by Rachel Stewart

Following on from last week’s ‘Riding Shotgun’ where I talked about depression and Big Pharma and SSRIs I got to thinking about my mate Tony Soprano.

Now, if you haven’t watched the best show in the history of television I don’t know what to say to you except, what are you waiting for? The Sopranos hit the screen in 1999, and I’m watching the entire series again for around the twelfth time. I kid you not.

Why do I do it? Because I see it with a new lens every time I watch it. As my own life unfolds, and I age, it holds even more treasures about the human condition than one TV series should be allowed. The layers – script, acting, casting, storylines – are beyond anything I’ve viewed before or since. And that’s a big call.

Sure, Tony Soprano is a mafia boss, a thug and kills purely for profit. Yet, he has a humanity about him that is compelling. For me, I was hooked on Tony from the moment he fell in love with the ducks that briefly inhabited his swimming pool. His devastation when they flew away never to return, and his subsequent panic attacks triggered by their leaving, permanently endeared him to me. So he whacks a few guys every now and then and is a serial philanderer. Worst things have happened at sea.

The panic attacks are the driver for seeking psychiatric help, and what a ride that turns out to be. Of course, as is the usual way of things, he is prescribed anti-depressants. In the short-term it’s all good. He gets the mood lift but, as is the way of the drugs, followed soon after by the numbness, the libido drop, and the same depression except with the volume turned down.

His psychiatrist, Dr Melfi, tells him that depression is just rage turned inward. Which, given Tony doesn’t really hold back on that score, is fascinating.

Where it gets really thought-provoking is when in the final season his son, and who by now we’ve watched grow up, Anthony Jr is dumped by his girlfriend, and he starts an ever-downward spiral towards a suicide attempt. AJ also talks to a therapist and the scenes where he talks about his fixation with the state of the world post-911, terrorism, and people eating up large in America’s shopping malls is revealing.

For me, one of the best quotes in the entire series, is when he responds to the question of why he’s depressed. He replies, “I mean, how can anybody not be? You'd have to be effing nuts not to be. I mean, you'd have to have your head wedged so far up your ass that all you could see is your own stupid face!”

That is salient and important in the context of both depression and nihilism. Which one comes first? The fact is that the state of the world can certainly drive depression but said state can also appear more urgent and lethal when one is depressed.

And I think AJ touched on something that is patently true. And that is that it’s entirely normal for a human to be deeply affected by the culture they see around them and that it’s actually a normal and healthy reaction to something profoundly out of tune. Sure, there’s nothing we can really do individually about the state of the world, but that line comes more from the head than the nervous system.

Now Tony Sr is faced with the possibility that his depressed son has inherited his “putrid genes”. He blames himself, in other words. But his paternal love for his struggling son is palpable.

We see a human being struggling with the human condition. And I think that’s the magic of The Sopranos from the first scene to the last scene and played out over eight and a half years. We meet an unforgettable cast of characters, belly laugh, feel gut punched, sickened by cruelty and greed, and watch families do the best they can within the paradigm of Italian organised crime with a history going back centuries.

The Sopranos neither glorifies nor vilifies that life. It just is. And that was a huge point of difference between any TV that came before it. Because organised crime is and always has been a fact of life.

And anyway the line between the real villains and the so-called good guys is so blurred these days as to be indistinguishable. So, yes, Tony Soprano is a ruthless murdering criminal. Think about what heinous activities world governments and corporations and, yeah, BigPharma are up to these days. Let’s not dress it up. They do what they do for their deep and abiding love of the bucks.

Tony is at least capable of loving the ducks.

Listen to the full episode of Riding Shotgun.