Meet Tony Soprano

The Sopranos 1.01 Review - 'The Sopranos'

Guest Starring:

John Ventimiglia as Artie Bucco

Jerry Adler as Hesh Rabkin

Michele de Cesare as Hunter Scangarelo

Drea de Matteo as Adriana La Cerva

Katherine Narducci as Charmaine Bucco

Anthony DeSando as Brendan Filone

It's been over eleven years since The Sopranos first premiered on HBO, but today was the first day that i've ever managed to watch an episode. So, in tribute to this fascinating series, i will be doing a review of each and every episode from all six seasons.

First off the bat - the premiere episode.

When we first see Tony Soprano, he seems like a pretty conflicted character - he is currently in an office with a shrink talking about his life. Then, as the episode goes on, we see parts of his life as he explains them to us - life with his family, life at his job and with the mafia, and his strange obsession with a small family of ducks living in his pool.

However, as we gain a deeper look into his life, we see that things are far from perfect, and that each portion of his life in particular contributed towards his string of panic attacks. His strained relationship with his wife and kids, his stressful job as being a capo of the New Jersey mafia, and his annoyance at the lack of respect and dignity present these days all contribute towards his cause for therapy as an outlet to explain his problems without telling anyone.

To be honest, not much occured this episode but, due to it being the premiere episode, the writers had a lot of ground to cover and spent the episode introducing all the various and interesting characters that make up the New Jersey mafia. From Tony, through to his wife Carmela, and kids, Meadow and Anthony Jr., his uncle Junior (who seems intent on whacking Little Pussy in Tony's friends restaurant), his mother Livia, and his mob family - there were many, many characters to introduce in the brief time frame of fifty minutes. Thankfully, the writers managed to do a good job here, combining flashback events with character introductions and some brutal violence and nudity mixed in for good measure.

Overall, here are my marks for the first episode:

• Potency of the season's theme(s) identified in the episode:  **********

• Editing & Scenes of Relevance:  *********

• Main characters connection with audience/actors effectiveness in role:  *********

• Secondary characters connection with audience/actors effectiveness in role:  ********

• Music & Visual Effects:  *******

• Originality and effectiveness of the episode's narrative:  *********

• Integration and effectiveness of multiple story arcs and character relationships:  ******

Overall Marks:  58 / 70 

Grade Percentage: 83% 

All in all, the first episode of The Sopranos did a fantastic job of setting up the premise of the show and i liked the almost immediate tension between Tony and his Uncle Junior, who seems intent on whacking Little Pussy. Tony manages to avoid this taking place by blowing up his friend's restaurant but the dynamic between the two was very interesting and will likely be a recurring subplot for the season. I look forward to watching the remaining twelve episodes of Season 1.