New Thought Leaders
Chase, New York City 2008
In the 1990s, when David Chase first came in to pitch a new drama that revolved around the mafia, all the clichés came to mind. But what emerged was something far more layered, and outrageously funny. Like all great dramas, it was about much more than first appearances would suggest. The Sopranos was about middle-class lives and middle-aged ennui. About marriage and raising a family, dreams shattered by reality, and about power on many levels. All these themes were wrapped around a guy having a panic attack who gets a psychiatrist to piece together a Freudian puzzle about a relationship with -- of all things for a mobster -- his mother. David fearlessly broke from tradition, casting an unlikely protagonist and avoiding tidy endings. Like all great artists, David made us look anew not only at this genre but at our own middle-aged sensibilities and about what it means to “live well.”
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