Things Stupid Guidos Misinterpret About The Sopranos

[JoeBrotheChildSpitGuzzler]

Was discussed in another thread but deserves it's own. What are some things the smooth brained viewers of this show take literally? Who are some characters people like that they shouldn't or don't like that they should?

 

[BonnieMcFarlaneMe2]

I still think Tony was cool and a good role model.

 

[TheUserRedditBanned]

Well, most people think Tony Soprano is the hero of the story, which is obviously missing the point. He may be a product of his upbringing and less to blame for the crimes he commits than society or prosecutors would recognize, but there are no good guys in the Sopranos.

The only thing that is good and decent and pure in that fictional world is Adriana's dumb girl love for her useless junkie husband.

 

[medium wyzzz]

Gueedz misinterpret everything involving them.

 

[Dummy Gaynuts]

apparently a lot of things the italians did on that show were illegal

 

[JoeBrotheChildSpitGuzzler]

Well, most people think Tony Soprano is the hero of the story, which is obviously missing the point. He may be a product of his upbringing and less to blame for the crimes he commits than society or prosecutors would recognize, but there are no good guys in the Sopranos.

The only thing that is good and decent and pure in that fictional world is Adriana's dumb girl love for her useless junkie husband.

Yeah that's a big one people thinking Tony is badass and based when he's scum. Also people who hate AJ miss the point.

 

[Lamont & Tonelli]

 

[CuntFucker .]

I misunderstood the show during its first two seasons myself when I was younger. I used to think Tony suffered from guilt and might try to find a way out of mob life later on. Even then, the show made it pretty clear that his affliction was caused by stress and vain dissatisfaction.

 

[Meownaw]

They think AJ is a terrible a character. THAT'S THE POINT YOU RETARDED WOPS. If his son was like everyone else's it would have been retarded.

 

[TomFromNawlins]

They—along with plenty of ‘medigan viewers—still care about what happened to the Russian.

 

[LingerLonger]

They think that Dr. Melfi is trying to help Tony. But she only has him there for the thrill and is addicted to the therapy to the point where the show literally has her become a drunk and addicted to alcohol to drive the idea home for viewer. She basically sabotages Tony's progress and keeps him in the mafia and by the end of the show is offering him advice for how to run his crew directly. Her own therapist is so jealous of her relationship with Tony that he breaks the law and outs him as her patient.

They also think that the jew therapist that sees Carmela offers her good advice. But he is just as bad as Melfi. He immediately sends Carmela away without helping her or taking her money because he doesn't want to deal with the mafia. He also doesn't tell Carmela the most useful thing that she could do to get the kids away from Tony. Go to the police or FBI behind Tony's back. Carmela knows about multiple murders by that point. She would get the kids away from Tony by simply having him tossed into jail. But the therapist doesn't want that as his name could come up. He basically tells Carmela "whatever you do.....do it the hell away from me".

People don't understand why Tony goes to Vegas after Christopher dies. Because he wants to live like Christopher for a week to see what it was like to escape from his own life. So he stays at Christopher's favorite hotel. Sees a prostitute that Christopher used to bang. And does drugs like Christopher. And is high and drunk 24/7 throughout the entire vacation. He plays roulette for hours and then at the end he goes into the desert and he screams "I get it!" at the world. Basically acknowledging that his life is like a roulette wheel and right now he is lucky and the next week he might get unlucky and get whacked and he has no perfect control over his life. From that point on Tony becomes far less cautious and almost acts suicidal when it comes to being on the lookout for assassins or the FBI.

 

[TomFromNawlins]

They think that Dr. Melfi is trying to help Tony. But she only has him there for the thrill and is addicted to the therapy to the point where the show literally has her become a drunk and addicted to alcohol to drive the idea home for viewer. She basically sabotages Tony's progress and keeps him in the mafia and by the end of the show is offering him advice for how to run his crew directly. Her own therapist is so jealous of her relationship with Tony that he breaks the law and outs him as her patient.

They also think that the jew therapist that sees Carmela offers her good advice. But he is just as bad as Melfi. He immediately sends Carmela away without helping her or taking her money because he doesn't want to deal with the mafia. He also doesn't tell Carmela the most useful thing that she could do to get the kids away from Tony. Go to the police or FBI behind Tony's back. Carmela knows about multiple murders by that point. She would get the kids away from Tony by simply having him tossed into jail. But the therapist doesn't want that as his name could come up. He basically tells Carmela "whatever you do.....do it the hell away from me".

People don't understand why Tony goes to Vegas after Christopher dies. Because he wants to live like Christopher for a week to see what it was like to escape from his own life. So he stays at Christopher's favorite hotel. Sees a prostitute that Christopher used to bang. And does drugs like Christopher. And is high and drunk 24/7 throughout the entire vacation. He plays roulette for hours and then at the end he goes into the desert and he screams "I get it!" at the world. Basically acknowledging that his life is like a roulette wheel and right now he is lucky and the next week he might get unlucky and get whacked and he has no perfect control over his life. From that point on Tony becomes far less cautious and almost acts suicidal when it comes to being on the lookout for assassins or the FBI.

I always took the “I get it!” as meaningless, a false enlightenment that comes with a trip.

 

[HH Brother]

 

[Sue Lightning]

You could make an entire new thread about each of the things i’ll list. It’s fucking insane how often this show gets misinterpreted

Carmela and Furio is the exact same thing as Tony cheating on his wife for years. AJ is a spoiled asshole. Tonys house is really cool. The mob is a thing of honor with rules. Tony is really badass. Christopher isn’t an addict and is just a weak pussy (the exact hypocritical shit Tony says). The Melfi scenes are boring and add nothing to the show. Thats all I can think of for now but theres more disconnected thoughts:

Tony Soprano is, obviously, not a character to look up to. At all. He’s a murderer and potential sociopath who justifies every action he does and criticizes the people around him for having the same feelings he does. He perceives his tragedies as more important than others, telling Furio to get over his father dying then a hard cut to him crying about a horse. He’s incensed at a dog being suffocated but not Chris being high at his mothers wake. A lot of the show is about nature vs nurture. It’s shown that Tony witnessed a shit ton in his childhood like the man getting his pinky cut off and how the mob life was basically inevitable for him, committing his first murder around 20. Theres a great scene when Paulie and Tony go to Florida where Tony says “I just never feel like (my father) loved me” to which Paulie says “What are you kidding? He trusted you enough to kill that guy.”

I think the funniest commentaries are the ones on race. Other users pointed out the classic “FUCKING NIGGERS! WHO ELSE HUH?” and then a cut to Tony looking at the stolen car. There’s also that scene where Tony brings AJ to the hood, teaching him that Italians are hardworkers and to carry on that lineage while blacks are animals. Meanwhile in the episodes context Tony is committing fraud by buying up these properties, forcing the blacks out, and getting them appraised for impossible prices. He can’t even grasp that he’s worse than these niggers and even more potentially responsible for whats happening to them.

The point is is that they wrote Tony to be the most stereotypical Italian , hypocritical, traumatized, violent, racist, etc. And somehow instead of Italians realizing he’s a piece of shit they idolize him.

 

[bumbum8]

They also think that the jew therapist that sees Carmela offers her good advice. But he is just as bad as Melfi. He immediately sends Carmela away without helping her or taking her money because he doesn't want to deal with the mafia. He also doesn't tell Carmela the most useful thing that she could do to get the kids away from Tony. Go to the police or FBI behind Tony's back. Carmela knows about multiple murders by that point. She would get the kids away from Tony by simply having him tossed into jail. But the therapist doesn't want that as his name could come up. He basically tells Carmela "whatever you do.....do it the hell away from me".

I always thought the point of that scene was to throw cold water on the audience through Carmela.

The therapist is taking away her defense of not really knowing what Tony is doing, or at the very least being strung along and manipulated, and he tells her she's complicit, she's wrong. She's ruining her children, and she needs to leave the relationship. He's Chase being direct and telling the audience that Tony really is a piece of shit and he is actively poisoning his family, but Carmela is too.

She doesn't ever leave, even after she's told that if she doesn't, she has no one to blame but herself for what's coming.

On whether or not Phil was gay, it doesn't matter. The rules are the rules, and the other guys don't want to kill Vito because he brings in money, whereas Phil held on to mafia values as a way to survive in prison, though I'm not sure how long he was in there. He never says.
Anyway, it always irked me about people claiming because he came out of the closet that was supposed to be some huge clue.

 

[Libby Son Of Loin]

Gueedz misinterpret everything involving them.

Wyyz answer my fucking thread is this you?

 

[Libby Son Of Loin]

They're proud about the Columbus Day episode even though it's fucking shit.

 

[guest]

Gangster/mob media always seem to have that issue. When I was growing up retards wanted to be like Tony Montana.

 

[TomFromNawlins]

While plenty of viewers misinterpreted the show, I also think Chase’s opinion of his audience was overly cynical and a bit unfair.
He thought a lot of viewers were hypocrites for “rooting” for Tony but then wanting to see him killed.
I would paraphrase Chris talking to Jon Favreu about Swingers: “Hey, you wrote it.” Don’t make Tony a compelling character and then complain that your viewers connected with him. And don’t assume that, just because people find him compelling, they don’t want to see him face some sort of comeuppance. You can do both.

In short—and I think I’m justified in this opinion based on Many Saints—Chase wasn’t as brilliant as he thought he was.

 

[Sue Lightning]

People don't understand why Tony goes to Vegas after Christopher dies. Because he wants to live like Christopher for a week to see what it was like to escape from his own life. So he stays at Christopher's favorite hotel. Sees a prostitute that Christopher used to bang. And does drugs like Christopher. And is high and drunk 24/7 throughout the entire vacation. He plays roulette for hours and then at the end he goes into the desert and he screams "I get it!" at the world. Basically acknowledging that his life is like a roulette wheel and right now he is lucky and the next week he might get unlucky and get whacked and he has no perfect control over his life. From that point on Tony becomes far less cautious and almost acts suicidal when it comes to being on the lookout for assassins or the FBI.

I disagree with this assessment. That entire episode to me is about Tony being “powerful”. He kills Christopher which, even for the viewers, is unimaginable. We saw him kill Big Pussy sure but even then he felt terrible about it. With Christopher it was completely cold and psychopathic. The only justifications we get are the ones Tony repeats at the funeral: “A tree branch went through the car seat, would have killed the baby.” So much can be said about this assessment in the first place. Christopher wouldn’t have a baby if he stayed with Adrienna, both him and Tonys doing to get rid of her. He wouldn’t have been high if Tony and others didn’t constantly rebuke and shit all over him for his sobriety, etc. Tonys psychopathy is made evident with one interaction where Paulie, who had the most issues with Chris throughout the series, feels extremely bad about beefing with him, while the man who literally snuffed him out feels nothing. And seeing the extensive grieving spill over into his house makes him decide he has to get away.

So he goes to LA. The reason he sleeps with Chris’ old lay isn’t to “be Christopher”, but to fuck him over one last time. Remember that Tony is a compulsive sex addict and possessive. He beats Zellman for sleeping with the Russian he broke up with. He almost slept with Adrianna and says Christopher doesn’t deserve her but he’s worthy enough. Then he gets extremely incensed when he finds out Christopher is sleeping with the real estate agent. Sleeping with the prostitute is one last, albeit flacid, fuck you at Christopher. “You got my girls, now I got yours.” Now that gets into what Tony “gets” at the end of the episode, which is nothing.

Throughout this season and earlier in the episode, a point is made that Tony is continually losing at gambling. After he kills Christopher he literally falls over laughing in a revelatory fit after winning muttering “he’s dead.” This shows a clear message to Tony. “I killed Christopher and my luck is finally turning up.” This is the exact thing he “gets” in that final scene, but in essence, it’s saying that he truly gets nothing. His life is empty. The life of another person, no less his nephew, is disposable and brought him good luck. At this point he is utterly devoid of anything human. We can also connect this to when he relays the experience to Dr Melfi: “I had a vision that mothers are like the school bus drivers, they drop us off and go on their way but the problem is we keep trying to get back on the bus.” This is a clear look into Tonys psyche and how he understands nothing. For 6 seasons we’ve seen him grasp with his mother from the murder plot she started to potentially testifying against him to the Franz Feldstein plot showing she was mostly a victim of Johnny Boy. Melfi makes the statement that Tony is incapable of understanding Livia and this shows it. In any other adjusted humans representation the mother is the school bus driver for our entire lives. We get off but we often get back on. In this case Livia is a selfish person who dropped Tony off as he attempts to reclaim that love. And he doesn’t understand this isn’t representative of everybodys experience. His mother was just a piece of shit and he’s continually chasing after something he can’t get. He truly understands nothing.