Analyzing Evil: Tony Soprano From The Sopranos

Welcome everyone to the forty-ninth episode of Analyzing Evil! Our feature villain for this video is Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. I hope you enjoy, and thanks for watching. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to let me know below!

00:00 Introduction
04:43 Background and Relationships
23:58 Appearance, mannerisms, and talents
27:34 Personality and Psyche
53:36 Beliefs, Values, and Vices
58:13 Crimes
1:10:28 Conclusion

#TonySoprano #TheSopranos #TheManySaintsOfNewark

[TheVileEye]

I somehow glossed over Tony actually scoring high on his IQ tests in Many Saints, so apologies for stating otherwise!

[kickflipinyaface]

I just imagine Tony Soprano watching this on his laptop, doing his heavy breathing thing as the video goes on. Until finally he just picks it up and throws it across the room

[mattjack]

So I've watched the entire series of The Sopranos, and I've watched this analysis of Tony Soprano, along with several other videos on Tony Soprano and his character. After considering all that I have seen, and all of the information I've gathered, I have come to the conclusion that Tony Soprano, most likely, never had the making of a varsity athlete...

EDIT: WOW! Thanks for all the likes and comments! I originally thought that my comment was kinda corny and silly, and never would have thought so many people liked it. Thanks guys 😊

[thethrowawaythatstayed]

“Being likeable doesn’t make you a good person” well put.

[Acheron]

“Ralph isn’t a great guy at all”

That’s probably the nicest possible way to describe Ralph lmao

[twodivision]

As much as a genius dr Melfi was it's kinda puzzling for me that throughout 7 years of therapy and even after her colleagues begun throwing her direct hints she still didn't figure out that Tony, in fact, never had the makings of a varsity athlete...

[chrismontante]

Also, the way Tony would watch television or movies was particularly fascinating, he romanticized noble moral acts like when he was watching the war documentary. He appeared extremely emotional at the thought of a soldier sacrificing his life for his fellow comrade.

[fuferito]

“Without Tony Soprano, there would be no Walter White.”
-Vince Gilligan, creator of _Breaking Bad._

[angelg]

i know you don’t really do supporting characters but i really think Christopher Moltisanti deserves a analyzing evil

[kidnicky]

"Tony was worried his nephew's drug abuse would impact his newborn daughter"

I don't think that Tony gave a shit about Christopher's daughter. In my opinion, when Tony noticed the car seat, he subconsciously chose Christopher's daughter as the internal rationale that he would use to justify the murder to himself. He had been waiting for the opportunity to get rid of Christopher without the burden of guilt, and the branch through the car seat presented that opportunity. If Tony had been able to look back on the accident years later, it's likely that he would have convinced himself that saving Christopher's daughter was the reason he did it, and the incident had nothing to do with the real reason, which was that he was protecting himself from the dangerous liability that Christopher had become.

[TheVileEye]

You know how much gabagool I had to eat to get through this? It took me twenty years to make this video and by the time I was done my estimation of Tony Soprano as a man just plummeted.

[dewilew]

Barbara really does represent the most healthy way of dealing with toxic family members. Janice and Tony represent the two extremes. Janice got as far away as she could, as fast as she could. Tony stayed and became just like his father, while being the most affected by the neuroses of his mother. He took the brunt of the psychological damage caused by that upbringing. People criticize Barbara's character because not much is done with her in the series. We only see her at important family events. But I think that's intentional. She did get away, but she's close enough to still be part of the family, and she's there when she's needed, but she's far enough away to not be damaged by all the BS that her family is involved in. She's "in the family, but not of the family", so to speak. Consequently, she is the least psychologically damaged of the siblings.

[CharlieApples]

17:11 It should also be mentioned that Lydia effectively puts out a hit on Tony, her only son, by manipulating Junior after finding out Tony was seeing a psychiatrist. She was so disgusted by the idea that simply disowning her adult son wasn’t enough; she wanted him dead so he would never embarrass her again.

While her own obsessively narcissistic ego played a major part in this, with her instantly imagining Tony telling a stranger about what a terrible mother she was while she wasn’t present to defend herself, another aspect of it was that she saw Tony seeing a therapist as an unforgivable show of weakness.

In the absence of her abusive late husband, she took up the torch of enforcing the “old ways”, effectively becoming the shadow boss of the family. Even Junior and Tony recognize this; realizing at multiple points that Lydia is manipulating them, and by doing so she is running things without actually being officially involved, and from an untouchable position of safety and fealty; an elderly mother, grandmother, and widow. The law would never touch her. Rival families would never touch her. She was bulletproof, in a world where everyone else was a sworn soldier.

She initially wanted Tony to succeed Junior as the head of the family, but found Tony’s admission of seeing a psychiatrist as so irredeemably pathetic that she lost all faith in him, and immediately began plotting to take him out. In her eyes, he had shown himself to not be leadership material, and would only ever be an embarrassing liability—a threat to _her_ legacy.

[grandwizardautismo]

One of my favorite details in The Sopranos is Tony’s eating habits. In the beginning of the show, he will have Carmela heat up normal portions of leftovers or will have normal snacks when around the house. Towards the end he will take an entire tray of leftover pasta, sit down in his bathrobe, and eat the entire tray in one sitting. Whenever he goes to another person’s house in the later seasons, he rummages through people’s fridges and helps himself to any cold cuts or meat they have in the fridge.

[kevinkibble]

The difference between Breaking Bad and The Sopranos is that the Breaking Bad writers clearly made a point of getting you to make excuses for Walt's horrible actions in your head, and had you empathising with him until the very end. The Sopranos, on the other hand, simply presents Tony's evil doing as it appears, without sugarcoating anything, and leaves it up to the viewer to decide just how evil he is, depending on where your own moral compass is pointed.

[zipblockarchives]

Tony never wanted to change, he wanted to world to change to fit his beliefs.

[cmattss]

My favorite scene about Tony's nature is a scene where he talks to Melfi about Vito being gay. He immediately tells her that he finds it disgusting, but after a fairly short discussion, he admits that he actually doesn't care if someone is gay. Because of his upbringing and the people he surrounds himself with, he instinctively acts hatefully, but once he's in the safety of Melfi's office and is free to explore his actual thoughts, he finds that he doesn't hate gay people or even Vito. It's a window into the reality that Tony isn't a meat headed bigot like most of his crew, and probably would be a more understanding or even kinder person if his circumstance allowed it. It also makes his eventual decision to have Vito killed all the more cold and callous.

[Triviata]

The thing about Tony Soprano is that, so long as he doesn't have a problem with you, he's almost decent and you could be forgiven for actually liking him ... but as soon as there's a problem, he's cunning and brutal.

[alsimmons]

Tony isn’t an antihero, he’s a villain protagonist.

[rdobson]

Tony is most certainly the embodiment of how such a horrid upbringing can truly shape someone for the worse.