Tony Soprano’s therapy sessions are a wonderful contrivance for looking into the psychology and the moral perspective of someone who makes a living as a criminal.

He’s there because he’s having anxiety attacks even a tough guy has trouble coping in this world turned upside down. The show famously starts with mob capo Tony Soprano in a therapy session with a psychiatrist. Organized crime, like the rest of society, has had to adapt to the times.

Some of the characters on the show aspire to achieve the celebrated fame of those movies, though others, wisely, prefer to stay in the background.īut the real point is that these characters are part of the modern era. Via character dialogue, the show even unabashedly compares itself to The Godfather and Goodfellas, the two iconic movies which define the modern era’s obsession with Mafia-related entertainment. Because Americans do love a good crime story. And in the grand tradition of American fiction, it’s about aspiration, about wanting to rise in wealth and status, and maybe even become the boss.Īnd, of course, it’s about crime. It’s about family, the bedrock of American life. That’s what this show is ultimately about coming home. What has he had to do, and to put up with, to get to this large automobile and this beautiful house? The scene ends as he closes the car door. The grim look on his face as he exits his SUV suggests a lot of serious business on his mind. Suddenly he’s in a much nicer neighborhood, pulling into the driveway of an upper middle class house. You see buildings that will become familiar as you watch the show, which promises to be urban and gritty. He exits the highway and proceeds through lower class sections of the city. The song goes… When you woke up this morning A shot from the opening credits of The Sopranos.Ī serious looking middle aged man is driving on the highway through an industrial section of northern New Jersey, smoking a cigar.

You got yourself a gun sopranos