Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Setup: There's this guy, see? He cheats on his wife (and cheats, and cheats...). He kills people with his bare hands. He funds criminal enterprises with money obtained from other criminal enterprises. He runs a strip club. He growls at his family, sometimes outright explodes into violence with them. He blows money, of which he seems to have an awful lot, on expensive trinkets. Handguns are hidden throughout his house. He cusses indiscriminately, not only when among his buddies but also with his family and even perfect strangers -- in fact, it sometimes seems the only people immune to this character tic are those from whom he wants to extort something.

And really, none of his family or friends are a whole lot more pleasant. They all carry petty grudges. They've all got trashy ways of talking and murderous knee-jerk reactions. Oh, sure, they've all got senses of humor. But it's most often cruel humor, humor which doesn't tickle one's funny bone but lodges there, like a fishhook.

In short, this is just about the least promising setup imaginable for a TV series that a good liberal could love. A good anarchist, maybe; a sadist, sure. But not a lefty. Indeed, this scenario sounds like one over which lefties could easily join hands with wingnuts. These people are despicable.

And yet, and yet...

Mrs. FLJerseyBoy and I don't get HBO. This has made us take our enjoyment of "The Sopranos" in uneven bursts, waiting until each year's series is released to video/DVD. But from the time we watched the series premiere, five years ago, we were hooked.

Sure, there was a guilty visceral thrill during any of the characteristically murderous action scenes. But the real draws have nothing to do with violence:

• I know it's a sappy bleeding-heart-liberal term, but we love the characters' humanity. By which I mean: While any one character is "consistent" -- true to him/herself -- from the time we first see them to the (heh) last, every character is also inconsistent with his/her "type." A perfect example of this was the episode in which Tony Soprano drove his daughter Meadow on a visit to several potential colleges in the Northeast. At one point during the trip, by coincidence he encounters a guy with whom he's had, umm, a long-term unrequited displeasure (to say the least). In a hugely brutal scene, he strangles his nemesis with a wire. Typical of a Mob movie, eh? But then you've got to weigh that against Tony's demeanor with Meadow throughout their trip: tender, funny, protective, fatherly.
• The writing is just funny as hell. Not just the whip-cracking dialogue -- I mean the establishment of plot, for the overall story's arc as well as for any one season or episode. From the premiere, with Tony's neurotic quest for (you might say) The Meaning of the Ducks, through a later episode like the one where Paulie and Christopher try and fail, hilariously, to kill a Russian competitor, let alone to bury him in the New Jersey Pine Barrens while nearly freezing to death -- the show just cracks, us, up.
• While almost nothing of any of the characters' day-to-day lives, superficially, resembles anything in our own, they're all constantly getting caught in situations familiar to us. It's a little creepy, in fact, that "empathy" (of all emotions) should come into play while watching such godawful people at work and play. But that's exactly what happens. Tony struggles, early on, with how best to provide care for his elderly mother, eventually having her checked into a long-term-care/"rest" facility. It's true that neither the missus's nor my own parents were an operatically dreadful parent like Tony's mother, Livia. It's also true that we've both had to deal with the same issues, on a smaller scale, as our parents aged. So along with the laughter, it's the not-uncommon tightness at the back of the throat which keeps bringing us back.

Above all else, one word: Gandolfini.

If you check IMDB, you'll see that his acting career (Sopranos aside) hasn't been one of blockbuster after blockbuster. They're not art films, either (although casting him as an updated Othello might be a great choice). In short, James Gandolfini seems among the unlikeliest actors imaginable to command a screen. But he does, in every episode.

It's in his eyes, primarily, and -- for me -- primarily when he's not talking. When he sits in Dr. Melfi's office, for instance, struggling with how to say something, watch his eyes: The eyelids droop like window shades being lowered to hide what's about to take place in the room. Tiny muscles at the outside corners of his eyes twitch, reflexively, as he thinks unpleasant thoughts about himself.

I saw Gandolfini on Bravo recently, doing of those "Inside the Actor's Studio" interviews with James Lipton. It was an interesting interview, sort of, but only in the sense that it was interesting to see him "not acting." Gandolfini wasn't particularly voluble, nor even consistently entertaining when he did talk. And you know what? I didn't even remotely care. The eyes were the eyes I was used to seeing on TV. The tight little cockeyed smile was the same. I don't know if I believe in the general notion of actors being born to play particular roles, but it's pretty clear to me (and, I think, to Mrs. FLJB and lots of other people) that Gandolfini has met such a role in Tony Soprano. Imagining any other actor in the part is like imagining Jay Leno playing Johnny Carson: in a word, criminal.