to writing the show's pilot, Chase took Brad Grey at his word. He didn't want that stuff they did on the networks? Chase would give him something different. "I didn't really watch much television until the first season of Twin Peaks, in 1990," he explains. "That was an eye-opener for me. There's mystery in everything David Lynch does. I don't mean, Who killed Laura Palmer? There's a whole other level of stuff going on, this sense of the mysterious, of the poetic, that you see in great painting, that you see in foreign films, that's way more than the sum of its parts. I didn't see that on television. I didn't see anybody even trying it."

Chase sat down to write a script that was not only highly personal but also one in which the material wasn't pre-chewed for viewers. "On network, everybody says exactly what they're thinking at all times," he says. "By and large, my characters would be telling lies." Above all, he wanted the pilot to be cinematic: "I wanted to do the kind of stuff I've always loved to see. I didn't want it to be a TV show. I wanted to make a little movie every week." Indeed, Chase nervily inserted his David Lynch moment early in the pilot script: Standing behind his home, Tony is beguiled by some ducks that have landed in his swimming pool. It's not a scene that advances the plot; but what is clear is that, among other things, Chase was sending a message: We're not in Studio City anymore!

Indeed, Chase wastes no time announcing his intentions. The first scene has Tony in Dr. Melfi's office, and subsequently he is felled by repeated panic attacks. A close friend of Chase's was dying of cancer while he was writing the pilot, and this too makes its way into the script, with Tony, fearing he might have a brain tumor, undergoing an MRI. In fact, the entire first season would be devoted to cancer, death, and depression. "I was raised with this dread of cancer," he says. "My mother talked about cancer, cancer, cancer all the time. That's where she lived. When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, she described some friend of hers that was in so much pain they couldn't stand to have the sheet on them. It was: Oh my god!" It seemed like everyone on the show was on medication. Hospital scenes turned up so regularly that viewers might have been excused for thinking they were watching ER. But despite the spilled blood and swallowed pills, the show was always funny.

Not Violent Enough?

As Francis Ford Coppola had when he was casting The Godfather, Chase rounded up the best un- and semi-known Italian actors in New York City. He knew that the pilot, and the subsequent series, if there was one, would stand or fall on the actor who played Tony Soprano. Susan Fitzgerald, who worked for Grey, sent Chase a tape of the scene from the spectacular Quentin Tarantino-Tony Scott picture, True Romance, in which Gandolfini throws an already bloodied Patricia Arquette through a glass shower door. Fitzgerald said, "This is the guy."

For his part, Gandolfini loved the script. "I laughed my ass off," he recalls. "I was like, This is really different and good, and odd. I thought, I've never been the lead before. They're gonna hire somebody else. But I knew I could do it. I have small amounts of Mr. Soprano in me. I was 35, a lunatic, a madman."

Chase recalls, "Jim stopped in the middle of the first audition and said he wasn't doing good, there was an illness in his family. Then he didn't even show up for the second audition. The third audition was at my house. What happens every time [when you're casting something] is that people come in and read, and they read and they read, and you start to think, This is really badly written, the thing sucks. And then the right person comes in, and it all works. It was pretty obvious that Jim had too much going on for this role to go with anyone else."

Chase can be inscrutable, and actors who met with him often had no idea whether he liked them or not. "I thought he was really bored," recalls Michael Imperioli, who plays "Christofuh" Moltisanti, of his audition for Chase. "He's got a poker face, so I thought he wasn't into me, and he kept giving me notes and having me try it again, which often is a sign that you're not doing it right. I thought, I'm not getting this. So he said, 'Thank you,' and I left. I didn't expect to hear back. And then they called."

No one involved with the pilot, not Chase (who directed it), not Gandolfini, thought it would get picked up. It just violated too many shalls and shall-nots, even for pay cable. Indeed, once the pilot was shot, HBO couldn't make up its corporate mind. Recalls Time Warner president and C.O.O. Jeff Bewkes, then chairman and C.E.O. of HBO, "For us, it was a real stretch just to pay for The Sopranos, because even in its first year it was going to be the most expensive drama that I think anybody had ever made, $2.5 to $2.7 million per hour." (The dollars were chewed up by the location shooting in New Jersey.) "If you were us," Bewkes continues, "you were going to have to say, O.K., so let's go spend $30 million for a series that on the surface looks like a gangster who's going to a shrink. And later, when we were casting Jimmy Gandolfini, we knew no network would put a guy with his bulk into the key leading-man role of a week-after-week series they were trying to make commercial. If it didn't work, we were completely wiped out."

Chase was so sure that the pilot would never get made he had been having conversations with the producers of The X-Files about coming on as a producer-writer. At the last minute, right before the Sopranos actors' contracts were set to expire, after which they would be free to take other projects, HBO ordered 13 episodes. But the wrangling wasn't over. Chase wanted to call the series The Sopranos, after some kids in his high school. "But HBO had a problem with that," he explains. "They thought people will say, 'It's about opera,'" which proved true. "They had people generating lists of alternate titles, page after page after page: New Jersey Blood, this terrible shit. They wanted to call it Family Man. Steven Van Zandt said, 'This is insane! Are they outta their fuckin' minds?!' Then a series went on the air called Family Guy, and that was the end of that. So they said, 'All right, use The Sopranos.'"

Despite his contempt for network television, Chase had picked up work habits that served him in good stead. Says Carolyn Strauss, the president of HBO Entertainment, "He was a veteran TV producer, had worked very hard in the network system for many years, and he knew which rules to observe, which he might be able to break."

Given the demands of the dense and complex scripts, the first season was shot on an extremely tight schedule, eight days an episode, although they were long, 16-hour days. This put the actors under tremendous stress, especially Gandolfini, who was in almost every scene. The production hit a speed bump on the fifth episode, "College," co-written by Chase and James Manos Jr., in which Tony takes his high-school-age daughter, Meadow, on a college tour. The story was based on a trip Chase had taken with his own daughter. Gandolfini was having trouble learning his lines. "I had never done anything like that amount of memorization in my life," he recalls. "I'm talking five, six, seven pages a night. David might have regretted giving me his home phone number, because I'd wake him up at 3:30 in the morning and say, 'What the fuck, man?! You're fuckin' killing me! I can't do this. I'm gonna go crazy!' Like I had to do almost a one-page monologue in a phone booth. And being the calm person that I am-especially then-I couldn't get it. I'd forget my lines. I took the phone, and I smashed it a couple times. After that, I broke the windows in the phone booth. crack! smash! bang! And all I could hear was David laughing hysterically. And then I started laughing. And I said, 'You know, I can't memorize all this shit.' But you learn, you learn how to do it."

Says Chase when I bring up the phone-booth story, "Some of that turmoil that's inside of Jim, that pain and sadness, is what he uses to bring that guy to the screen. He'd complain, 'These things I have to do [as Tony], I behave in such a terrible way.' I'd say to him, 'It says in the script, "He slammed the refrigerator door." It didn't say, "He destroys the entire refrigerator!" You did that. This is what you decide to bring to it.'" Chase laughs, then continues: "The reason I was amused [when he destroyed the phone booth] is because I have these same tendencies as he does, which is I'm very infantile about temper tantrums with inanimate objects. Telephones and voice-mail menus, that sort of stuff drives me crazy."

The real problem with "College" was HBO's objection to the story line. In the course of the tour, Tony stumbles across a snitch who's now in the witness-protection program and realizes he has to kill him. "That was a truly big flap," Chase recalls. "We'd gone four episodes, and I thought, If this guy really is a mobster, come on, he's gotta kill somebody." Worried about Tony's "relatability," Albrecht told Chase, "You know, you've created one of the best characters in the past 20 years, and you're gonna destroy him in one fell swoop." Chase stuck to his guns, and when the first cut of the episode arrived at HBO, Albrecht was certain that he was right, that the murder didn't work. "The audience'll hate this guy," he told Chase. "You can't do it." Chase fought back: "I gotta tell you, in the universe he lives in, if he doesn't do this, the audience will hate him more. He's gotta uphold the code. If we're really gonna believe this guy is a credible mobster, he's gotta kill people. In real life, that's what these people do."

In the end, Chase and Albrecht compromised. Chase shot a couple of extra scenes in which the snitch deals drugs and, worse, hires someone to kill Tony, all of which put Tony's actions in a better light. Nevertheless, Chase insisted not only that Tony kill the snitch but that he do it with his bare hands, garroting him, and that's the way it was shot. Chase would be vindicated a year later when he and Manos won Emmys for writing the episode.
Toneee! Toneee!
HBO screened two episodes for the press before the start of the first season. The response was overwhelming. "When I saw the way people reacted at the screening, I was stunned," Chase recalls. "They were clapping, cheering, laughing in all the right places. It was everything you could possibly dream of. When the reviews came out, all across the country, there was only one negative review. I thought, Wow. I've never seen that happen."

The Sopranos premiered on January 10, 1999. Recalls Albrecht, "Nobody had ever paid attention to us before. Now Saturday Night Live was doing parodies of a first-season show on HBO! We were the focus of media attention, whether it was the five-o'clock news or The Tonight Show or The New York Times. Certainly, I'd never been involved with anything like that before." The Gary Shandling Show had been an object of cult adoration; The Sopranos was a phenomenon. Three and a half million people had caught the premiere; soon each episode (shown several times a week) was drawing an aggregate 10-million-plus viewers-huge numbers for HBO. (The most recent new episodes averaged 13.1 million viewers, after a peak of more than 18 million during season four.)

Gandolfini and company became instant celebrities. The actor remembers going to a fight at Madison Square Garden with some of the cast. It was as if they were the Beatles. "I walked in, there was a stampede," he says. "The whole crowd started chanting Toneee! Toneee! My manager was in from L.A., and he was like, 'Holy fuck!' I said to him, 'You better be nice to me or I'll ask these guys to kill you.'"

Van Zandt-who had originally auditioned for the part of Tony after his face popped out at Chase from the cover of an old Springsteen album-had gone out of his way to make himself unrecognizable on the show by gaining weight and replacing his signature bandanna with its opposite, a sleek pompadour. "After 25 years in the music business, I'd achieved a fairly notable level of celebrity," he says. "But by the second show on this sort of you-have-to-find-it cable station, which only a couple of fight fans knew where it was, 7 out of 10 people who stopped me on the street were talking about The Sopranos: 'Great new show.' I'm like, 'My mother didn't recognize me-how the fuck did you?' So I knew then, David's hit a vein."

Some fans were hard-pressed to distinguish the actors from their roles. "I was living in the meat-market district on the far West Side, below 14th Street," Gandolfini remembers. "I heard this banging on the outside door and screaming. It was late, like after midnight. So I opened the door, and the guy turns white. All of a sudden I realize, Oh, fuck, he thinks I'm Tony. So that's when I started to realize ... "

Real wiseguys had circled around The Godfather, but the Sopranos team was careful to keep them at arm's length, knowing that one thing could lead to another. Chase had some familiarity with the history of the Mob in New Jersey, but for research he preferred law-enforcement sources, inviting Mob experts to come in and talk to the writers. Robin Green and Mitch Burgess, whom Chase hired at the beginning of the first season, recall listening to a guy in the witness-protection program who had lectured at Quantico. "We used a lot of that shit," says Green. "For instance, we learned how they would break an arm, laying the guy's arm over the curb and then stomping." Another thing the writers picked up from the experts was "the attitude of Mob guys toward cunnilingus"-negative-which Tony would use against his Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese), with whom he was struggling for control of the family, when it emerged that the latter had a predilection for muff-diving.

Still, despite keeping a distance from the real thing, the Sopranos cast and crew couldn't help knowing their real-life counterparts were out there, watching the show, and every once in a while the production's seismographs would detect some rumbling. Once, Chase recounts, "a guy came into a bar where one of our actors was, and he just sat there looking at him all night long. As the bar emptied out, the guy said to him, 'You know, I'm from Jersey. I want you to know you're making a lot of people unhappy out there. These people don't like your show and you should watch what the fuck you're doing.' And he left. Nothing ever happened. We never knew if he was connected or not."

Imperioli has written several episodes. "The thing that I take away as a writer, the whole key to David and the show's success, is detail. Nothing is left generic. When Paulie and Christopher were lost in the woods"-the famous "Pine Barrens" episode, in which Paulie flips out, thinking he's killed a Russian mobster, and ends up trying to bury him in a wintry forest-"we were already stuck in the snow, we were stranded, we were freezing, so what a great idea that Paulie lost his shoe. That one detail opened up this whole other world of comedy, desperation, trying to make a shoe, him wanting to steal my shoe-whatever." Shades of Saps at Sea.

Not everyone, apparently, appreciated Chase's level of control. "People were intimidated by David's brain," says Landress. On the set, he was known as "Master Cylinder," the arch-nemesis of Felix the Cat in the 1950s cartoon series for television. Master Cylinder is described on Wikipedia as "a disembodied brain contained within an electromechanical body." Draw your own conclusions.

Chase makes himself available to the actors if they have questions, although he doesn't always answer them. Once, recalls Lorraine Bracco, who plays Tony's therapist, Dr. Melfi, she asked Chase about a scene in which Melfi discusses a dream she's had with her own therapist. "I said, 'David, you gave me this huge dream-what does it mean?' He said, 'Absolutely nothing.' 'But, David, you want me to play this scene, how can I?' 'Well, sometimes you dream and it means absolutely nothing.' 'I know, but I'm a psychiatrist-dreams mean things.' 'Nope, this dream means absolutely nothing!' 'Okaaay!' So you climb out on the limb, and you end up hanging with one hand. It's not the normal way writers and actors work. It's the way he doesn't tie everything up in a bow after the 60 minutes. And no actor likes to be spoon-fed."

Unlike features, where writers are the butts of Polish jokes (you remember the one about the Polish actress who fucks the writer), television is a writer-driven medium, which, paradoxically, may be why Chase, during the first season, fired almost every writer on the show when his or her first draft came in. He explains, "We had writers from Iowa, California, you name it, and they just didn't seem to get this East Coast, schoolyard-bully thing, this level of verbal abuse. And savagery. It's called 'breaking balls,' and it's what guys in Jersey and New York do." Only Robin Green, Mitch Burgess, and Frank Renzulli were left standing. In the second year, they were joined by Winter. By the time his agent sent him a videotape of the pilot, Winter had already done a good deal of TV writing, for shows such as Xena: Warrior Princess. When he finally got into the writers' room, at Silvercup, he was impressed. "This wasn't handcuffed network TV, where you can never be yourself. It was very freeing, when you didn't have to edit yourself. This was absolutely right out of our brains onto the page. I couldn't believe this stuff was coming out of characters' mouths-and this is a television show."

Chase had little patience for learning on the job. Either you got it or you didn't. It took him two years to warm up to Winter. "It's almost like a war situation," the writer continues. "David doesn't want to get to know you that well, because you might be out of there very quickly. He used to say, 'I'm not running a writing school.' You better understand why Tony would or would not do something, and if he would, this is how he'd do it. You have to deliver. I'm exaggerating slightly, but you are only as good as your last script. If it doesn't come in right, you're gone." As Tim Van Patten, who has directed numerous Sopranos episodes, puts it, "If David finds your Achilles' heel, he will go for it, at war or play." Sirico, who had done serious jail time, took a step backward whenever he ran into Chase.

The writers' meetings were grueling, from 10 in the morning to 7 or 8 in the evening without much in the way of breaks as they "beat out the story." Says Winter, "David wanted to hear everything-every stupid dream you ever had, any dumb thing that ever happened to you as a kid, your ridiculous opinions about politics, life, women, friendship. There was nothing too horrible, too trivial, too stupid to make it into the show, because it's real life." Gandolfini calls the writers "vampires." He says, "You tell them shit about your life and then it shows up three episodes later." Continues Winter, "At one point, in the third year, we needed something really horrific to happen to Meadow and her roommate. And I said, 'Once I was on the subway and I saw a homeless woman who had a skirt made out of a garbage bag. As she got up, the skirt fell off, and she had the Daily News stuffed up the crack of her ass.' I thought, Of course, we'll never use that. David said, 'That's perfect.' I was like, Wow! There's no limits!"

Two Stupid Guineas Yelling at Each Other

Much of the material continued to come from Chase's own life, and not all of it from his childhood. He also drew on his experiences in Los Angeles. "It's amusing to me that there are two businesses which seem to be run by criminals: the Mob and Hollywood," he observes. "My heart goes out to mobsters before it goes out to those other guys, because at least mobsters confront you." Sometimes the Hollywood material was explicit-Christopher tries his hand at writing a movie script-and other times metaphorical. On one level, Tony and the other bosses are surrogates for Chase himself, the show-runner. For example, these words from Tony sound like one from the heart: "All due respect, you got no fucking idea what it's like to be number one. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fucking thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end you're completely alone with it all."

Chase is so paranoid about leaking plot points, it's as if he's forced everyone connected with the show to take an oath of omertà. Says Van Patten, "When I'm done reading a script, I will take the first 10 pages and rip them up into small bits, drop half into the bathroom garbage, and half into the kitchen garbage. Then I'll take the next 10 pages and rip them into small bits, drop half into the other bathroom garbage, and half into the incinerator in the hallway. I've been doing that for 10 years. My fingers would be killing me by the end of these things. But I'm terrified that someone would find it, and there'd be a leak traced back to me. My mother-in-law just gave me a paper shredder, but now it's too late."

Like many of his characters, Chase has a temper. In the grand tradition of Scorsese and Coppola, he can throw things in meetings, break phones. "God knows, my father threw shit-we're not allowed to have a temper anymore?" exclaims Gandolfini, sounding very much like Tony hectoring Dr. Melfi. "We're not allowed to get angry about things? There's something wrong with you 'cause you raised your voice? When did that happen? To me, David's truthful, he's clear. He tells me when something's wrong. When actors come to me, ask, 'Am I doing O.K.?' I'll say, 'Believe me. If you weren't doing O.K., you would know.' I appreciate that. Occasionally we have started a conversation loudly. But after a second or two, we both laugh. 'Cause we know it's just gonna be two stupid guineas yelling at each other."

Anger is a great motivator. "What's driving the show, and driving David, is that he doesn't like the world as he finds it," says Konner. "He's taking out a lot of his frustrations by letting these characters act out without a super-ego, without a sense of responsibility, because he wants to-and to some extent we all do."

But, of course, the other side of the coin is there, too. You can't sustain a marriage to your teenage sweetheart for 40 years and raise a child without achieving a modicum of maturity. Acting out is not without cost, and even the show's most impulse-driven characters, save perhaps Paulie, struggle against it. Tony may screw around, but, as Gandolfini reminds us, "if you look at every relationship that he has had, he hasn't gotten away scot-free in fuckin' anything. There's that Russian girl tried to kill herself. There's Gloria Trillo"-the sexy Mercedes-Benz saleswoman played by Annabella Sciorra-"another fucking lunatic who wanted me to kill her. The Russian with the one leg? She tells me, 'You're like a little baby.' As interesting as this man's life is, he has paid a price." The Sopranos is precisely a battlefield between civilization and its discontents.

Year by year, defying the laws of television gravity, the show just got better. Every time it seemed as if there was no place to go, Chase and the other writers somehow topped themselves. They killed off major characters, first Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore) and later Adriana (Drea de Matteo), both of whom had been flipped by the F.B.I. (When Big Pussy turned rat, his photograph reportedly came down in social clubs all over New Jersey and New York!) It sent the show's jeopardy index through the roof, signaling that no one was safe. And Chase kept adding weird and wonderful characters-John Heard's bent cop in the first season; David Proval's Richie Aprile, a psycho who jumps out in a show rich with psychos; Svetlana (Alla Kliouka Schaffer), the one-legged, chain-smoking, tough-talking Russian "caregiver"-and kept putting the regulars in eye-popping scenes that left you blinking, wondering if you just saw what you thought you saw: Johnny Sack pulping one of Ralphie's crew, snarling, "Let me buy you a drink," and then pissing on him; Christopher, stoned on H, sitting on Adriana's dog and crushing it, or crossing himself before dropping Ralphie's severed head into a hole in the earth; Dr. Melfi raped in a parking garage; Gloria Trillo hitting Tony in the back of the head with a steak; Janice (Aida Turturro) stealing Svetlana's prosthetic leg; Paulie pawing through Adriana's underwear drawer, sniffing the crotch of her panties; and on and on. Chase was having a ball, or as much of a ball as he allows himself to have. As Konner puts it, "It's tremendous power. I mean, my God, hundreds of people working in the service of something you thought up in your little brain."

As the story lines grew more complicated and the cast got bigger (and some actors renegotiated their salaries), the show became more expensive to produce. The 8-day shooting schedule for each episode became 12 days, with some episodes reportedly taking nearly a month, putting the show somewhere between television and features. The cost per episode went up to an estimated $10 million plus.

The Sopranos became to HBO what Quentin Tarantino had been to Miramax, a magnet for talent. Says Jeff Bewkes, who, on a shelf in his office, proudly displays the bowling-ball bag that once contained Ralphie's head, "It was so respected by the creative community that all kinds of people-writers, directors, and actors-wanted to work at HBO who previously had said, 'I only want to work in feature films.' We now had David Milch making Deadwood, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg making Band of Brothers, and Hanks coming back to make John Adams," a seven-part mini-series set to appear in the first half of 2008. Adds Albrecht, " The Sopranos was the hammer that broke the glass ceiling for us."

The only problems were good problems, problems caused by success. In the middle of the third season, Ralphie beats his pregnant goomara (Ariel Kiley) to death behind the Bada Bing, where she works as a stripper. "Afterwards, I got stopped on Fifth Avenue by little old ladies who were like, 'Oh my God, you were so bad to that woman,' feeling my arms," recalls Pantoliano. "They were flirting with me, turned on that I was the guy who beat up this hooker. It was sick." (In a subsequent episode, when Tony kills Ralphie in the belief that he set a fire that incinerated a racehorse that Tony has come to love, Chase wouldn't tell Pantoliano if Ralphie had set the fire or not. Pantoliano decided to play the scene as if he hadn't, as if he were innocent.)

Someone who wasn't turned on was NBC's then president, Bob Wright, who sent out tapes of the beating to industry insiders at the end of April 2001, with a letter that read, in part, "I want you to help think about an issue that I believe is having a major impact on our business-the nature of the content in HBO's The Sopranos.... It is a show which we could not air on NBC because of the violence, language and nudity."

It was unclear what precisely Wright was getting at, but to Chase, the general intent seemed evident. "It was an attack," he says. "There was a lot of envy that we had freedom, while they were crippled by standards and practices. But it's not like the whole reason the show was a success is that people could say 'fuck' and shoot somebody in the head. Everything has to be appropriate to some version of reality. If I was doing a series about the family, or any of these faith-based church groups, I wouldn't have people saying 'fuck,' 'shit,' shooting each other in the head, or dancing around with their tits hanging out. But the fact is, for whatever reason, most people in America today use profanity in their daily discourse. So when I watch TV and it isn't there, it doesn't seem expressive of the way people really speak." Chase felt that Wright was virtually inviting the F.C.C. to censor the show. But Chase also understood that, in its own way, it was a compliment. He says, "It made me happy."

Recalls Bewkes, "I thought about calling [Wright], and then I thought, No, what am I going to say? He hung himself. Isn't there an old saying, Don't shoot a guy who's killing himself?"

Has success changed Chase? The director William Friedkin once said to me, apropos of losing touch with one's audience, "The day you take your first tennis lesson, your career is over." I mention this to Chase.

"I don't play tennis," Chase responds.

"There's a lot of golf in the show."

"I don't play golf."

Says Konner, "He doesn't play anything. He's not a happy-go-lucky guy. He wasn't a happy-go-lucky guy before, and he's not a happy-go-lucky guy now. He's a troubled guy. He hasn't changed that much, because he still feels that The Sopranos is not the movies, it's not the top of the game. And like good artists, he tends to de-value what he does." Adds Van Zandt, "If enjoying success is fucking a bunch of beautiful starlets, developing a cocaine habit, opening a couple of restaurants, buying a golf course-in that sense, he's not handling success very well." Chase did buy a château in France, but Van Zandt isn't impressed. "Is buying a house in the middle of the fucking woods, in the middle of nowhere, enjoying success? You tell me."

This Week Tony Buys a Couch?

The fourth season would end, in 2003, at a high point, with the devastating "Whitecaps" episode, written by Chase, Green, and Burgess, which climaxes with Carmela throwing her husband's golf clubs onto the driveway, with Tony himself-and the marriage-to follow. But whether the series would continue was an open question. Albrecht told Chase, "We'd like another season, obviously." Chase demurred-he was always worried about overstaying his welcome. According to Bracco, he had grown tired of Tony's "whining continuously about his mother," among other things.

Then Chase changed his mind. He recalls, "I had this great situation. Sometimes I began to think of it as the family business, my own farm. So why leave it? I was growing good tomatoes." Chase signed for one more go-round, but took a long hiatus. The same creative issues re-emerged more decisively after the end of the fifth season, in June of 2004. Explains Chase, "I've always said the show was sort of like the Mir space station. Parts wore out, it had to be jerry-rigged-it was only supposed to be up there for a year, but it wound up staying much longer. So every year the thought was, We should stop now. There's a point at which creative fatigue sets in, and I thought that would be pretty soon, and I wanted to stop before that happened. It was also something about the particular nature of the characters-they are fairly provincial and limited. There's nothing they're really trying to accomplish, except to stay alive and keep earning. There's a lot of socializing and collection of envelopes. But they don't travel that much, they don't read that much, and they stay, basically, in their neighborhood. We don't solve a crime every week, or perform an operation. And so it's hard to take them new places without just repeating yourself. It was over, as far as I was concerned. The impulse to leave and try something new had gotten stronger than the impulse to harvest the next crop of tomatoes."

Chase discussed continuing the show with some of the key players, including Gandolfini. "He asked me if I wanted to do another year," recalls the actor. "I said, 'If you think you have something to say. You know, I don't want it to be about: this week Tony buys a couch.'" But HBO wasn't ready to give up. The network had been there before. Says Bewkes, "I always said to him, Are you sure that you're thinking straight about this? Because you've already got a beautiful canvas for yourself in terms of the story, the setup, the characters, the actors. In effect, you're already making six Sopranos films a year. You'd be lucky to make a theatrical film once a year, getting all the bullshit that goes into that."

Finally, in January of 2005, Chase called an emergency meeting of his writers-Winter, Green, and Burgess-as well as his wife, Denise, on a Sunday at Silvercup, to sound them out. "There was a lot of inner conflict in all of us," says Green. "And David was the one that voiced it: 'Is this a good idea to go on?' He loved the show and didn't want to sell out, but there was the huge payday. It's very hard to resist. And then, what are you gonna do that's better than this? But, also, wanting to get out so you could do the movies you'd always wanted to do."

Brad Grey was now chairman and C.E.O. of Paramount Pictures, while retaining a significant interest in The Sopranos; he stood to benefit no matter what Chase decided. "He and I have had long discussions about the right time for him to get into the film business," Grey says. "He knows that he has an open invitation to make pictures here with me, and I think that's what will happen in time. I really believe that he'll be in the movie business."

Chase eventually decided to do one more season, a sixth, but once he got into the writing, there was so much material that one more season effectively turned into two. Chase is nothing if not a contrarian, and the season opened with a radical idea: Uncle Junior, on the brink of senility, shoots Tony, who slips into a coma and over a three-episode arc imagines himself in a different life, as a solar-heating-systems salesperson from Arizona. It grew out of an idea of Terence Winter's, namely, what would have happened to Tony had he not followed his father into the family business, but it merely seemed to prove Albrecht's point: Tony is an Everyman, and the Mafia is "the tickle for why you watched." Without it, Sopranos fans, or at least some of them, grumbled that the show was losing steam. But whatever your opinion of the parallel-universe gambit, the rest of the season-including the outing of gay mobster Vito Spatafore (Joseph Gannascoli), the simmering trouble between Tony and Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) of the New York family, and Christopher's adventures trying to attach Ben Kingsley to a script and his assault on Lauren Bacall (who, playing herself, was thrilled to say "fuck" on camera)-was priceless.

Peter Biskind is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and the author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. His most recent book is Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film (Simon & Schuster).

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How David Chase and The Sopranos Changed Television Forever

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To paraphrase the timeless words of Edward G. Robinson's Rico in Little Caesar, "Is this the end of Tony?" Well, that wouldn't be for me to say, and in any case, I don't know, what with plot points guarded as fiercely as the crown jewels.

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One of my favourite scenes from the brilliant series the sopranos...This is acting at a higher level. R.R.Guthman