Pilot

New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano starts seeing a psychiatrist.

This is an excellent start to a great show that sets the scene perfectly and introduces one of the great characters in popular culture.

I think it's one of the best starts to a television series. It not only introduces you to the main characters and themes of the overarching story, but it works as a standalone piece of filmmaking.

Tony Soprano is an ingeniously written character. He is portrayed with many antisocial traits, but you can't help but like and identify with him and his issues. James Gandolfini brings him to life with humour, sadness, intimidation and unbelievable charisma.

The Sopranos frames Tony's existential crisis perfectly through fears that everything around him is changing in a negative way. He is depicted as someone obsessed with the past who is facing the world as it approaches the twenty first century. This pilot wonderfully introduces many concepts associated with this angst that are given further depth as the series goes on. Gary Cooper, the ducks, his dream and various other exchanges of dialogue are all unforgettable examples of how David Chase hooks the audience with the insight and vulnerabilities of a Mafia boss.

We also have strong introductions to other characters such as Livia, Carmela, Uncle Junior, Dr Melfi and Christopher. I never tire of watching the scenes involving Gandolfini, Nancy Marchand and Dominic Chianese.

The production values are generally good but they improve greatly in future episodes. Some song selections and camera angles are a bit random. Also the realism is improved, particularly around how characters behave in front of onlookers. However, there are plenty of iconic images such as the opening and closing shots, the intimidating use of the Passaic River bridge, the scene inside Satriale's and various other location shots around New Jersey.

Some of the editing contains great humour, particularly when we have transitions like from Tony saying "It's a beautiful day. What could be so bad?" to the miserable, cantankerous faces in the next scene.

I first began watching the series back in 1999 and I'm pleased to say the pilot has lost none of its capacity to entertain. It's not a perfect hour of television but it sold a network the idea of The Sopranos and for that alone it is worth its weight in gold.

This is how a pilot should be: intense, to the point. Characters presents themselves but not much exposition.

Gandolfini is excellent. (RIP)

Lots of creepy vibes and funny jokes. Action moves solidly from act 1 to 2 to 3. At the end you are hooked.

So great, I couldn't describe it as great and awesome.

So, it's the pilot and if you know what's coming up after this, it does rather pale by comparison to the rest of the series but then, it is a pilot. More light hearted, wacky, more odd cinematic camera angles, a very different narrative style to the rest of the series but, even by the half way mark of this pilot it starts to resemble what it is to become, Tony's Looney Tunes Cartoon accent has begun to fade in places and we can almost forget we're watching the 1st episode. It took me a while to give The Sopranos a chance. It was an episode of season 3, the first one I saw in full, that made me want to see it from the start. That was back in 2001. I often think the more comical narrative of this pilot which was probably the subject of many of the early Channel 4 trailers was what put me off for the first few years. That, and the then close resemblance to the then recent film Analyse This. As a first time viewer though, you should not be put off. Within a few episodes you'll see why this is now considered by many as one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

... says the first line of "Goodfellas" from 1990. I wonder if this series, as good as it was, would have been such a big hit if that film had not come first. Because it was the very first to examine the mobster life from the working gangster's point of view. All of those that came before either examined the mob from the executive suite ("The Godafther") or the gangsters lived exaggerated lifestyles of wine, women, and song. None of them had any mobsters who were also living suburban lives worrying about letting the sauce stick or picking up a disabled brother from his regular appointment at the hospital. "Goodfellas" did that. What The Sopranos did was build on what Goodfellas had done and drill down deeply into the characters, which is something you can only do in a series.

So it wasn't really a jarring experience late in the 90s to see mobster Tony Soprano, overwhelmed by his unique professional and rather routine private lives, taking his troubles to a psychiatrist. The pilot opens rather abruptly with Tony meeting his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), for the first time. That meeting intersperses Tony's actual life with what he is telling Melfi, and although he gets the point across to her, he is leaving out some of the details. Such as when he discusses a delinquent debt owed him and how he and the debtor "had coffee". You see the actual meeting which is Tony running down the debtor with a car and then giving the guy a brutal beating.

Tony and Melfi have a complex relationship. Tony is initially a reluctant patient, but that changes with time. I think that Melfi, although she knows what Tony does for a living, initially thinks she can help this man, but that changes with time as she sees he really would never choose any other life than the one he has.

Rewatching this I was wanting to give it a 10/10, but I'm not sure if that just isn't because I am impressed with the series as a whole. So I knocked it down to a 9/10.