What is the main message of the Sopranos? Is there one?

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Did you notice the shot of the shot on the bar...... A tell? Look at what alchohol and drug abuse has done to families in our country. DC knows what the cost has been. He's lived it. He was an alcoholic and drug abuser once upon a time himself wasn't he? He has also repeatedly said that he HATED American television. He has been showing it like it is now for 10 years, and how it is done.

Same with gambling. A harmless little fun? Sure it is. Look at the recent mob run gambling ring bust in Arizona of all places. When Chris, the alkie/junkie from hell, left the party in the bar after the conversation from hell with Paulie they immediately cut to the frat boys downing shots. No, no message there.......

When Chris tells JT roughly "You just wanna leach off me and then write about me" did anyone think he was kidding. He really believed he was being ripped off by the guy. He was being ripped off. We all are by writers like that. No, no message there either.

When Tony tells the mob kid roughly "I didn't realize gambling was so big in college nowadays", no message there either. Case closed. This is a show where nothing ever happens and there are no moral messages from Chase to his audience, and the Russian will spring back to prominence and kill them all too. Speaking of Russia......

The only thing more interesting than watching Christopher's face in his Marlon Brando-like Apocalypse Now stairwell scene would be watching the faces of all the young wannabe gangstas out there in America and the world as they watched this episode. Too bad so many never will get to see it. There are millions of them just like those little frat punks who just happened to be also born into it. Frat and sorority houses are filled with kids who live their college years in a blur of sex, drink, and rock and roll, then get a high paying job through their connections.

Life isn't fair and never will be. Just because morally bankrupt people don't ever kill or maim anyone it doesn't make them any less despicable. They are collectively killing the entire planet with their lifestyles. Fear is the beginning of wisdom, not the avoidance of it. I fear nature. Tony is beginning to. When was the last time he saw a duck?

Having zero real education about what truly makes people tick (aka psychology) the allure of easy money and easy women is too much for kids to resist. These days the true gangster wannabes are mostly of other ethnic groups but still. It's an enormous problem for our society that is rarely treated effectively in the media. The white variety seem bent on the more lucrative and safer career in white collar crime. That is treated even less.

Bruce Sprinsgteen once said the the best songs are always those that can be interpreted in a number of different ways. TV is the same. It is like a ray of sunshine that can be seen in many different colors through a prism of our own subjectivity. True this isn't sunday school or a morality play. But it is the greatest psychological thriller of our age. One with a very clear message of "Don't believe the hype"......real men hurt all the time, it's how you deal with it that counts.

If you don't deal with it there will be hell to pay by somebody.......a wife, a son, a nephew, yourself. DC & Co have been showing how to deal with it for ten years as well. They also continually makes strong comments about our American society and it's worship of money. pleasure, and power. These moral weaknesses we have may just destroy the world one day. We are nature's terrorists in a lot of ways.

The wannabe criminal can say to himself "real men don't do that" when he's 21 but by 31 or 41 surely he will know better. He just won't want to admit it. The frat rat can say to himself that binge drinking is just harmless fun until he sees firsthand the human wreckage cause but our society's willingness to promote alchohol as the "legal and accepted" drug.

The fact is the greatest drug of all is money and our society is hooked bad. We are like junkies wandering through alleys lined with fools gold. We are expert at hiding the trackmarks of what greed has done to us. We can sit back and laugh at how ignorant the people in the mob are for living their lifestyles because of their foolhardy greed. But are we really that much different? The closing shot of Chris staggering up his driveway to his brand new house with $40K in landscaping just repaired said it all. He spent all that on his lawn and ZERO on the root cause of his problems. AA is free. Now he's a dead man. No message there.

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