Sopranos supreme

It’s the beginning of the end for The Sopranos, and all reports suggest the last season—12 episodes this year and a final 8 beginning in January 2007—will provide a fitting end for television’s most famous mob family. Even though the first episode of the 6^th season aired yesterday, I still have to say “all reports,” for I’m still working my way through the final episodes of the third season. For several years I was suspicious of the show’s hype, if at first only because of the fact that it was television, and it’s only been in the last 2 years that I’ve come to respect the medium. But after taking Salon’s repeated recommendations and working my way through the grisly, labyrinthine alleys of The Wire and being utterly blown away, I figured maybe it was time to give HBO a chance.

And what I found was one of the most deeply satisfying filmed dramas, on TV or the big screen, that I’ve ever seen.

While I wasn’t initially hooked on The Sopranos in that must see, addictive manner that 24 tends to grab people—the first season is extremely patient in the way it develops—I was intrigued enough to keep going. And I’m thankful I did, because the genius of The Sopranos isn’t in high tension cliffhangers or the screen equivalent of page-turner plotting, but in the depth and consistency of its characters.

Drama, as anyone who has taken a basic playwriting course or read a bit about screenwriting guru Robert McKee will tell you, is all about conflict. Especially on television, scenes typically consist of a disagreement between two, occassionally three or four, characters, each of whom is pushing for one thing and one thing only (often referred to as “motivation” or, the term I prefer, “goal.”).

The best example of this is 24. Watch an episode and it’s immediately apparent: Jack will argue that protocols don’t matter because the bomb’s going to go off in five minutes, while someone else will argue back that he has to wait for authorization to come. The President will want to disclose the truth about something, but his wife will argue that doing so will harm his family. A terrorist henchman will want to follow the initial orders from the top terrorist boss, but his field commander will argue that the situation has changed and a new plan must be followed. Every scene is an argument, essentially, with two, occasionally three, points of view and each character having one thing and one thing only that they want to get out of it—diffuse the bomb now, wait for authorization, etc. The fun is watching them resort to different tactics in order to achieve their goals. The President isn’t responding to Sherry’s gentle come ons? Watch her switch to a harsher, defensive tone that takes offense at his lack of care for their family. Bad guy unwilling to respond to Jack’s demand for info in exchange for being released? Threaten to kill his family! It’s not very complicated, but it keeps the tension way up.

The Sopranos, good drama that it is, follows a similar pattern of scene-by-scene conflict, but instead of hanging its arguments on the wireframe, single-issue characters that populate most shows, it fleshes out each of its characters’ competing impulses with the sort of detail usually reserved for great novels. So Tony, for example, is constantly acting to preserve his mob rep, to honor his family, to satisfy his sexual urges, to pacify his wife, to keep control (though not too much) of his kids, to preserve interpersonal harmony in his “business,” and a host of other influences too numerous to list. He wants all those things, to some degree, in the same way that most of the time, we in the real world are acting under an uncountable number of desires, both obvious and hidden. The pleasure is in seeing Tony and the rest of the cast work through all those different strands of desire to figure out how in the world to make the best choices and live a decent, balanced life—albeit one where murder, extortion and drug dealing are reasonable options.