I fight as a viewer to be engaged with the material a writer presents on television. I wrestle with logic and with plausibility, even though I'm perfectly aware that television is escapism. I, like many opinionated viewers, enjoy a healthy dose of reality inside the realm of whatever show I watch. That's why my list of favorite shows all qualify as having some very basic, realistic elements inside of their fabric.
Television, like the movies, is about distorted reality, its about epic happenings. That's why we tune in week in and week out, to find some adventure lacking in our own American lives. Some shows are better than others at effectively blurring the lines. Those are the shows that can place grounded characters in larger than life situations. My all time favorite show did just that.
The Sopranos ended its six season run over five years ago. To this day, it has meant more to me as a cinematic achievement than any other program...OR film...that I have ever seen. It's hold on me, enthralling in depth and substance, was uncommon. Rarely did I take such ownership in a television show, in a cast of characters. There was something uniquely pivotal about the show, about its depiction of these terrible, awful people who all seemed to be one decision away from the bottom of a river.
The magic of the Sopranos, the magic of David Chase, was that common, law abiding Americans with no desire to commit a crime of any nature, were enthralled by a drama that dealt with a man who spent most of his waking hours doing just that. The embodiment of human sin, of flesh and blood, Tony Sopranos heavy set figure cast a new kind of shadow on the formulaic world of tv drama.
At first, we thought of The Sopranos as a show about bad guys, nothing more than a really engrossing gangster drama. What I came to understand is that it was never about bad guys or good guys. It was about people, real people, people who made some very distinct and morally reprehensible decisions in life and yet, at the core, were all about family. No other drama had ever contrasted two opposing elements so adeptly. For as often as you hated Tony Soprano, wanted his blood on the wall, almost as often you felt he had a heart, that part of him could have been a legitimate citizen. That's the beauty of The Sopranos.
It's not about rooting for a good guy or a bad guy. It's about watching the morality play of one mans life and the various negative and occasionally positive effects it has on those around him. That is how it must be viewed. Too long had audiences been force fed all too black and white stories of good vs evil. As much as we'd like it to be that simple, it really isn't. There is evil in the best of us and there is good is the worst of us.
What The Sopranos did, at least for me, was put this hard truth on display, allowing audiences to judge and sympathize accordingly. There is no denying the level of depravity these characters exuded. But, there is also no denying that none of them, with the exception of one Phil Leotardo, was heartless. That, in a nutshell, is why we love the dichotomy.
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