"The Sopranos"; it's the greatest show in television history. That's right: better than Game of Thrones, The Office, and definitely better than Breaking Bad. It features Newark native and the person I most aspire to be, Tony Soprano (without all the cheating), his wife Carmela, his daughter Meadow, son Anthony Jr., and the rest of his New Jersey crew in their fight to keep the Italian mafia alive in the late 1990s. Feds are cracking down on these poor guys, and it doesn't help to have whistleblowers like Salvatore "Pussy" Bonpensiero trying to avoid serious jailtime by betraying his friends and exposing Tony.
As an Italian American, I always loved mafia movies and television shows. I am a big fan of works such as "Goodfellas" and "Godfather I"and II. No self—respecting Italian American likes "Godfather III." Everyone knows that. Directors like Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Francis Ford Coppola dressed my parents' television screens for my 18 years of childhood. For us Italians, cinema is one of the many ways we display our incredible culture. My mother made sure I was well-versed in the many Italian American films released in the latter part of the 20th century. The movies she has showed me have been fantastic, with "Goodfellas" being my personal favorite movie. There was one Italian masterpiece my mother forgot, though, and I have to tell you, it's the best one I've seen yet. It's what I'm writing about today. If you've read the title (and also the very first line of the first paragraph, for that matter) you already know what I'll be talking about.
"The Sopranos" is just fantastic. There is not one part (besides the strip clubs and adultery) about it that I don't like. Look, I'm an old—fashioned guy. Ask my mother, my girlfriend, my brother—really, anyone who's close to me. They'll tell you I love sitting outside Nardelli's Grinder Shoppe in Waterbury with my three closest friends, Chris, Joe and Liam, just shooting the shit and . They'll tell you that our idea of fun is sitting in my friend Chris' basement viewing classic Italian cinema, eating cannol, some sfogliatelle (pronounced: "shfooyadel") and maybe, if we're lucky, Chris will have some leftover proscuitt' in his kitchen fridge. It's playing some real money poker, placing bets and throwing the cash in the middle of Chris' pool table, us wearing our white shirts, with gold chains around our necks. We're guineas, we're wops, dagos. Italian in every sense of the word! Chris will make the four of us some espresso and caffe lungi (meaning large coffee, in Italiano. You can look it up if you don't believe me, but why wouldn't you?) from his prestigious DeLonghi Primadonna S espresso maker that sits proudly on his kitchen counter. We'll all gather around the table with his mother and father to mangia (eat) some lasagna, decorated with Mrs. Faxon's special, homemade sauce recipe straight from the old country.
What, then, does this have to do with "The Sopranos?" The greatest television show of all time? What do I, Jack Premus, have in common with New Jersey legend Tony Soprano himself? Me, a low—class Italian American, who's closest Italian mecca is Waterbury, with Tony Soprano, who calls Newark his stomping grounds? A man who has a net worth a million times more than mine? Our shared Italian heritage, that's what!
Tony Soprano and I, Jack Premus, both love our mothers very much, and would do everything and anything for them. Sure, sometimes they give us agita, lots of it at that. At the end of the day, though, our mothers brought us into this world, and they can also make an amazing dish of manicott' with their homemade sauce recipes they have from Italy. Tony Soprano's family and mine also hail from the same city in Italy, Avellino. That's important, because it means we share many of the same traditions, like the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a tradition that southern Italians do on Christmas Eve. Usually, it'll go something like this. My mother gets out the DeLonghi fish fryer (every important appliance in any good Italian American's household, like the fish fryer on the Feast, is of the DeLonghi brand) and prepares it with the oil and grease and whatnot. Then, my father will begin frying the calamad (calamari), bacala (salted cod), clams oreganata, shrimp scampi, and then there's three others that I always forget. That's just one example.
I think the most important thing that Tony Soprano and I have in common is that even though we do bad things sometimes, (I'll occasionally drive over the speed limit, while Tony will put a store owner out of business for owing him money for a poker game) it's important to realize that we both love our families and other loved ones very much, and that we will do everything and anything in our power to protect them from the evils of the world. I'd jump in front of a train for my mother, anyone in my family at that, including people like my girlfriend, who I love and trust deeper than I'll ever know. Italians put their famiglia on pedestals and hold them in very high esteem. In the Italian culture, famiglia is the most important thing, nothing else. We're always taught that as kids. Not money, not fame, not even education. Family is first, or famiglia e' primo, as my grandmother used to say. Blood is thicker than water, they'd remind me also. I thought this was common knowledge, as a kid. I thought everyone had Sunday Dinner, and I thought everyone saw their grandmothers and aunts (pronounced: "ants," as in the insect. Not the other way, as people who aren't from the Tri—State Area like to pronounce it) and uncles on a regular basis, more than twice a month sometimes. When I went to college, my first time stepping out into the real world, I realized this just isn't the case. Family isn't always taught to be the most important thing, I realized. It shocked me.
This week, I didn't really know what to write about for my first Odyssey article. I thought I was going to write about why I love "The Sopranos" and why it's better than shows like Game of Thrones. While both have incredible amounts of violence and gore in them, the two couldn't be more different when it comes to family and the values that we hold deep down, even when all Tony Soprano does is whack the guys that disobey him, even close friends like the aforementioned Pussy Bonpensiero when Tony finds out (yes, spoiler) that he has been wearing a wire and is working with the FBI. What an asshole! Anyway, "The Sopranos" is so much more than a show to me. I see myself in Tony's shoes, like when he sits out at the local deli, Satriale's. It reminds me of sitting at Nardelli's in downtown Waterbury with my buddies eating our grinders and talking about anything. It's about friends, family, and seeing how those things remain important even in Tony's crime and murder filled life. If that doesn't speak volumes about the strength of the core values of Italian culture, I'm not sure what does.
You've also just wasted 10-20 minutes of your time reading about my thoughts on "The Sopranos" and how I feel the values of Italian culture are important to remember in our modern times. Not that we shouldn't be open to new ideas, because anyone would be stupid not to be. I'm only saying we should keep our core values (in my case, the ones pulled from my Italian heritage) in mind. This probably isn't important to you, but did anyone ask you? I don't remember asking you. After all, you chose to click on my profile and view my very first work here on Fordham's Odyssey team. While you're here, give it some thought, even if you aren't Italian American, which many of you probably aren't, as I haven't run into many of my kind on campus thus far. I'm so glad to have the opportunity to write on the Odyssey team, and I want to say thanks to Caroline for allowing me to join. You don't know what you got yourself into! I'm kidding. Anyway, watch "The Sopranos" if you get a chance. It really is a great show and while some think it bastardizes the Italian culture, I think it does the ultimate justice to the core values the Italian American culture tries to instill in its members. And that, my friends, is what I chose to write about this week.
