[lbo-talk] Sopranos

[Doug Henwood]

Just had a chat with my office neighbor, Larry Konner, who's written 
several episodes of The Sopranos, and was invovled with planning the 
broad "story arc" for the 3rd and 4th seasons. He says they don't 
intend to glorify the mob life, but you have to contend with the fact 
that anything that appears on the TV or movie screen tends to glorify 
whatever it depicts. Larry agreed with me that the whole thing is 
quite complicated - that you like a lot of the characters, and are 
shocked and troubled when they do horrible things.

One of the episodes he wrote was the one in which Carmella went to 
see a shrink on her own. The shrink, instead of taking the neutral 
line, tells her she's not merely an enabler, but is complicit in 
Tony's crimes, and she should take the kids & leave right away. Of 
course she goes right back to Tony. Some of the critics read this as 
addressed to the audience - you too are complicit by watching. The 
creators of the show didn't mean it that way, but apparently a lot of 
people took it that way.