The Sopranos is the greatest show that was ever made by human beings. This is not up for debate, it’s just fact. I’ve seen the show in its entirety over 4 times, and I’m envious of the people just discovering the show for the first time this year during quarantine. This year the show has become tremendously popular again, and with the release of the prequel film on the way, it’s a great time to revisit it.
The Sopranos begins with a remark that would foreshadow an entire generation. Tony Soprano tells his therapist, “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
On the surface, Tony’s comment is about his role in the mafia. But as the show progresses we can see it’s about so much more: the end of several myths about American life. In the case of his son, AJ Soprano, we see the idea of an “ending” even more clearly: Tony’s literally witnessing the end of his conception of masculinity, and the rise of the “failson.”
A failson can effectively be described as a young man who, despite education and/or other training, never ended up making anything of himself. He’s the type of dude who spends the majority of his time in his childhood bedroom, he’s lost in the world, has a dead in the eyes look, probably doesn’t work out, plays too many video games, masturbates to online pornography excessively, has some kind of artistic hobby that will never get him anywhere, all the stereotypes you’re familiar with, etc etc. AJ Soprano is the archetypal failson: he’s never worked a day in his life other than Blockbuster, and he lives a meaningless existence.
It’s been 13 years since the show ended, and there’s not a day I don’t think about how prescient the writers were. 2007 doesn’t seem that long ago, but when you think about how different everything is now, it feels like the finale of The Sopranos was a lifetime ago.
From 2007 to now, the previously accepted idea of masculinity has pretty much eroded. We’ve seen the rise of guys like Mark Zuckerberg, who found a way to turn his social awkwardness into an empire, earning him billions of dollars. He was the first man to popularize being an obscenely rich man who wears frumpy hoodies instead of a suit and tie. When you watch a show like Mad Men, it seems hilarious now in retrospect: the idea that men actually used to take pride in their appearance seems like a joke in 2020.
Other than the decline of the traditional image of manhood, the other big thing to go after the end of The Sopranos: jobs. The following year after the show concluded, in 2008 the American stock market experienced its worst lows in years. This all culminated in the economy absolutely shitting itself and committing a complete seppuku: the financial crisis of 2007-2008 was such a seismic shift in everything, it fucked up North American life for years to come — including the very notion of masculinity and “the breadwinner” society had so established for decades prior.
Fast forward to 2020. A time much worse than the financial collapse of 2007-2008. The modern day man is now a complete wreck. There are no jobs for young men other than delivering food to fat suburbanites who are stuck at home because of a pandemic, or jacking off for gay dudes on Onlyfans. The only successful young men I know either have money from their parents, or had a family member hook them up with some kind of decent job. Other than that, every dude I know lives a pathetic existence: living at home, drinking beer alone in their backyards and taking photos of it for Instagram approval, or living in a shitty apartment with 5 other broke losers. My generation is completely lost: we don’t own our own shit, we never will, and the worst part of it is we were raised to think we actually had a chance.
Contemplating the image of manhood he grew up with, Tony asks his therapist at one point, “What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type. That was an American. He wasn't in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do.” Today, the idea of a “strong, silent type” has evolved. Most young men have been made fools by economic collapse, a system that only benefits the 10 dudes in charge at the top, their unrealized dreams, and a planet that is consistently on fire and getting worse every single day.
Who are our role models? What is left for us? A movie from 1999 about a man who imagines a cooler version of himself and joins a club to fight? We’re completely fucked: most women have lost respect for men and want to peg us in the assholes, and men in 2020 have become mostly irrelevant. When you watch The Sopranos it’s like watching the whole thing happen in timelapse: the crumbling of institutions and the myth of the American dream in 86 episodes. AJ is the predecessor for who most men have become.
The final nail in the coffin this year: the Will Smith/Jada interview. It’s fucking sickening: she made a cuckold out of him, and as if that wasn’t enough she made him sit down in front of the world to talk about it. In any other era a dude like that would’ve simply divorced her and used his remaining millions of dollars to live a cooler life. But of course not: we live in 2020, and that’s not what men are like anymore.
In the last episode of The Sopranos, AJ makes a surprising announcement, “My ultimate goal is to qualify for helicopter pilot training. Afterwards go to work for Trump or somebody. Be their personal pilot.” In 2020, you can easily imagine a thing like that coming true: when failsons can’t stand for something anymore, they —alongside the myth of masculinity — fall for anything (including a guy like Trump).
