Vito Spatafore¶
At a glance¶
- Played by
- Joseph R. Gannascoli
- Position
- Soldier → capo — the family's top earner
- Family
- Married to Marie; two children; Phil Leotardo's wife's cousin
- Died
- 2006 — beaten to death on Phil's order, "Cold Stones" (S6E76)
The show's bluntest statement about the culture it depicts, and one of its most genuinely sad arcs.
The arc¶
Vito is, for several seasons, background: a competent soldier, then a capo, then the single biggest earner in the family — which in this business is the only currency that matters and buys real protection.
He is seen by two crew members at a gay club in Manhattan.
He runs. And the show does something nobody expected: it follows him.
New Hampshire¶
Vito ends up in a small town in New Hampshire, where he meets Jim "Johnny Cakes" Witowski, a volunteer firefighter and short-order cook, and falls in love.
For roughly two episodes he has a genuinely happy life. He does honest work. He fixes a house. He gets up early. Nobody knows or cares who he is.
Chase films this with no irony — it's warm, slow, and slightly awkward, and it's the only extended sequence in six seasons of anyone escaping.
And then Vito can't do it. He can't handle manual labour, he misses the money, and more than anything he cannot conceive of himself as an ordinary person. He gets in the car and drives back to New Jersey, knowing what's waiting.
What happens¶
Tony's calculus is financial and pragmatic: Vito earns more than anyone, so Tony is inclined to find a way to keep him — possibly relocated, possibly quietly. He says as much. He is talked out of it.
Phil Leotardo — Vito's wife's cousin — has no such ambivalence. Phil's men take him in a motel room and beat him to death, and the show shows almost none of it and leaves no ambiguity about what happened.
What the show is doing¶
Two things, carefully separated.
The characters' homophobia is depicted, not endorsed. The crew's reaction is presented as a set of frightened men performing certainty. Their dialogue is stupid on purpose. And Tony — who is the closest thing to a moderate here — is moderate only because Vito is profitable.
The New Hampshire episodes are the show's only real depiction of an alternative. Vito gets offered exactly what Tony has spent six seasons in therapy failing to want: a smaller, quieter, honest life. He turns it down. Then he's murdered for who he is anyway.
The arc drew some criticism at the time for pace and for the broadness of certain New Hampshire material. What has held up is the core proposition: the thing that kills Vito is not being gay. It's that he couldn't imagine being anyone other than a gangster, even when a way out was in front of him and he was happy in it.
Joseph R. Gannascoli¶
Gannascoli, a former chef and restaurateur, reportedly campaigned for the storyline himself after reading a book about a gay mobster and pitching the idea to the writers.