The Sopranos: Can Tony Soprano Be Cured? | Video Essay

David Chase’s The Sopranos sets us a simple question: can Tony Soprano be cured? Support ScreenPrism on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=7792695

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Transcript provided by Youtube:

00:02
The initial idea of The Sopranos is “What if a mob boss went to therapy?”
00:07
We open with Tony Soprano meeting with Dr. Melfi for the first time,
00:11
“Melfi.
00:12
What part of the boot you from, hon?”
00:15
“Doctor Melfi.”
00:17
and David Chase’s show sets us a simple question: can Tony be cured?
00:22
With Dr. Melfi, this outsider with a special window into Tony’s psyche,
00:26
we then spend six seasons trying to figure out if this patient can be helped.
00:31
“Let’s talk about that.”
00:33
“What?”
00:34
“Rage.”
00:35
“Why?”
00:36
“Depression is rage turned inward.”
00:38
Ten years after The Sopranos ended and nearly 20 after its premiere,
00:42
Tony remains one of the most iconic TV characters ever.
00:46
He ushered in the age of the antihero in a show
00:49
that’s given credit for ushering in the Golden Era of TV.
00:52
We don’t want to be Tony, but we can’t stop watching him.
00:57
The show hooks us with a back and forth
00:58
between humanizing him and making us feel for him,
01:01
and then reminding us again that his violence is inexcusable
01:04
and he might be a textbook sociopath.
01:07
“You’re not a truthful person.
01:11
You’re not respectful of women.
01:14
You’re not really respectful of people.”
01:16
“I don’t love people.”
01:17
“Maybe you love them, I don’t know.
01:19
You take what you want from them by force or the threat of force.”
01:23
We want to know if he can reconcile his two faces and his two families,
01:28
and if digging deeper into root causes from childhood really leads to anything.
01:32
“This psychiatry shit.
01:34
Apparently what you’re feeling is not what you’re feeling,
01:36
and what you’re not feeling is your real agenda.”
01:39
So is there hope for someone like Tony Soprano,
01:41
or is there such as thing as a lost cause?
01:45
“Do you feel like Frankenstein?
01:49
A thing, lacking humanity, lacking human feelings?”
01:52
Before we go on, be sure to hit subscribe
01:54
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01:58
Tony and his crew idolize the version of the mob they see
02:01
in classic films like The Godfather and Goodfellas.
02:04
“I’ve been gone a long time.
02:06
Let me hear it.”
02:07
“‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’”
02:12
These films are grand, sweeping epics where even murder
02:15
and betrayal look beautiful.
02:16
And Tony’s New Jersey life looks common and ugly in comparison.
02:22
When the crew tries to watch The Godfather II, the disc doesn’t work.
02:28
This symbolizes the disconnect between their mob nostalgia and their reality.
02:32
“You know what scene I love most?
02:35
‘It was you, Fredo.’”
02:37
Paulie refers to Fredo Corleone betraying his brother in The Godfather II,
02:40
“I know it was you, Fredo.”
02:43
not knowing that Big Pussy is working for the FBI at that point.
02:46
And the scene where Tony’s shot at holding a bottle of orange juice
02:49
echoes the scene in The Godfather when Don Corleone is shot buying oranges.
02:54
So The Sopranos gives us self-aware nods to these iconic films,
02:57
but the show intentionally de-glamorizes them.
03:00
“He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
03:02
And the point is not just that the glory days are long gone —
03:05
it’s that they never existed to begin with.
03:07
They are just a fiction given to us by some very beautiful movies.
03:11
“You know the hey-dey, the golden age or whatever of the mob?
03:16
That’s gone.
03:17
And that’s never coming back.”
03:20
The show also undermines our expectations of who a Mafia Boss is.
03:24
“What do we mean when we say leadership?
03:26
Huh?”
03:27
Tony’s no Michael Corleone —
03:29
he’s more of a George Costanza,
03:31
“I was at the pool!”
03:33
often seen in his bathrobe,
03:34
unable to escape the senseless irritations and maddening minutiae of suburban boredom.
03:39
“Come on, I’m a fat [bleep] crook from New Jersey.”
03:42
Tony doesn’t even meet his own criteria of an aspirational male hero.
03:46
“Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?
03:48
The strong, silent type.”
03:51
He’s sensitive, temperamental, and prone to tantrums.
03:54
He feels emotionally weak.
03:55
“I got the world by the balls, and I can’t stop feeling like I’m a [bleep] loser.”
03:59
And his crew members are inept.
04:01
Christopher is a wild card.
04:02
“I got home too late last night.
04:04
I didn’t want to wake the man up.”
04:05
“Did you get up early this morning and call?
04:09
He’s always in his office by six.”
04:11
“I was nauseous this morning.
04:13
My mother told me I shouldn’t even come in today.”
04:15
He doubts that his son AJ has what it takes.
04:18
“In my business, forget it.
04:21
He’d never make it.”
04:23
And Paulie and Silvio can be bumbling and reckless.
04:26
“I can feel it itching me already!”
04:28
Tony’s life may lack the glamour of the Corleones’,
04:31
but his arc does echo Michael’s in The Godfather Part II.
04:35
“You’ve got no idea what it’s like to be number one.
04:38
Every decision you make affects every facet of every other [bleep] thing.
04:42
It’s too much to deal with, almost.
04:44
And in the end, you’re completely alone with it all.”
04:49
Michael claims all along he’s doing everything for his family.
04:52
“Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again.
04:56
Ever.”
04:58
Yet he ends up alone, having killed or driven away all of the members of his family.
05:03
Over time, Tony also shocks us by killing off ever-closer members
05:06
of both his mob family and his extended blood family.
05:10
In season two, he’s physically sick before he kills Big Pussy.
05:15
Killing his best friend turned informant on a boat suggests that
05:18
Tony’s emotionally at sea.
05:20
It also recalls the setting of Fredo’s murder.
05:24
Tony goes on to order Adriana’s death, shoots his cousin Tony Blundetto,
05:28
and even kills Christopher, who’s been arguably closer than a son to him.
05:32
Like Michael, Tony justifies his line of work with the idea
05:35
that he’s doing all this for his family.
05:37
“Everything this family has comes from the work I do.”
05:39
“Alright, Tony.
05:40
That’s enough.”
05:41
But as much as he does love Carmela and the kids,
05:43
he rarely puts their emotional needs first.
05:47
And obviously he puts them at risk with this business.
05:50
Godfather II ends with the melancholy image of Michael in tragic isolation,
05:55
having sacrificed his family for his successful business.
05:58
Tony likewise moves more and more toward this cold emptiness.
06:02
He shows no remorse for killing Christopher.
06:05
When he dreams about confessing his crimes to Dr. Melfi,
06:07
at first he performs fake grief.
06:10
“This is pain like I’m not used to.”
06:13
But then he tells her how he really feels.
06:16
“The biggest blunder of my career is now gone.”
06:19
Michael Corleone’s pain is filtered through cinematic beauty.
06:23
But with Tony, an ugly emotional truth is presented in
06:26
mundane, unflattering images that refuse to give us nostalgia, glamour or romance
06:31
we expected from mob stories before The Sopranos.
06:35
The central paradox of Tony Soprano is that this big, bad mafia boss has a sensitive psyche.
06:40
“Like [bleep] King Midas in reverse here.
06:43
Everything I touch turns to shit.
06:44
I’m not a husband to my wife.
06:47
I’m not a father to my kids.
06:49
I’m not a friend to my friends.
06:52
I’m nothin.’”
06:53
In his profession, Tony is expected to bury his feelings,
06:56
or have no feelings at all.
06:58
And he’s embarrassed about seeing a therapist, taking medication,
07:01
and having panic attacks.
07:05
But for the viewer, Tony’s mental health struggles humanize him.
07:08
We realize he’s grappling with deep feelings he can’t always explain.
07:11
And he’s plagued by self-loathing.
07:13
“I wished it was me in there.”
07:15
“Giving the beating or taking it?”
07:17
Tony resents happy-go-lucky people who don’t bear his psychic burden.
07:21
“I see some guy walking down the street with a clear head.
07:24
You know the type, he’s always [bleep] whistling like the happy [bleep] wanderer.
07:27
And I just want to go up to him and I just want to rip his throat open.
07:31
I want to [bleep] grab them and pummel them right there,
07:34
for no reason.”
07:35
His complicated dreams show us an active subconscious,
07:37
a side of him that even he can’t access most of the time.
07:42
Crucially, Tony’s family history to some extent explains away his violence in our eyes.
07:48
Tony’s mother, Livia, is an devious, nihilistic person.
07:53
“I say what your mother has at the very least is
07:56
what we call borderline personality disorder.”
07:59
She’s almost like the devil on Tony’s shoulder,
08:01
pressing him to give into his unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
08:04
“Oh, poor you!”
08:07
She manipulates Tony’s uncle Junior into ordering a hit on her own son.
08:12
“You try to get me whacked?”
08:14
“She doesn’t understand you.”
08:15
“She smiled!
08:16
Look at the look on her face!”
08:17
After seeing just how dysfunctional this relationship is,
08:20
we want to give Tony a pass sometimes.
08:22
“What kinda person can I be, where his own mother wants him dead?”
08:26
And then there’s the history of mental illness in Tony’s family line.
08:28
“I remember hearing about my great-great-great-grandfather.
08:31
he drove a mule cart over a mountain road.
08:33
Probably was a panic attack.”
08:35
This is pretty much confirmed when AJ starts having panic attacks just like Tony,
08:39
and Tony’s father before him.
08:41
Tony’s guilt for passing on these genes represents a deeper self-hatred.
08:45
He’s afraid that his children will inherit the worst parts of him.
08:49
“When you blame your genes, you’re really blaming yourself.”
08:52
We don’t see AJ and Meadow become killers,
08:54
but we do see both of them suffer from depression and a sense of hopelessness.
08:58
“My rotten [bleep] putrid genes have infected my kid’s soul.
09:03
That’s my gift to my son.”
09:05
So with all of this throughout the show we make a lot of excuses for Tony.
09:08
If he can’t fully change for the better,
09:11
maybe he’s just inherited too heavy of a burden.
09:14
And he can’t get himself out from under it.
09:16
The first time we get to see Tony for the unapologetic killer he is
09:20
is in the season one episode “College.”
09:22
Tony takes Meadow to visit colleges and happens to recognize
09:25
a former mafia soldier turned informant,
09:27
who’s since joined the Witness Protection Program.
09:30
We’re kind of shocked when Tony kills the guy,
09:32
because we’ve been watching him play the doting father for most of the episode.
09:36
The shift from good dad to coldblooded killer is jarring.
09:40
“Are you in the mafia?”
09:42
“Am I in the what?”
09:44
David Chase actually had to convince HBO executives that this plot point was necessary.
09:50
“Chris Albrecht said, ‘you have four episodes there,
09:55
you’ve created one of the most compelling protagonists in American television,
09:59
and you’re just gonna flush him down the toilet by having him kill that guy.’”
10:05
This episode caused a sea change in TV.
10:07
We’re used to seeing stuff like this all the time now, but in that moment
10:10
The Sopranos made murderous antiheroes fair game.
10:13
And we have to wonder if we’d ever have gotten Breaking Bad
10:16
without this episode of The Sopranos.
10:18
“A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me?
10:22
No.
10:23
I am the one who knocks!”
10:25
As the show goes on, Tony’s ruthlessness and his love for his family duke it out all.
10:29
“In the end your friends are gonna let you down.
10:32
Family: they’re the only ones you can depend on.”
10:34
Early on, we get fewer killings with more time between them.
10:37
So we have the space to wonder if he’s feeling doubt or regret .
10:41
But it becomes increasingly clear that violence isn’t the exception for Tony.
10:45
It’s the rule.
10:46
But by the end, ruthless Tony is the one who wins that battle for his soul.
10:50
The show started with that question of whether therapy
10:52
would do anything for Tony,
10:54
and we get a clear answer — it’s no.
10:56
“Apparently, the talking cure actually helps them become better criminals.”
11:00
In season six, Melfi realizes that if anything,
11:03
her therapy sessions are enabling Tony.
11:06
She’s allowing him to perform the right moral emotions,
11:09
so he can go on behaving exactly the same without
11:12
having to worry about any guilt.
11:14
“Yochelson says they sharpen their skills as conmen on their therapists.
11:20
Crocodile tears, what have you.”
11:23
Melfi’s conclusion makes us think back to all the times
11:26
Tony tried to manipulate or seduce her and then stormed out.
11:29
But we also can’t forget how he opened his mind and his past to her —
11:33
“A coward’s way out, you know what they call it.”
11:37
“”I think whoever said that didn’t understand depression.
11:40
But you do.”
11:43
And at least at times, he really did want to heal.
11:46
So if Melfi’s had it with him, where does that leave us?
11:49
Tony does have breakthroughs, and he develops deeper self-knowledge,
11:52
but in the end, not much comes of it.
11:55
“All this [bleep] self-knowledge, what the [bleep] has it gotten me?”
11:58
The abrupt cut to black in the series finale denies us
12:01
the moment we’ve been waiting for for Tony —
12:03
the peace, the realization, the catharsis pulling it all together.
12:07
But instead of becoming a new, better person, Tony is just the deeply confused,
12:12
contradictory patient we met in season one —
12:14
only now he has the vocabulary to describe what’s wrong with him.
12:18
“Obviously I’m prone to depression — a certain bleak attitude about the world.”
12:33
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12:34
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12:38
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12:40
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12:43
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12:47
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