Family ties

National Review, June 25, 2007 by Peter Suderman

WHO lives, who dies, and who gets pinched? As The Sopranos drew its final breaths this season, questions like these attracted the most interest from press and fans. But with a show so resistant to tidiness, such questions miss the point. Series creator David Chase has always eschewed easy answers, and he has devoted much of his show to teaching--or forcing--viewers to live without them. But equally important, and mostly overlooked, is that the show was never really interested in typical mob-story questions; for all its tracksuits and sausage cookouts, murders and union scams, The Sopranos has displayed only a grudging willingness to deal with the tropes of the gangster picture. Instead, it has used the genre's hooks to ensnare its viewers into a milieu altogether both more harrowing and more familiar--the life of the modern, upper-middle-class family.

Just look at them: a mom and a dad, a son and a daughter, a big house with a yard and a pool, even a cranky uncle--as a domestic unit, the Sopranos are nothing if not the prototypical TV family, which is to say the prototypical American family. From the Cleavers to the Huxtables, America has long looked to television to set the standard for life at home. And in the Soprano family, as in so many TV families past, Dad still goes to the office, Mom still stays home, and the kids still bicker in the back seat of the car and have trouble with their homework. Tony, Carmela, Meadow, and A.J. drive SUVs, watch big-screen TVs, fret about college, and host poolside cookouts. They're a textbook update on the nuclear family comfortably ensconced in the green grasses of a suburban cul-de-sac.

But gone are the days of clean living and hard work, now replaced by a bottomless supply of narcissism and violence, petty arguments, crude behavior, and vicious consumerism: a never-ending drive for a bigger house, a newer car, a fancier television. There's no use denying the show's crime-story impulses entirely; but, as often as not, The Sopranos has been a cruel and bitter take on the vulgarity of suburbia set amidst the ruins of the American family.

From its opening credits, which depict Tony Soprano's drive out of New York, through its Jersey outskirts, and up to the driveway of his palatial suburban dwelling, the show brings viewers out of the world of urban crime and into the home. Throughout, the show's surface is domesticity; the aesthetic here is more Pottery Barn faux-simplicity than Corleone opulence. For a number of seasons, Tony conducted his business conversations in the family basement, surrounded by the accumulated junk--washing machines, cleaning supplies, barely used exercise equipment--that litters the storage spaces of so many American homes. Like that junk, his dirty dealings are stuffed away in the basement, leaving the upstairs and yard of the Soprano household to seem simply nice, in an understated, neutral-toned, golfcourse-community sort of way.

Even when dealing with matters of life and death, the show never strays far from familial concerns. Season Two opens with Pussy Bonpensiero, a fellow mobster whom Tony (rightly) suspects of having given information to the authorities, heatedly defending his innocence. It's potentially a life-or-death conversation, yet it's staged against the same backdrop one might expect for talk of an upcoming pool party or golf game. It starts in Tony's driveway as he's picking up the morning paper, then moves to the basement, where his wife, Carmela, continually interrupts with calls down the stairs asking Tony to fetch laundry and bottled water. Their conversation ends on Tony's living-room couch, with Carmela and the kids eating breakfast in the background while the two mobsters sip coffee from pastel-striped mugs. Tony conducts the entire business wearing his bathrobe. It's Goodfellas by way of Martha Stewart; even when things are at their most dire, these two men, both lifelong thieves and murderers, cannot escape the trappings of suburbia.

After all, what is Tony but the typical harried father and husband--head of The Family, but also head of his family? As dad, he shuttles his daughter around to tour the Northeast's colleges (stopping along the way to off a rival). When his son falls into depression after a rough breakup, he sends him out to have a good time with other young men (at a strip-club party hosted by up-and-coming gangsters). Tony even helps his wife get her start in the real-estate business (by aggressively leaning on city building inspectors). He's balding; he's overweight; he likes sports, beer, and steak. He's an old-fashioned, lovable schlub, who just happens to kill when it suits him and run a major crime syndicate.

But never mind the murders and the hijackings. Tony's job is just a job. Like any manager, he hires and fires, manages cash flow, and arranges deals with other organizations. He's a Boss, sure, but he's also just a boss, a son who followed in his father's footsteps and, like so many in his generation, outearned his parents to step into the upper-middle class. Make no mistake, Tony is a babyboomer through and through: He's got unresolved issues with his mom, sees a shrink, and fights with his wife over kids, work, and money. For anyone over 40, it all sounds awfully familiar.