GONE TOO SOON... R.I.P. JAMES GANDOLFINI

I find it very difficult to separate James Gandolfini the man from Tony Soprano, the larger-than-life mobster he portrayed so brilliantly on television.  And given the mysterious way the series ended, it almost feels as if we now have the answer to the question: Whatever happened to Tony Soprano?  He died of a heart attack while on holiday in Italy with his son.

Over the course of 86 episodes, I watched as Gandolfini made Tony Soprano - a man that, by all rights, I knew I should both fear and hate - the most loveable anti-hero in the history of television. After all, Tony had ordinary people intimidated, robbed, swindled, beaten and killed. He cheated on his wife relentlessly and without remorse, yet reacted violently when she threatened to do the same to him. He murdered his best friends and even two of his own cousins to protect himself, his loved ones and his small-scale criminal empire. Time and again he lied to everyone, including himself. And yet...and yet people loved Tony Soprano.  I know I did.

What a perfect match it was.  An Italian guy from Jersey...playing an Italian guy from Jersey.  The realism was such that even real New Jersey mobsters were said to be both fascinated and a little spooked.  The show always did a great job of reminding us that while we do share a common humanity with them there is a big difference: they are supremely selfish, narcissistic, casual killers who will always look out for themselves first.  

Unfortunately, I was just shy of my 12th birthday when the show premiered in January 1999.  I didn't start watching the show until Season 4 and had to catch up on the rest.  I have now seen every episode multiple times.  It never gets old.

To watch Gandolfini as Tony Soprano is the rare occasion of seeing an actor fully inhabit a role, from those little quiet moments where Tony relaxes with giant bowls of ice cream, watching the History Channel (one of my personal favorite things about him was his love of history) or a Jimmy Cagney movie, nostalgic for a black-and-white world he never got to experience, to the bursts of violence that remind us of the volcanic sociopath lurking inside. 

Tony Soprano was, like all humans, a complicated mess, and James Gandolfini made the character the most complete realization of that human condition I've ever seen.  I love Don Draper but the quintessential Mad Men character will always rank second behind "T."  Beneath the superficial exterior of the "mob boss" - as shallow an archetype as was ever created - Gandolfini found endless layers: the anxious father, the affection-starved son, an alternately loving and terrible husband, a helpless romantic, a ruthless pragmatist, a coldblooded killer, an adolescent goofball, a raging bull, and on and on. 

That he contained and portrayed these identities so effortlessly is what made Tony Soprano real, and James Gandolfini so strangely familiar and endlessly fascinating to watch, in ways we will never be able to fully explain.  And who needs to, anyway? Fuhgeddaboudit!