What are some things unrealistic about Sopranos?

I'd say Tony being able to get away with seeing a psychiatrist would be one. Anything else?

The amount of violence seemed a little higher than normal, but there has to be to make it entertaining.

Didn't Tony whack the Matt Bevilacqua while boss of the family? I doubt that would ever happen.

The FBI sits on their ass and doesn't get and doesn't get a single conviction in 8 years. Aside from season 1, is anyone in the NJ family even indicted?

I'd also say that Tony going out and doing a lot of the killings was unrealistic.

I'd agree that as a boss, Tony shouldn't have committed so many killings on his own, but then again it was a TV show...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that Frank Costello saw a shrink when he was boss?

The boss killing on his own.

Tony beat and collected money from that degenerate gambler himself. Tony killed multiple people himself.

I guess one could make the argument that gaspipe killed that Frankie hydell guy while he was underboss, so it could happen...

I'd say that was different, since Casso had a personal vendetta among other things. Any capo collecting protection money as well as beating someone up and taking a 100 dollars from them like butch did with the construction worker also was unrealistic to me.

How about "too many Chiefs, not enough Indians"?

Virtually never referencing the fact that the Boss of the family was in prison and Jackie Aprile, Junior and Tony were all merely Acting.

Who was supposed to be the boss then? Didn't really watch the series consistently, couldn't deal with the goofball accents.

A guy named Ercole DiMeo, who's mentioned briefly in Season 1. I think it was when the writers were still getting things in place, in terms of characters and a story line, and they basically dropped that character going forward.

The Sopranos aint a family, they're a glorified crew

Right that's what I always thought that they were modeled after the Lucchese's main Jersey crew.

Why would it be so unrealistic that he got away with seeing psychiatrist? Junior did try to whack him because of this (among other things) but failed. It was never depicted as if this was totally acceptable (mobster seeing shrink) but in the end no one could do anything about it really. Tony had solidified his position as the boss and led a small but extremely violent (for this day and age) and relatively young group of mobsters. NY family led by pragmatic Lupertazzi sr. made money with them and didn't want to cause war and instability by whacking a boss.

Carmela hooking up with the painter was unrealistic to me. I doubt anybody gets away with hooking up with a bosses wife

Sopranos was a great show but very fictional at least in terms of the modern mafia. first of all the mob killings have decreased substantially since teh early 90's. Also like someone already said a mafia boss visiting a shrink would be the end for him. Another issues was the fact that they made the jersey mafia just as strong as new york which is laughable. Gotti called the jersey mob the minor league and basically ordered them around like they were his soldiers lol

Tony never knew about the painter, and the painter didn't know who Carmela's husband was at first...then he "pissed his pants".

I never said tony knew about the painter. Bottom line, i doubt that situation has ever happened.

She didn't even sleep with him. You really think no bosses wife has ever cheated?

Depends how you define unrealistic. Soprano family is indeed based on DeCavalcante family in terms of location of family, the size and some of the rackets they ran, but other than that the members of this family are fictional characters. That doesn't make it totally unrealistic otherwise pretty much any work of fiction is "unrealistic" because it didn't exactly happen this way in real life.

You have to accept these characters as real and as long as their story is realistic in the context of the environment they're in, if the interaction between them is realistic and so on, everything is fine.

Is anyone from the characters in the Soprano family unrealistic as a mob character? IMO nobody, they all pretty much fit into "the life". The difference is that they are more violent than the actual DeCavalcante family was, but violence as such is not unrealistic at all considering that this is a series about mob.

The number of killings has indeed decreased, but this doesn't mean that murders couldn't have happened this day and age if leadership of some family wanted to resort to violence. All it takes is the boss giving the order to one of his soldiers. It just happens that modern bosses aren't ready to do this for a number of reasons, but since when it's "unrealistic" for a mafia boss to order killings and for mafia soldiers to commit them?

Tony's character was paranoid, selfish, violent and had problems with rage. You had tons of mobsters who were like that. It would actually be unrealistic if there was too little violence. He lead a small but deadly family with a lot of soldiers who were prepared to kill and did commit murders through series (Chris, Paulie, Sil, both Baccalieris, Gigi, Patsy, Benny, Walden, Eugene... Hell, almost everyone from the major characters, even Vito was doing hits) not to mention his connection with Naples. You can imagine him as some sort of modern day DeMeo in this regard.

This also explains why even that large NY family feared him and didn't want to try to discipline him until Phil became boss. They even called the NJ family to perform hits for them. Especially Lupertazzi was your typical modern day non-violent boss - with the example of him and his family the series actually showed us that violence of Soprano family is not the norm these days and that even big families are hesitant to use it.

The Commision appears to be de facto non-existant so there was no one to discipline the Sopranos and tell them what to do. That's why Tony got away with seeing a shrink and a number of other things and could pretty much do what he wanted on his territory. They still made a lot of money with him and that was the most important. Again, totally realistic.

You have a real life example of that Albanian gang (of pretty much the same size as fictional Sopranos) dissrespecting Gambinos and there was no retaliation.

Another thing you have to consider is that most of these murders were murders of low level associates (or not connected at all) who were probably under the radar and their murders couldn't be directly linked to top LCN guys, for example Brendan, Mustang Sally, those two guys working for Chris, Jackie jr. and his guys, all those civilians etc. I believe such murders happen in real life too, but we simply can't know about every LCN-related murder/commited by LCN member. Not that many made guys died.

I think through the show we can easily see that Tony is not a typical mob boss and his family is not a typical mafia family either, if we're comparing him and his guys to Lupertazzi family who resemble modern LCN more. Creators of Sopranos didn't want to present modern post 00s mob in documentary-like fashion but were presented us what could have happened in a modern mob environment with a bit different set of characters than actual NJ mobsters (but still in the realm of general character traits of mafiosi).

In terms of realism they did far better job than say Godfather IMO. It's unjust comparing Sopranos to Godfellas and Donnie Brasco because these two are based on real life stories. Out of fictional mob stories Sopranos are the most realistic.

Most of violent things Tony did himself were personal, like avenging murder attempt on Chris and on himself. Plus he was trying to keep his tough guy persona to be more feared. He was a violent person in general and probably enjoyed being a bully. Scarfo was doing hits while boss too.



They indicted a number of people in first season and it was made clear that they were focused on Junior Soprano and Baresi crew. They started building a RICO case against Tony and his crew in the 2nd season but there were some setbacks like all those rats dying, bug in Tony's house neutralized etc. He lasted 7 years as boss on the street which is not so unrealistic considering that he also had a lot of luck. Also, FBI seemed to be more concerned about what was going on in NY, they mention trial against Massino, they brought Johnny Sack and his crew down etc.

Didn't that Federal Prosecutor come in to the local Detectives in season 6 and say, "We've been building a major RICO against Tony Soprano……"

Not to beat a dead horse but that sounds a lot like the Philly indictment being alleged for years and then finally coming down.

i think what is unrealistic is them having an office in the back of a strip club and people call tony like he is an insurance salesman.lol

I think you are misinterpreting. Im not talking about mob culture im talking about modern day mafia. Actually i think what i said was pretty accurate. Not just me but other mobsters like Michael Franzese said that the Sopranos wasnt accurate ike for example a boss going to the shrink