The Sopranos Season 1
Overview
Thirteen episodes, a cable channel nobody took seriously yet, and a premise that sounded like a joke: a mobster in therapy. Season one of The Sopranos introduces Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as he collapses in his backyard and starts, very reluctantly, spilling his worries to Dr. Melfi. His real fear, underneath everything, is timing — that he's arrived at the end of something: the end of his kind of family, his kind of business, his kind of America. Creator David Chase builds the season around the two women who made Tony: Carmela, holding the house together with her eyes wide open, and his mother Livia, whose cold war with her son produces some of the most uncomfortable scenes TV had ever aired. Uncle Junior's resentment simmers into open conflict, a college trip with Meadow takes a quiet, dark turn, and those ducks in the pool come to stand for everything Tony's afraid of losing. It won armfuls of awards and did something bigger: it proved a TV series could be as rich and unresolved as a great novel.
