It was the best of mobsters, it was the worst of mobsters, it was the age of omertà, it was the age of ratters, it was the epoch of soldiering up, it was the epoch of snitching, it was the spring of kingpins, it was the winter of RICO indictments, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to the Bada Bing, we were all going direct to the FBI.
In the city of Newark, New Jersey in 1960, Anthony John Soprano entered this world. The firstborn son of Livia and Johnny Boy Soprano, little Tony lived a charmed childhood wanting for nothing but parental affection. His father was rising through mafia ranks, eventually becoming captain of the DiMeo crime family. Young Tony marveled as Johnny Boy welcomed wiseguys into their home, gorging on pasta and stories of La Cosa Nostra’s secret society.
Tony’s eyes opened further when Johnny went to prison in 1973. Needing income, his strong-willed mother employed her own larcenous schemes from bust-out schemes to offshore stashes. From Livia, Tony learned the nerve required for rule and survival. After his father’s early death, Tony left Rutgers to follow in the old man’s footsteps, becoming a twenty-year-old earner.
By the 1990s, Tony had become capo of the family, now called the Sopranos. He ran hijackings, gambling, protection rackets and more alongside his two confidantes Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante. On the surface, Tony played the respectable mobster - doting New Jersey dad and waste management consultant. But behind the scenes, he used all means necessary to grow the family, including murder, when needed to whack rats or rivals.
As the feds targeted the mob, Tony resisted against old-school Omertà codes. He saw a therapist, passed on naming rituals, and established comfortable suburban lives for his wife Carmela and kids Meadow and AJ. These choices fostered friction with the old guard. Still Tony hungered for the life of luxury, vice and power afforded to bosses before him, leading to betrayals and bodies.
By the millennium, the golden mafia years seemed to be ending. With Tony suffering panic attacks, the Feds intercepting secrets, and blood constantly spilling, omertà now came with a price. As ratters in witness protection like Sal Bonpensiero eroded the code of honor, Tony longed for the simpler, more prosperous times of his father's era. By 2007, with the FBI perched to swoop down, Tony’s fate seemed uncertain and somber. His only constant was family, however dysfunctional.
Tony Soprano lived the mafia life to its murderous, opulent hilt at the twilight of the gangster heyday. Haunted by parental damage, he ruled New Jersey through shrewdness, psychoanalysis and calculated violence, leaving corpses and contradictions behind. As British writer Charles Dickens said, it was the best of mobsters, it was the worst of mobsters. For Tony Soprano was, like all complicated souls, a stew of lightness and darkness. In the end, la famiglia was all that mattered. Capiche?
