It's very self-conscious and -exploratory regarding Italian ethnicity, to the point where it asks what it means to be Italian-American, culturally speaking.

Is it not telling that the starting point - the first scene - and a continuing element of the show is between the positive career and professional achievement made by Melfi, on the one hand, and a "waste management consultant" gangster stereotype on the other?

Many characters show concerns regarding their ethnic image; Melfi's ex-husband Richard is a good example. He's aghast that one of her clients is a notorious gangster, not because it puts Melfi at risk necessarily, but because his name ends in a vowel - that's superficial inverse snobbery, and Chase is right to expose it. Remember Richard's desperate confusion when he is told that Melfi's rapist's surname is "Rossi" in season three.

Italian-American activists protesting against the show remind me of the new surge of right-wing feminists who are "all for women" despite never really interrogating the issue at hand with any real depth. Is Chase inaccurately depicting the Mafia? Perhaps the murder rate in the show is exaggerated, but even if we took this away, I doubt any of these activists would stop protesting - to them, it's a great collective burden that they belong to an ethnicity to which "the Mafia" also belongs. All sorts of irrelevant, misguided issues arise from such a burden. As with the blind militant feminists of which I speak, the protests made against this show in the name of "Italian-American defence" say more about the vacuousness of those protesting than they do about the show.

Why can't they see the rich intelligence of the show when it explores Tony as a product of social circumstance; when it shows the great difficulty Meadow and AJ have in escaping this same social circumstance; when it depicts organized crime as an encouraged by-product of unbridled capitalism (and the failure of the American Dream); when it shows a great respect and nostalgia toward Tony's stonemason grandfather who made something of their lives in this new world?