Word: carmela
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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SCORNED WIFE Long-suffering bottle-blond Carmela Soprano turns a blind eye to her husband's faults, mostly for material gain...
...another - God help us - "quirky drama." Numerous characters were added; some episodes meandered; others - a trip to Italy, his nephew's flirtation with Hollywood - were self-indulgent and untrue to the tone of the series. When it connected, especially in Tony's increasingly strained relations with his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and his moody son, it was fantastic. But sometimes, it wasn't much...
...with them at the same time. Tony's still dealing with, or avoiding, the guilt over the bloody way in which he's consolidated his power; daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) is at Columbia University, across the river; Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) is running with a bad crowd; and Carmela - long-cheated-on Carmela - is sublimating her feelings like a good suburban housewife, through tennis lessons. (We also follow the Sopranos' Polish maid, one of a growing cast of peripheral East Europeans - Polish domestics, Russian strippers, Czech mobsters - who provide a modern-day connection to the Italian Americans' immigrant past...
...nifty device too, because it reminds you of the show's discomfiting ambiguity. You're rooting for a murderer as Feds try to nail him. (Don't leave the house, you idiots! Goddamnit, Carmela, drive faster! Catch them in the act!) And then you remember just who and what it is you're cheering for. In the second episode (airing back-to-back with the first), Tony finds Meadow in the living room watching a video (the mob movie "Public Enemy") for homework with Noah Tannenbaum, a half-black, half-Jewish guy from her dorm; Tony pulls Noah aside...
...Afterward, Carmela finds Tony passed out on the floor (he's had another of his panic-attack blackouts) and he tells her the story. The way Chase handles the scene shows how this series is in a league above anything else on TV. On a network show - even in the heyday of "All in the Family" -Tony's wife would have to be a sympathetic counterbalance, the tolerant peacemaker. But Chase and Falco don't let Carm off the hook: She subtly betrays that she's not entirely comfortable with her daughter dating a black man either...