Why do we like the sopranos

We know he's a bad guy, but we can't stop ourselves from loving him. These are five times we loved Tony Soprano, and five times we despised him. One of the greatest parts of the pilot has to be the ducks that fly away from Tony's pool.

The metaphor is quite obvious. But then again, as Melfi points out, it's meant to be quite obvious. Tony is feeling incredibly anxious about his children growing up and leaving the nest, and he saw the ducks as a way to retain their youth and innocence - as a way to remain a proud father. Despite being a career criminal, Tony is also a devoted family man, and that comes through in the ducks.

Everyone knows that Christopher was a sloppy criminal. He continuously fell into drugs, he was generally immature and unpredictable, and he had second, third, fourth, and fifth chances within the organization. But that still doesn't warrant Tony brutally plugging his nose and forcing him to strangle on his own blood. Tony justifies the decision by looking at the car seat, but that's just a means of telling himself it's OK. He knows, deep down, that it's not.

One of the things that made The Sopranos so good was its relatability and its subversion of the traditional mob story. In most mob stories, the characters are remorseless characters who conduct violence without a second thought. In The Sopranos , Tony is a vulnerable person who requires therapy to make his way in the world of violence and family troubles. GQ called it the hottest show of Google searches for The Sopranos dwarfed those for other classic series such as The Wire ; on two occasions in June and August, there were almost twice as many searches for the former as there were for the latter in the UK, while between 18 and 24 October in the US, people searched for The Sopranos three times as often as they did The Wire.

But why is The Sopranos still so popular? For Schirripa, it was about setting the record straight. For Imperioli, making the podcast was about breathing new life into the series. Among these younger fans is year-old Maya, who goes only by her first name online, and lives in New York. She found The Sopranos on Amazon Prime when she was After she had watched all the seasons, and inspired by the humour and dark absurdity of the show, she set up the Twitter account Sopranos Out of Context.

At one point, he outwardly asks if he is a toxic person. The fact that he even has to ask this perfectly encapsulates Tony's character and his complete lack of self-awareness. On a similar point, Tony never tries to legitimately better himself.

He goes to Melfi for years, yet never makes any progress in therapy. He continuously refuses to hear what Melfi has to say, and he adamantly refuses to better himself or change his lifestyle in any significant manner. And yet he wonders why he is never happy. This is seemingly addressed at the end of season six when it's insinuated that Tony is a sociopath. Melfi finally understands that he will never get better - in fact, he may be using therapy to better his duplicitous skills - and she finally refuses to see him any longer.

The Sopranos is notable for its use of dream sequences. The dream sequences remain highly divisive, with many loving their more subtle and thematic approach to storytelling, and others hating them for the same reason.

Regardless, The Sopranos seems to take the stance that dreams have incredible meaning, so long as one takes the time to analyze them for meaning. In fact, an entire episode is devoted to Tony's dream regarding Blundetto's future - a dream that finally encourages him to take Blundetto out.

Listen to your subconscious - it may be telling you something. Like many antiheroes throughout television history, Tony Soprano is a legitimate family man. He seemingly loves his family, with a particular pride and love for his daughter, Meadow. In the year the world stayed at home, The Sopranos was the sourdough baking - or perhaps the jokes about sourdough baking - of TV. Show favourites like Uncle Junior and Paulie Walnuts bobbling up in the slip stream of meme culture suggests this is not merely the result of Boomers on a nostalgia trip but, like the second coming of Friends, signs of approval from the supposedly tricky-to-please new generation of viewers.

On paper, this makes no sense at all. The gun in the logo; the scowling face of Tony Soprano; the violence and the bad leather jackets; the clear lineage it shares with The Godfather and Goodfellas. All of this marks The Sopranos out as a cultural artefact from a bygone era when the narratives of middle aged men were still the de facto focus of popular culture. What on earth could Gen Z see in that?

Within the parameters of a normal, law-abiding life, I wanted to be like them.