Sunday Night in North Jersey: A Sopranos Page

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SUNDAYS AT 9 / HBO / SEASON ONE
Sunday Night
in North Jersey
A Sopranos page from a guy who lives off the Turnpike

Me / The opening credits / Who's who / My five / Emmy night / My grandmother vs. the show

My name is Kelly Barone. I'm 25, I'm a pharmacy technician, and I live in Bergen County, about five minutes from a Turnpike entrance. My family is Italian on my father's side, all of it, going back to my great-grandfather, who came over through Ellis Island and never left Jersey again except once, for a funeral in Philadelphia, which he complained about until he died.

I started watching The Sopranos on Sunday, January 10, the night it premiered, mostly because a guy I work with said there was a mob show on HBO that was filmed around here. I figured I'd watch ten minutes and make fun of the accents. By the end of the first hour I'd called my buddy Scott and told him to start taping it. I taped every one of the thirteen episodes myself, through the finale on April 4, on two tapes I've labeled DO NOT RECORD OVER in black marker, and I've watched the whole thing through twice since. My mother has borrowed the tapes. My grandmother has not, and won't. More on that here.

This page is about why I think it's the best show on television, from somebody who knows what a Jersey diner at two in the morning looks like.

THE OPENING CREDITS

If you're from around here, the opening credits are a game all by themselves. Tony comes out of the Lincoln Tunnel with a cigar, takes a ticket at the Turnpike tolls, and drives home. That's it. That's the whole thing. And I know half of it by heart because I drive it.

The Lincoln Tunnel, coming out on the Jersey side.
The toll ticket. Every Jersey kid has held one of those on a family trip.
The planes coming in low over the Turnpike by Newark Airport.
The Pulaski Skyway, which my father refuses to drive on.
The Twin Towers back in the side mirror, getting smaller.
The Pizzaland sign. I have eaten at that Pizzaland.
The streets of row houses, then the trees, then the big house up the hill.

The whole drive, the city gets farther away and the houses get bigger, and that's the show in about ninety seconds. He's a guy from Newark who made it to the suburbs, and he brought Newark with him.

WHO'S WHO: TONY'S TWO FAMILIES

The whole show is about a man with two families who can't keep them apart. Here's who's who.

THE ONE AT HOME
Tony Soprano James Gandolfini	Father, husband, waste management consultant, and a man having panic attacks. Gandolfini grew up in Bergen County and went to Rutgers, so when he sounds like Jersey, it's because he is.
Carmela Soprano Edie Falco	His wife. Knows more than she says and says plenty. The best acting on the show, and now she's got the Emmy to prove it.
Meadow and A.J. Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Robert Iler	The kids. Meadow is in high school and smarter than everybody in the house. A.J. is a kid who mostly wants to be left alone with his video games, which I can relate to.
Livia Soprano Nancy Marchand	Tony's mother. The scariest person on the show, and she's a little old lady in a retirement home. Marchand was the newspaper publisher on Lou Grant, if you're old enough. I watched her in this and kept thinking, I know women exactly like this, and I'm not going to say who.
Dr. Jennifer Melfi Lorraine Bracco	His psychiatrist, the only person he tells the truth to, sort of. Bracco was in Goodfellas, which is a nice joke if you think about it.
THE OTHER ONE
Uncle Junior Dominic Chianese	Tony's uncle, who thinks he should be running things and doesn't like being an old man. Chianese was in The Godfather Part II.
Christopher Moltisanti Michael Imperioli	Carmela's cousin and Tony's young guy, who wants to be somebody, and fast. Funny and sad at the same time. Imperioli was in Goodfellas too.
Silvio Dante Steven Van Zandt	Runs the club, does a Godfather impression, has the best hair on television. That's Little Steven from the E Street Band. I saw him play next to Bruce at the Meadowlands this summer and thought, that's Silvio.
Paulie Tony Sirico	Second best hair on television. Every time he's on screen my mother says she knows a guy who looks just like him from church.

MY FIVE FAVORITE EPISODES

No spoilers past what you'd figure out from the first ten minutes.

1	College Tony drives Meadow up to Maine to look at colleges and his other life follows him there. The best hour of TV I saw all year, and the Emmy people agreed with me.
2	I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano The season finale. Tony finds out who's been against him. The last scene, the whole family around a restaurant table while a storm comes down outside, I've watched about fifteen times.
3	Down Neck A.J. gets in trouble at school and Tony starts remembering his own father, with flashbacks to Newark in the sixties. My grandfather grew up near there and I wish he was alive to see it.
4	Meadowlands Tony makes a smart move with Uncle Junior, and A.J. finally figures out what his dad does for a living. The look on that kid's face.
5	The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti Christopher wants to be famous and the FBI is getting close. This is also the one where the show argues with itself about Italian-Americans on TV, which I write about on my grandmother's page.

EMMY NIGHT: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

The Sopranos was the first show on cable ever nominated for Best Drama. It didn't win that one. But Edie Falco won Best Actress in a Drama, and College won for writing, and when they called her name I yelled loud enough that the guy downstairs banged on the ceiling. Gandolfini didn't win. Next year. I'll put money on it, if anybody wants to take that bet.

SEASON TWO

HBO says January. That's a long time to wait, but I've got two tapes and a VCR, so I'll make it. Until then I'm going to keep driving past Pizzaland and pointing.

THE OTHER SIDE

Not everybody in my family loves this show. My grandmother thinks it's an insult to every Italian who ever lived. I think she's wrong, but she's not crazy, and I wrote up both sides as fair as I could: The Argument at Sunday Dinner >

people have stopped by since February 1999.

Write me: [email protected]
Last updated Wednesday, September 22, 1999

The Sopranos belongs to HBO. This is just a fan from Bergen County.