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Three questions people arrive with.

"Is the first season slow?"

Not slow — different. Season one is the closest the show comes to a conventional crime series, and it's the one most likely to mislead you about what you're watching.

The first few episodes carry a lot of setup: the panic attacks, the therapy, the war with Junior, the Soprano household. It's excellent television that behaves roughly the way you expect television to behave.

Then "College" (S1E5) happens, and the show tells you what it actually is. If you're going to bounce off The Sopranos, you'll bounce before that episode. If you're still in after it, you're in for six seasons.

The other thing to know: this is a comedy as much as it's a drama, and people who go in braced for grim prestige TV miss half of it. Some of the funniest writing on American television is in here, usually within thirty seconds of something appalling. See Comedy.

"Which episodes decide it?"

Four, spread across the run. If you're sampling rather than committing, these are the ones that show you the range — though all four land far harder in sequence.

"College" (S1E5) — Tony takes Meadow on a college tour and murders someone between campus visits. HBO executives fought it, arguing that a protagonist who commits a cold-blooded killing would lose the audience. Chase's counter-argument was that the audience would lose respect for Tony if he let the guy live. Chase won, and American television's whole antihero era comes out of that argument. Won the writing Emmy; Time and Entertainment Weekly have both called it the series' best.

"Pine Barrens" (S3E11) — Paulie and Christopher lose a Russian in the snow. Directed by Steve Buscemi. The purest demonstration that this show is a comedy, and the source of the most famous unresolved plot thread on television. Chase eventually explained what happened to Valery, and only because, in his words, so many people got pissy about it.

"Whitecaps" (S4E13) — Tony and Carmela's marriage detonates across a single extended fight. Gandolfini and Falco both won Emmys off this. No violence, no plot, and it's the most frightening episode in the series.

"Long Term Parking" (S5E12) — the one people don't recover from. Say no more than that.

"What should I watch for?"

Small things that reward attention early and pay off across six seasons:

  1. Who Tony is talking to when he tells the truth. It isn't Carmela, and it usually isn't Melfi either. Track how often the therapy sessions are a performance and how rarely they aren't.

  2. The food. Nobody in this show eats casually. Meals are where power is arranged, loyalty is tested, and violence gets scheduled. Gabagool at Satriale's, Sunday dinner, the ducks, the onion rings. See Food & Ritual.

  3. The dreams. Chase uses them structurally, not decoratively — they're where characters know things they haven't admitted to themselves. The big ones: the fish in "Funhouse" (S2E13), the Test Dream (S5E11), and the whole of "Join the Club" / "Mayham" (S6E2–3). See Dreams & Symbolism.

  4. Every closing song. Chase personally chose almost every needle drop in the series. The song over the end credits is a comment on the episode roughly as often as it isn't. See Music.

  5. How characters talk about mob movies. These men have all seen The Godfather and Goodfellas and are consciously performing them. Silvio does the Pacino impression; Tony rates Godfather II over the first. The show is about people imitating fiction about people like them. See Mob Movies & Self-Awareness.

  6. What "improvement" means to Tony. He goes to therapy for six seasons. Whether he gets better, gets worse, or gets more efficient is the central argument of the show. See Tony's Arc.

Practical notes

Watch order is simply broadcast order. Season 6 was split into two parts — 12 episodes in 2006, 9 in 2007 — but it's one season and plays continuously.

The prequel comes after, not before. The Many Saints of Newark (2021) assumes you know the series. It is not a starting point, and it's the weakest thing with the name on it.

Don't read the ending first. It's the most spoiled ending in television, but the experience of it is the point, and it can only happen once. If you already know: The Ending.

On the title sequence. The first three seasons show the World Trade Center in Tony's side mirror. It was removed after September 2001. Some streaming versions carry the original; some don't.

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