Through and through he is a gangster, adulterer, cold-blooded killer, inveterate liar, unrepentant racist, a bully, master manipulator, abuser of women, and a horrible, horrible father who made his children complicit to his crimes to devastating effect. Other than self-interest, Tony has no code.
#You got yourself a gun sopranos code#
There is nothing heroic about Anthony Soprano, anti or otherwise.Īnti-heroes have a code and are willing to sacrifice to honor that code. One so-called first where I find myself in disagreement with some Sopranos fans is this idea Tony Soprano is television’s first anti-hero. At the time, we had never seen anything like it, and therefore it is not hyperbole to argue The Sopranos is to television what Rock Around the Clock was to music. His mold is now the norm, what we expect. What Sopranos creator David Chase did accomplish, though, was nothing less than to crack the artistic code for a medium that was well into middle age.Ĭhase hardened the mold of the ten to thirteen episode format, and through adult storytelling, respect for the intelligence of his audience, cinema-quality production values, and pitch-perfect performances, showed the world what television was truly capable of. For decades, the television miniseries, notably Roots (1977), The Winds of War (1980), Holocaust (1978), and most especially Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), had been gripping the nation over a handful of nights as “novels for television.” The Sopranos is not the first show to ignore the 22 to 24 episode season.
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There was Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks and let’s not ignore primetime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty. The Sopranos is not the first show to tell a continuing story. In the background Alabama 3’s Woke Up This Morning throbbed on the soundtrack: “Woke up this morning, you got yourself a gun, got yourself a gun, got yourself a gun…” and with the sound of a record scratch, The Sopranos changed television forever.