They Filmed
The Sopranos in
Our Town
—
Eileen Frankel Tomarchio
AND WE THOUGHT OURSELVES SPECIAL. Brought up the factoid every opportunity. Proudly stabbed at the tiny dot in foldout maps. Filming lasted a couple of weeks, scattered set-ups for different episodes in season 6. A park, diner, bakery, cemetery. When we asked the actors what they thought about our town, they replied that they’d only just gotten here a few hours before, but they liked what they saw. Production looked efficient and workaday, which amazed us considering the intensity of the scenes being shot. We were excited for all the metro news coverage. Fanboys showed up in wifebeaters, open bathrobes, slippers, gold chains. No James Gandolfini on the call sheets, sadly, but everyone had heard he was a great guy, and a few knew him from Rutgers. We were glad to have fresh bragging rights beyond collectible resin dinnerware and The Toxic Avenger. When the episodes aired, our humble industrial borough looked newly wondrous to our eyes. The familiar made unrecognizable, unreachable, even. A kind of magic. The ratings for our episodes were through the roof, we heard.
Well after the series ended, our town continued to milk the reflective mythos. We hosted progressive dinners following The Sopranos Family Cookbook. We dressed our kids on Halloween as little Silvio Dantes with big quiffs and silk bowling shirts and stuck frowns. Local delis sold out gabagool, bakeries had runs on sfogliatella. Ketchup packets in glove compartments triggered laughter over Paulie and Christopher lost in the wintry Pine Barrens with nothing else to eat. A reach down a kitchen sink to clear a garbage disposal called up Uncle Junior with his hand stuck in a drain for a whole day. When family occasions got animated, we repeated Livia’s I don’t like that kind of tawk… In our marital beds, we conjured Tony fucking his Russian mistress, Carmela fantasizing about Furio. In argument, we imitated Tony’s spitting rage, Carmela’s cutting down to size. We knew we could never match the enormity of actor meeting character meeting celluloid, but so what? We had a crutch, a cheat-sheet, a coach. The notion of being derivative didn’t faze us. We understood that having such a vast set of mutual references was a gift.
In time, the tour businesses added our town to their location guides and we mourned James Gandolfini’s death. Any luster-by-association was fading, but still we binged every season on DVD. When our kids were old enough, they binged the series themselves in order to know us better. They couldn’t understand the appeal of such ruthless, clannish, patriarchal people. They noticed we didn’t have many tight friends or family around anymore, as several had relocated to low-tax Vegas and Orlando, or died in accidents or from health crises or for other reasons that weren’t in the obits. None of us wanted to admit to a general drifting apart caused by nothing much.
Our kids worried over us. They read aloud the longevity studies of nonagenarians in Sardinia convening daily at bistro tables in stone alleys over cards and limoncello. Like Tony and his crew confabbing outside Satriale’s. Or Carmela and her friends lunching in Artie Bucco’s place. We tried to make up for the lack with tricky trays, Mahjongg, Friday mass, infant cuddling in NICUs, working the polls. Yet what meaning was there in these, really, compared with the bonds of turf wars and blood feuds and arcane codes of honor?
When the series was proclaimed an institution, our town felt another small burst of pride. But watching the early seasons again on cable, we found they looked muddy, like old Polaroids, and lamented that the locations themselves were radically changed. The Fortunoff Fine Jewelry now a Fortunoff Backyard Store. Fountains of Wayne now a Raymour & Flanigan. The Raceway gas station where Phil Leotardo’s head gets run over by his own SUV now a CubeSmart Storage. Our kids kept saying Just wait till it’s available in 4K and Your moots are over on Sopranos subreddit, whatever these meant. We wished we’d started a regular tradition of Sunday supper for them and their friends and partners years before, non-negotiable—Even once a month, for fuck’s sake! Our homes like when Artie’s restaurant goes dark during a storm and the family Soprano eat by candlelight and Tony makes a toast to the little things. We took memoir writing classes to put our regrets and confusions and longings into words, like would we ever be grandparents at this rate? And in this fucked-up joint? Most of us didn’t finish out the sessions. We got hand tremors and had weird dreams about Adriana or Richie Aprile or Big Pussy getting whacked repeatedly while we looked on from feet away, immobile, helpless.
Predictably, an Italian superstore opened nearby, replete with lounge singer-greeter, overpriced rice balls, glossy cast photos. We steered clear, preferring drive-thru Biggie Bags and takeout biryani. We had more time to ruminate. Look back, ask questions. Like, had we given too little regard to the Tony/ Dr. Melfi dynamic? To themes of co-dependency, enabling, depression, anxiety, sexual violence, bigotry, isolation, dementia? Had we gotten the show all wrong? Confused the exotic and the relatable? Somebody posted on Facebook about the town finally replacing a square of sidewalk that had retained a stubborn prop blood stain all those years, like a badge of honor. We hit like, love.
These days, our neighbors and friends and family die in ordinary, complicated ways. We remember Tony near death after Uncle Junior accidentally shoots him. His coma-dream of an alternate-reality self. Just a heating-system salesman in a hotel room, gazing off at an airport beacon, reckoning with his true nature. We remember that really sad Moby song in one episode’s closing credits, and wonder if it might be accompaniment to our own twilight states near the end, our own morphine selves floating bodiless over our nothing-special streets. Or if our lives will end like the series did. A stupid cut to black, Don’t Stop Believin’ drowning out everything. •
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Eileen Frankel Tomarchio lives in a wee New Jersey town, where she's been a librarian for 18+ years. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in OSU The Journal, Necessary Fiction, Baltimore Review, Porter House Review, Pigeon Pages, Tiny Molecules, Milk Candy Review, JMWW, and elsewhere.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram
Well after the series ended, our town continued to milk the reflective mythos. We hosted progressive dinners following The Sopranos Family Cookbook. We dressed our kids on Halloween as little Silvio Dantes with big quiffs and silk bowling shirts and stuck frowns. Local delis sold out gabagool, bakeries had runs on sfogliatella. Ketchup packets in glove compartments triggered laughter over Paulie and Christopher lost in the wintry Pine Barrens with nothing else to eat. A reach down a kitchen sink to clear a garbage disposal called up Uncle Junior with his hand stuck in a drain for a whole day. When family occasions got animated, we repeated Livia’s I don’t like that kind of tawk… In our marital beds, we conjured Tony fucking his Russian mistress, Carmela fantasizing about Furio. In argument, we imitated Tony’s spitting rage, Carmela’s cutting down to size. We knew we could never match the enormity of actor meeting character meeting celluloid, but so what? We had a crutch, a cheat-sheet, a coach. The notion of being derivative didn’t faze us. We understood that having such a vast set of mutual references was a gift.
In time, the tour businesses added our town to their location guides and we mourned James Gandolfini’s death. Any luster-by-association was fading, but still we binged every season on DVD. When our kids were old enough, they binged the series themselves in order to know us better. They couldn’t understand the appeal of such ruthless, clannish, patriarchal people. They noticed we didn’t have many tight friends or family around anymore, as several had relocated to low-tax Vegas and Orlando, or died in accidents or from health crises or for other reasons that weren’t in the obits. None of us wanted to admit to a general drifting apart caused by nothing much.
Our kids worried over us. They read aloud the longevity studies of nonagenarians in Sardinia convening daily at bistro tables in stone alleys over cards and limoncello. Like Tony and his crew confabbing outside Satriale’s. Or Carmela and her friends lunching in Artie Bucco’s place. We tried to make up for the lack with tricky trays, Mahjongg, Friday mass, infant cuddling in NICUs, working the polls. Yet what meaning was there in these, really, compared with the bonds of turf wars and blood feuds and arcane codes of honor?
When the series was proclaimed an institution, our town felt another small burst of pride. But watching the early seasons again on cable, we found they looked muddy, like old Polaroids, and lamented that the locations themselves were radically changed. The Fortunoff Fine Jewelry now a Fortunoff Backyard Store. Fountains of Wayne now a Raymour & Flanigan. The Raceway gas station where Phil Leotardo’s head gets run over by his own SUV now a CubeSmart Storage. Our kids kept saying Just wait till it’s available in 4K and Your moots are over on Sopranos subreddit, whatever these meant. We wished we’d started a regular tradition of Sunday supper for them and their friends and partners years before, non-negotiable—Even once a month, for fuck’s sake! Our homes like when Artie’s restaurant goes dark during a storm and the family Soprano eat by candlelight and Tony makes a toast to the little things. We took memoir writing classes to put our regrets and confusions and longings into words, like would we ever be grandparents at this rate? And in this fucked-up joint? Most of us didn’t finish out the sessions. We got hand tremors and had weird dreams about Adriana or Richie Aprile or Big Pussy getting whacked repeatedly while we looked on from feet away, immobile, helpless.
Predictably, an Italian superstore opened nearby, replete with lounge singer-greeter, overpriced rice balls, glossy cast photos. We steered clear, preferring drive-thru Biggie Bags and takeout biryani. We had more time to ruminate. Look back, ask questions. Like, had we given too little regard to the Tony/ Dr. Melfi dynamic? To themes of co-dependency, enabling, depression, anxiety, sexual violence, bigotry, isolation, dementia? Had we gotten the show all wrong? Confused the exotic and the relatable? Somebody posted on Facebook about the town finally replacing a square of sidewalk that had retained a stubborn prop blood stain all those years, like a badge of honor. We hit like, love.
These days, our neighbors and friends and family die in ordinary, complicated ways. We remember Tony near death after Uncle Junior accidentally shoots him. His coma-dream of an alternate-reality self. Just a heating-system salesman in a hotel room, gazing off at an airport beacon, reckoning with his true nature. We remember that really sad Moby song in one episode’s closing credits, and wonder if it might be accompaniment to our own twilight states near the end, our own morphine selves floating bodiless over our nothing-special streets. Or if our lives will end like the series did. A stupid cut to black, Don’t Stop Believin’ drowning out everything. •
Eileen Frankel Tomarchio lives in a wee New Jersey town, where she's been a librarian for 18+ years. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in OSU The Journal, Necessary Fiction, Baltimore Review, Porter House Review, Pigeon Pages, Tiny Molecules, Milk Candy Review, JMWW, and elsewhere.
Website | Bluesky | Instagram