“The phone rings, in the middle of the night, My father yells, “What you gonna do with your life?” Oh daddy dear, you know you’re still number one, But girls, they wanna have fun“. Yes And the Sopranos the evolution of Meadow Soprano (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) starts from here, from the desire to continue being a spoiled daughter, a little Material Girl even if not completely, disturbed by the control of the parents but above all of the father Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), boss (in)discussed by himself in private and by his followers in the public.
The bond between Meadow and Tony is the bar that is raised or lowered in the character’s life span. An umbilical cord that sucks or transmits lifeblood from one to another, like the roped-together wanderers wandering in Takeshi Kitano’s film Dollsnoose of condemnation and refuge. Father and Daughter but not always in this exact order. Yin and Yang de And the Sopranosrelationship that contributed to the greatness of the HBO series.
Meadow is the archetype of millennial liberal
It was born in addiction of New York, the state of New Jersey that gathers and welcomes the majority of Italian American families. Hers could be an economically well-off family (with a small F), a father who is an entrepreneur of a conservative nature, a mother who is dissatisfied but devoted to her loved ones. Could be. His Family, on the other hand, has a capital F, a simple letter changes the perspective. It is not only her family but that of the Organization, the “Mother Mafia” that feeds them all, which allows Meadow to be spoiled and capricious, not to get up from the table but to continue reading and only extend her arm with an empty glass to have it filled by his mother, to buy amphetamines to support study and entertainment. Being the best compared to her brother AJ because she studies profitably and has an outgoing character, diametrically opposed to him, being “daddy’s girl” has made her life easy, too easy.
From the cocoon of her tantrums, slowly the frantic rhythm of her stomping feet to underline her stubbornness changes and transforms into the cadence of the clapping of her All Blacks, Meadow wants to get off the table, he feels the need. The tie that binds her to Tony stretches and her chrysalis begins to crack when she asks him bluntly if she’s part of the Mafia. After the first denial, Tony’s chrysalis also gets scratched and a flash of truth comes out. The Daughter who discovers the Father but only to confirm evidence, not to kill the Father, Freudian speaking, to recognize him and begin to establish a relationship of equality according to his parameters and not those of the parent. The crack on the chrysalis lengthens perhaps precisely due to the stubbornness of a young liberal who sees her as an actress in a relationship with her university classmate, Noah Tannenbaum, with an African-American mother and a Jewish father.
Conservative Tony Soprano openly opposes the choice of his daughter on racial grounds and spares no jokes. The differences between Meadow’s liberal and Tony’s conservative views remain ever-present and underlying from that moment on until Meadow openly calls her father a racist. She won’t abandon her ideas of her even when she is hastily and arrogantly dumped by Noah, she won’t mistake her father’s reluctance to accept her relationship with a “maybe he was right” of hers. The origin of this strong stance most probably arose from the occasion of having met the prototype Noah, a boy she liked even if annoying in his attitudes of superiority, with a fatal attraction not dedicated to Noah but to the possibility of being able to step straight into the narrow-mindedness of the father and make him fall.
This experience is the first real turning point in Meadow’s growth.
The bond that binds them wandering in their own lives drags Tony to feel the first real sense of remorse and pain not for the breakup of his daughter with Noah but for the violent and gratuitous death at the hands of Tracee’s Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano), one of the dancers of the local Bada Bing (the episode University of the third series created a lot of problems for HBO due to the rawness of the scene). Tracee was twenty years old, almost like Meadow, she was a devastated girl in search of points of reference who manages to sensitize the paternal chords of Tony who in the strip club he never looks at his nudity as a male. Tracee probably senses this difference and continues to seek her advice even though she is always treated with indifference. After her bloody death on Thanksgiving, Tony has a visual overlap of Tracee with Meadow that prompts him to look for her daughter to mend the relationship that had gone cold because of Noah. Liberal Meadow unwittingly undermines the creed of the Mafia boss who believes that the life and death of others has no value, the lives and deaths of others are all the same. For one of those journeys that life strives to make us travel and that always take us to other places other than the intended destination, Meadow affirms a conviction of him and Tony discovers that not all deaths are the same.
Living On A Thin Line
Living on a fine line between the cumbersome Family and the life you are building. Meadow Soprano defies gravity trying to keep balance with the death of her boyfriend Jackie Jr, son of boss Jackie Aprile. Her evolution is confirmed to be closely linked to her relationships as a couple even for what can happen outside her will as in this case. Jackie Jr is killed with Tony’s approval for an unsuccessful operation and above all he decided on his head. His death is passed off as if it came at the hands of African-American drug traffickers. Apparently Meadow believes this story but senses the real dynamic.
Depression, drug use, follow what happened, he risks losing his balance and falling on the worst part of the fine line, that of no return. Right now Meadow Soprano brings out the fighter character that she maybe she didn’t even know she had. Not a rebel tout-court in revolt against the Family but strong in his new awareness, he fights to be something different. She has accepted her origins and her parentage. The love for his father is not in question, on the contrary, part of his legal studies on civil rights is addressed precisely to discrimination by the police who consider every Italian-American mafioso. The interest in the law was already present in his past. Her final propulsion comes from her latest boyfriend Patrick Parisi, also from the lineage of a mafia family but like her not active in crime, already engaged in legal practice. Always a man at the center of her reactions to life (conscious and unconscious), the final thrust of the centrifugal force that unhinges her from her center as a spoiled and immature girl.
It could not be otherwise with such an important male focus as the father who considers her outside the gender role imposed by tradition (mothers, sisters and…) because he sees much of her character in her. Only with her does Tony lose his sexist vision and, despite or perhaps thanks to the clashes, establishes a respect that goes beyond her paternal love for her. Communicating vessels up to the epilogue which remains one of the best endings of the television series ever thought and which made the series HBO even more iconic, if that’s possible. Meadow is the last member of the family missing for dinner at their favorite restaurant. With her, the last ringing of the door that opens should reassemble the waiting clan but, most likely, it will welcome the end of the boss. The rope that binds Meadow and Tony Soprano pulls the sum. “Daddy’s Girl” is late for dinner, struggling with a parking space that fails as it is struggling with itself to find the perfect balance on the thin line of the Family Universe and its Galaxy, no longer a member of And the Sopranossolo Meadow.
The favorite daughter is awaited by the beloved father who looks at the door at every ringing, perceiving not her earthly end but Meadow’s conclusion that she is only a daughter. Daddy’s girl has become a woman and is ready to leave the household. The parable is over. Girls don’t just want to have fun, and Meadow knows it.
