Parallels

I hate that some people think Tony Soprano was supposed to be a good guy. It’s true. Scroll through a comment section for a clip from the show on YouTube, and you’ll see it. Lines of quotes from the show used as running jokes. It sounds like most of it should be ironic until you see people actually argue whether Tony was right to scare his daughter’s boyfriend away with racial slurs, or whether it was his place to do so as “the man of the house.” I hate how a phrase like that sounds so cliche and outdated until you hear someone actually use it again.

A lot of the time, I hate Tony Soprano by association.

I hate that he likes the same classic rock as I do. I hate that he owns a leather jacket like I do. I hate that he likes the same mob movies as I do, and he’ll always bring up the old classics at parties whenever he’s not using shallow, fleeting charisma to please a room because he feels insecure.

I hate how I don’t feel as comfortable talking about these things. And I know you think it’s because whenever I go home, I’m surrounded by a bunch of insecure, macho men doing whatever they want at a bar, but I’m really not. I’m surrounded by good people, and the ones that weren’t were some combination of diabetic, alcoholic, unsociable, or suicidal, and I pushed them out of my life a while ago. It was easier than confronting them. The worst I’d hear from one of the guys back home is, “Eh, I don't know about that,” and they’d just carry on. A lot of tragedy is mundane. I hate how I can’t ever articulate myself to them in person about these things.

Sometimes, I hate people. Well, not exactly. I don’t hate them. I just don’t like them, and I become uninterested in them, and whenever I hear about their problems it makes me bitter for some reason. I’ll eat more, drink more, see people less (and want to see them less), and I’ll have self flagellating thoughts I wouldn’t carry out but still make me feel like crap. Tony Soprano always acted that way. Throughout the series, he brought people down to his level too and kept them there.

I hate how I don’t know how to talk about this or if I should. I still have the instinct to never voice my deeper frustrations and just deal with it, and in school I know how my problem I’ve made for myself isn’t big at all compared to what I’ve read about, and what I’ve seen whenever I try to convince my mom to give some change to someone on the street because I don’t carry cash with me. So, I have both sides telling me to keep my head down. Maybe I should. I acknowledge that, but I want to be a writer, and that goes against my instincts. I genuinely don’t know what to do about some of this.

I hate that I don’t know what to do about this. For all the times Tony felt conflicted in the show about what he did for a living, he always fell back on the same vices and the logic he created to defend himself. Maybe, if anyone else thinks like this, it’s good that we question ourselves.

Written by: Bryce Thompson