TV Watch: James Gandolfini (1961-2013)

Tony takes care of business in "College" (Season 1, Episode 5).

by Ken

It so happens that a couple of nights before word reached us that James Gandolfini had died of a heart attack in Rome at 51, I watched most of a Sopranos episode that I happened to notice on one of the HBO channels.

I missed the beginning, but it was easy enough to recognize as the season-opener (Season 5, as it turns out) that includes a TV-news announcement about the paroling of a large number of mob inmates, which served as a means of injecting a clutch of new characters for the upcoming season, though I was reminded that the two really important ones didn't actually appear until the season's second episode. (That would be Tony Soprano's cousin Tony Blundetto, played by Steve Buscemi, who had directed a couple of Sopranos episodes, including what may be the most famous single one apart from the finale, "Pine Barrens," and the pain-in-the-ass "old school" New York captain Phil Leotardo, played so memorably by Frank Vincent.)

I bring this up for, basically, the same reason I've brought up Sopranos-related subject fairly regularly over the years here at DWT: The show is tightly interwoven in my cultural consciousness. My mind is in an ongoing state of bogglement at the achievement of creator David Chase and the simply astounding company of associates he assembled, on both sides of the camera, to pull the project off: writer-producers, actors, and all the crews. I've never had any reason to doubt that the show was in every way Chase's vision, but it couldn't have been done without that enormous number of hugely talented people, brought in from a staggering range of backgrounds, and enabled to work as a team.

Obviously the most visible face of the enterprise was Gandolfini as Tony. It's hard to disagree with all the tributes that have poured out since the awful news Wednesday. I don't think it's possible to overstate the success of his contribution, giving us a character who could withstand and even flourish under the enormous amount of screen time he racked up over the show's six seasons. We were compelled by him as a dominant but constantly struggling force in both his families, his real one and his, er, professional one. There was Tony's likable side, but also his monstrous one.

I was surprised to be reminded, in checking the records, that the episode that for me at least permanently changed the relationship with Tony happened as early as No. 5 of Season 1: "College," in which Tony drives his daughter, Meadow, to Maine for a round of college vists and spots a mob informant who has been living in Witness Protection, and after an elaborate cat-and-mouse chase winds up strangling the guy with a piece of wire. Boy, did that drive home how Tony's business went beyond "waste management."

(I see in the Wikipedia episode guide: "The episode was rated as the best of the series by Time magazine and was ranked #2 on TV Guide's list of 'TV's Top 100 Episodes of All Time.' " Also, "James Manos, Jr. and David Chase received the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for their work on this episode." I was also reminded of a charming detail in the episode: that at Bowdoin College Tony "is struck by a Nathaniel Hawthorne quote on display in the admissions office: 'No man . . . can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true.' " Is that wonderful or what?)

On one point, though, I'm going to disagree with a widely voiced accolade for Gandolfini: that he "made" the show, that it couldn't have succeeded nearly as well without him. Again, I don't want at all to diminish his achievement, but that achievement was as the most visible member of the Sopranos team.


Consider just one aspect of Tony: his utterly baffling irresistibility to women. Yes, he buys lots of them (namely, anytime it suits his pleasure), but we see time after time women who are unable to resist his, um, "charm." When I describe this as "baffling," I don't mean to say or even suggest "unrealistic." We know that such things happen in the real world, and are for a lot of us a source of fascination. You could have a jolly time "explaining" Tony's magic touch -- the attraction of power, of danger, and so on and so on. The writing of those six seasons' worth of episodes will sustain all manner of fascinating discussion. But I'm going to argue that the achievement was mostly in the writing and in the reaction of all those intersecting actors. I don't think Gandolfini "did" anything to make it credible; it was made credible by the way all those other characters clearly (and credibly) believed in Tony's irresistibility.

I think it's important to remember that it was David Chase who chose Gandolfini for the role, and Chase had been casting both expected and unexpected actors as mob figures from the highest echelons to the lowest for a long time -- his "mob" episodes of The Rockford Fils are some of that extraordinary show's most wonderful. I think it's safe to say that nobody except Chase would have made such a choice. I would assume that the quality above all that commended Gandolfini was his ability to credibly portray a North Jersey Italian-American lug of a head of household, off of which so much of the show would play. And it was a brilliant choice. I just want to suggest that there were probably any number of other choices he could have made, and the show would have worked just as well, because the writing, ensemble, and production would almost surely have been good enough to make any of those other choices work.

I've mentioned before that I saw Chase, as part of a panel of Sopranos people appearing before a cheering audience while the show was still in production, field a question from an audience member: Could the show have been done for a broadcast network? (We know that Fox was supposed to do it originally but turned chicken.) Clearly the question was intended as a sort of self-congratulatory hat tip to HBO, for its tolerance of the terrible language and terrible behavior. But Chase took the question literally, thought about it briefly, and replied that yes, he thought it could have been. Adjustments would have to have been made, but yes, it could have been done.

Still, it was James Gandolfini who was chosen, and who for six seasons produced episode after episode of such remarkable work. Every time I dip back into The Sopranos, I find that it looks as good as it ever did, if not better -- because with some removal in time and additional exposure, I not only treasure things I've already noticed (including many I've noticed and forgotten), but see all sorts of things I didn't before.

ONE ADDITIONAL NOTE: THE FRIENDS OF DAVID CHASE

Here's where it pays to be an attentive viewer, at least a more attentive viewer than I often am. In that Season 5 opening episode I was talking about, with the TV-news report about the outflow of all those mob parolees, there's an interview with a self-proclaimed Mafia expert about the significance of the development. It was only while I was sifting through Sopranos material for this post that I discovered that the blowhard was played by Matthew Weiner, who had just joined the team as a writer-producer in Season 5. In fact, Episode 2, in which Tony Blundetto and Phil Leotardo are actually introduced, was his first Sopranos writing credit.

I've read that Weiner had already written and unsuccessfully shopped a pilot for what became Mad Men before he was taken on as a key member of the Sopranos team for Seasons 5 and 6, and that David Chase had seen the script and that was one of the reasons he hired him. We also have one of the longtime key Sopranos writer-producers, Terence Winter, serving as the creative driving force for Boardwalk Empire, and Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green masterminding Blue Bloods -- and of course erstwhile Sopranos cast members all over the tube. The show, beyond its own merits, seems to have served as a TV academy of sorts.

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