Getting my brains fried with overdose of the 'Sopranos the TV series' after managing to download Season 1-6. Just like a box set of DVD shows, this collection TV series is simply addictive. 'Sopranos' have been hailed as the best TV series of all time with 21 Emmys and 5 Golden Globes awards to boast.It falls in a genre which is somewhere between the typical mafia flick and a comedy. To say categorically that it is a comedy would not serve justice to the laughs coming from the laughing machines. It definitely does not instill that 'off the edge' nail-biting gripping experience of 'The Godfather' trilogy. The series gives us the feel of being a parody of sorts looking at the psychological stresses that a typical Italian mafia would go through the lens of a series of psychiatrist-patient sessions between the protagonist Tony Soprano and Dr Melfi in a series of flashbacks. It also pokes fun at the typical paradoxical American family who does things which are generally accepted as wrong but still try to instill 'good' values in their kids! The failures and under-achievements are all blamed to their family line!
So far I have finished watching the first season of 9 episodes.
It starts with Tony Soliano having a panic attack. After exhausting medical investigations to ascertain the cause of his apparent loss of consciousness, he is referred to a shrink. Reluctantly and incognito, ensuring none of his circle of men are aware that he is psychologically unbalanced, he sees a lady psychiatrist (whom he also has erotic dreams about)!
Legitimately he is in waste disposal business in New Jersey but in real life, he disposes people who does not toe the line. He is frantically trying to find an answer to his medical condition at the same time dealing with stresses around him. Stresses come to him in many forms - a domineering and demanding mother who is forced to stay in a retirement home after she accidentally almost burnt her house down but she is still calling the shots; the run the mob with some many backstabbing subordinates; his 'incapable' uncle Junior whom he made boss but Tony has to make all his decisions; his hot-blooded assistant who thinks he is 'Scarface'; the wife who disproves his line of work but does not mind the remunerations; a smart teenage daughter who knows his activities with her own set of growing pains; a laid back teenage son whom Tony finds desperately to bond; fear that his children might know his job - as if they did not know; with his Russian young almost-teenage mistress and the authorities, of course! And there is a whole gamut unresolved issues of a young Tony growing up in a household where his father was always in and out of prison, sibling rivalry, seeing his father getting arrested by the cops and growing up with an overworked frustrated mother.
Living up to the reputation of being a mob film, there is a lot profanity hurled at each other even in something which appear like a friendly banter between friends or family members! (only rivalling 'Raging Bull' in the number and most creative usage in the four lettered word which starts with an 'F'!). I can understand why it did not make it our shores, especially when Tony Soprano's daily hang out joint being a topless pole dancing bar with graphic view of the near full Monty performers flaunting their well endowed medically enhanced assets gyrating around a pole ! With all our censors' butchering, it would have been a silent movie with jerky shots of a running cameraman!The take home message that I got was that the Italian Americans depicted here ate, drank and behaved like hell. You can only blame so much to your genetic, upbringing, unresolved childhood issues. It may look like an escapist route to rationalisation and brooding but we all have to just grasp the situation at hand and make amends. If you are in the mob, however, it is easier said than done!
If you don't hit for them, they will hit you!
N.B. After the 2001 Twin Tower mishap, most American shows do not depict this icon in their presentations. Some studios even cut older scenes with the icon in the background so as not rekindle bad memories. In the Sopranos' opening credit, it is shown in Tony rear view mirror.
P.S. Why is it that there must be an psychological explanation for everything we do?
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