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The Sopranos Is the Perfect Show to Help Us Understand the Trump Era
Tony Soprano is a bully with a deep distrust of the FBI — just like our current president
He’s a swaggering, narcissistic bully whose waistline balloons as the pressure builds. He’s racist, sexist, and chauvinist — but saves his harshest words for the FBI. He inherits his father’s sketchy business, but almost loses everything when his witless cronies bungle a clandestine meeting with the Russians.
I’m talking, of course, about Tony Soprano, the boss of North Jersey. And I am also talking, of course, about Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. Twenty years after a mob boss walked into a psychiatrist’s office to launch a series, and four years after a mogul rode down an escalator to launch a campaign, the resemblance is uncanny.
Despite living in a golden age of television, I rewatch The Sopranos like clockwork every year. Partly it’s because it’s one of those rare shows that always offers something new on repeated viewing. Mostly it’s compulsive. Birds fly south. I hit play on the pilot. Which, until fairly recently, is not the kind of thing I would have mentioned to a casual acquaintance, let alone the entire internet. It hardly suggests time well spent.
