I am Italian American, and I love The Sopranos. And I’m not talking about the show, which pretty much lost a special place in my heart the day I realized they bring in these new, somewhat redeeming, and likeable characters (Richie Aprile, Jackie Jr., Tony Blundetto, Ralph Cifaretto) just to kill them off, leaving their original cast intact.

No, I love the idea of The Sopranos. While Italian-American groups rant and rave about the damage the Jersey mobsters do to our reputation, they ignore some of the more glaring mockeries of our people. For instance, the hit TV show, Everybody Loves Raymond, featured a dysfunctional family with a nagging Italian mother, a buffoonish brother, and a sex-crazed husband who left much to be desired on the domestic side of things. To make matters worse, the only principal character of actual Italian descent was Ray Romano. The rest of the cast—down to his supposedly 100% blonde Italian kids—were played by non-Italian actors. So, held up against The Sopranos—which, at the very least, makes an effort to cast Italian Americans in roles that may poke fun at Italians—Everybody Loves Raymond seems to have dodged plenty of figurative bullets in its TV run.

But The Sopranos have their merits even when held up to a mirror. If you study the episodes closely, most of the non-mafioso Italians that we see have highly-regarded, intellectual jobs:

–Tony’s Italian next-door neighbor is a doctor.

–Cousin Brian is a brilliant accountant.

–Artie Buco and his wife run a successful restaurant.

–Tony’s daughter, Meadow, who has always shunned and been embarrassed by the mafia lifestyle, graduated from Columbia and works at a law firm that helps the lower class with legal problems.

–Finn Ditulio, Meadow’s fiancé, is studying to be a dentist.

–Jennifer Melfi, Tony’s psychiatrist, not only plays a doctor, but refused to let Tony know she was raped, even though he could have been far more effective in meting out punishment than the legal system.

The list goes on for pages, but this is probably the most detrimental argument against those who claim the show hurts the image of the Italian-American: If it does anything, it actually helps us in our everyday life. If there are people out there dumb enough to believe that every Italian-American happens to be in the mob, I say let them. How can this be a bad thing for an otherwise non-connected Italian? If my freshman-year college roommate took a look at my visiting uncle, decided he was in the mafia, and then never used my detergent again without asking, I cannot see how this is a bad thing. And I could use it the same way Anthony, Jr., did last season. Even though he has never so much as seen a gun, he played off his family connections to get massages from hot blondes and score VIP tables at clubs in New York. His new friends were tools and users, but those are the same small-brained idiots who believe that because The Sopranos is a show about mobsters, then all Italians must lined up against it, no matter how many positive portrayals the show sneaks past these same fools.

And this all, of course, comes back to the Raymond idea. Perhaps The Sopranos gets a bad rap because of their casting. If you look back at the most effective mafia movies, they all have Italians in principal roles. The Godfather Trilogy had Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. Goodfellas cast DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta. And The Sopranos has pretty much every Italian character played by an Italian. Because of this realism, it strikes a chord with the viewer, becomes more real, infuriates the pedantic idiots running Italian Organizations, and causes town councils to block the filming of the series at family-owned restaurants (and this is not limited to Holsten’s, whose owners are married to Italians!).

If these Italian organizations and overzealous city council members would internalize their yelling for an hour, pop in a DVD of the show, and take a look at the fully-positive stereotypes that The Sopranos offers for all of its non-mafia members, it would not only cause far less embarrassment for those of us who see the show for what it is—entertainment—but also let us dig into the real reasons for not liking the show; namely, it has gotten boring and stuck in the mud.

Until that day comes, however, us Italians on the other side of the fight will have to stand by a show that has been sub-par just so we can oppose a faction of the Italian-American population that has gotten too loud and obnoxious to ignore any longer.

— by John Busco
John Busco, originally from upstate NY, has been living in NJ for several years, and currently calls Hoboken home.

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