The Sopranos (Spin Offs) by Dana Polan

Author:Dana Polan [Polan, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-10-11T19:06:00+00:00

The sitcom background enables The Sopranos' depiction of Mafia "Family" to be tinged with some of the meanings given to the domestic family in American ideology: these gangsters are men who work together on activities that require toughness and terseness, but they also interact with affection and understanding as well as misunderstanding, generational conflict, paternal advice, and so on. Tony Soprano is called upon by his crew to be like Father Knows Best's pastoral leader, Jim Anderson, who welcomes members of his flock into his private den and tries to sort out their problems, and it is a source of The Sopranos' cynical but comic revision of the sitcom that Tony is not always able to fulfill the role. One central narrative line of the classic domestic sitcom recounts the catastrophes that can happen when parents are absent and the children get into trouble, whether intentionally or not. While The Sopranos does show such chaos in the domestic sphere-for example, Anthony Jr. 's endless screw-ups or Meadow's drunken partying-the series also sometimes depicts the workplace in similar terms, as a social space that can fall apart in the absence of leadership. For example, the much-acclaimed "Pine Barrens" episode from season 3 is nothing so much as a sitcom in which the grown men Christopher and Paulie are reduced to childish helplessness when they become lost in the woods and need patriarch Tony to come rescue them. At the same time, Tony's own frantic need to deal with his two underlings, as well as a Russian Mob boss who might have it in for him and a mistress who wants to spend time with him, has its own sitcom tone: how can one balance work issues with the demands back at the house-even if, in this case, the "home" is that of the mistress, not spouse?

But if sitcoms frequently investigate the affective bonds within the sphere of work, they also, on the other hand, give close attention to the realm of the family at home and tend, in the classic works, to concentrate on the interactions, sometimes supportive, sometimes fraught, between patriarch and matriarch-especially when either ventures into terrain in which the other is master. Typical in the classic domestic sitcom was the narrative of the male breadwinner who is often harried at work (for example, Darren's boss on Bewitched endlessly asks him to develop new ad campaigns) and who seeks solace at home only to find further upheaval, frequently at the hands of his homemaker spouse, especially in those cases where she wants to do more with her life than just uphold domesticity (like Lucy Ricardo, for example, who keeps wreaking havoc by wanting a career of her own in show business, or an income of her own).

Where the cheerful resolution of everyday problems in middle-class sitcoms like Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, or The Donna Reed Show is often mirrored in the cheerful handsomeness of the characters and the homes they live in, more working-class-centered sitcoms like

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