I watched the original run of The Sopranos rather spottily over the years (I couldn’t always afford premium cable back in the day). But after I watched the prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark, which aired on HBO Max in October, I decided I needed a comprehensive rewatch. The Many Saints of Newark was watchable, but perhaps its true gift will be getting people to rewatch The Sopranos. The big surprise is how little the show dates itself beyond Meadow’s clothing choices. It is a truly timeless epic television poem of the many different meanings of family.
- Lela Moore
Freelance writer and FanSided contributor
Why we needed this fandom this year
We needed The Sopranos, and, yes, that prequel, this year because we are living together through a global pandemic that is causing many of us to question our life choices. How better to reassure ourselves that we are doing the right thing than to watch Tony Soprano struggle through therapy for 86 episodes? (RIP, James Gandolfini, for you are missed.)
Best fan moment of the year
The best fan moment of the year was seeing Vera Farmiga’s brava performance as Livia Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark. For all her outsize influence on the original show and on Tony Soprano’s character, Livia was only in the original show’s first two seasons because Nancy Marchand, who played her, died in 2000. So it was a real gift for Sopranos fans to see her character develop through the prequel.