IMO the huge success of the series, led the authors to take some licenses, at the end the Sopranos has been successful because it really shows how is the life of a mobster in the 2000s, beyond the movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, etc..
Tony is a bourgeois, who became boss of a family of New Jersey, only to the merits of the blood, and basically isn't a sociopath (otherwise he would have left that Artie was crushed by debts), a bully (he began to respect Bobby Baccalieri only after Bobby beat him, and in revenge ordered him to kill a man), it's not a genius (favoring his junkie nephew,kill his best earner, etc.)
But it's this humanity that has made, in my opinion, famous the series, and as a touch of class on the last episode where you don't know if Tony dies or not, for mehe was whacked but it's just my opinion.