Artie Bucco¶
At a glance¶
- Played by
- John Ventimiglia
- Occupation
- Chef and owner — Vesuvio, then Nuovo Vesuvio
- Wife
- Charmaine Bucco
- Relation
- Tony's oldest friend from school
- Fate
- Alive; still cooking
The show's civilian, and its longest-running argument about what proximity to Tony actually costs.
The friendship¶
Artie and Tony went to school together. Artie went to culinary school; Tony went the other way. The friendship survived, and the show uses it to ask a question it never stops asking: can you be near this and stay clean?
The answer, delivered over six seasons, is no. Not because Artie becomes a criminal — he doesn't — but because the relationship corrodes him in slower ways.
The restaurant¶
In episode one, Junior plans to have someone killed at Vesuvio. Tony, to protect his friend's business from becoming a crime scene, burns the restaurant down — an act of protection that destroys Artie's livelihood, is never explained to him, and is paid for by insurance he doesn't know Tony arranged.
That's the template. Every favour Tony does Artie is simultaneously generous and diminishing, and the generosity is never free.
Artie rebuilds as Nuovo Vesuvio, and it becomes the crew's restaurant — which means comped meals, a permanent unpaid tab, and a proprietor who cannot say no to the men keeping him in business.
Charmaine¶
The most clear-eyed person in the series. Charmaine Bucco has Tony's number completely, refuses to be charmed, refuses the comped everything, and reminds Artie — repeatedly, correctly, exhaustingly — that they are being slowly bought.
She once cleaned houses for Carmela, a detail she has not forgotten and Carmela has. Their scenes together are among the show's sharpest about class.
She eventually leaves him, largely over this.
The decline¶
Artie's arc is a slow accumulation of humiliations, most of them self-inflicted:
- A loan-sharking scheme he tries to run himself, which fails embarrassingly
- Lending money to a French chef and losing it
- A pathetic infatuation with a hostess
- Being publicly slapped by Benny Fazio in his own restaurant
- A suicide attempt in "Everybody Hurts" (S4E45)
The suicide attempt is where the show puts the argument most directly. Tony's response is to give him money and treat the whole thing as a logistics problem, and Artie's despair is precisely that he knows he'll take it.
Why he's important¶
Artie is the audience's position. He gets to be near it, laugh at the jokes, eat well, and tell himself he isn't part of it — which is roughly what the show asks its viewers to do for 86 episodes.
And the show keeps demonstrating that the position is not neutral. Artie ends the series with his restaurant, his marriage repaired, and his self-respect substantially gone.