An Ode to My TV Dad, and the State That Raised Us
or Woke Up This Morning, Got Myself An Introspective Personal Essay
This morning, inexplicably, my partner and I decided we should have breakfast at the James Gandolfini Rest Stop.
Watching the Sopranos for the first time was like returning home. Not necessarily in a way that’s safe and warm, but a place where there’s a familiarity to all of the scars. The specificity of the New Jersey Italian American experience was summarized for me in the first episode, at AJ’s birthday as everyone got out of the pool on a beautiful day to eat pasta inside.
Driving through New Jersey, singing along to Into the Woods as we drove through the western edge of the Pine Barrens, I reflected on what the state of New Jersey represents. New Jersey is a place that lacks permanence and identity. Our media markets were defined by cities in other states: were you a New York-New Jersian, or a Philadelphia-New Jersian. Giants or Eagles (we ignored our own sports teams despite what that one episode of Seinfeld would have you believe). The Sopranos had to exist in New Jersey.
Jersey is a place that is made to be left. Our unofficial state song is about leaving. The second most notable Jersey song, Living on a Prayer, is also about a time when you have not yet arrived. The Sopranos, like Springsteen and Bon Jovi, offers us looks at identity in transit — Tony, who realizes he came in at the end, Meadow, in search for Italian American identity while never having a solid foothold in either place, Christopher, attempting to live up to the name of a father he never knew.
Thinking about my own relationship to New Jersey, growing up on the outskirts of Atlantic City as the casino industry was struggling for its last breaths. Featuring crumbling towers that were once shrines of opulence, in retrospect with a foreboding omnipresence of the name Trump, I was witnessing what I knew as the American dream crumble. I would listen to my fathers stories about the old Atlantic City in it’s heyday, of a town on the rise. I’d hear about all the old Italian markets, some of which I remember from my early childhood, which closed up its doors one by one never getting replaced by anything else. I started to understand, a few years ahead of the rest of the country, what it felt like to come in at the end of something. When the best is over.
In The Sopranos, I saw the people of Atlantic City, of New Jersey, crumbling under the weight of the decisions that were made generations before us. While Paulie’s rings reminded me of my Uncle Hank, or the way Tony says capicola sounded like my dad, it was the feeling of dread that most brought me home - of knowing I’ll never live the life of my closest ancestors got, because it was never meant to be sustained.
I haven’t talked to my father in years, and because of that, I haven’t celebrated Father’s Day in years. It was after a breakfast of Sbarro’s, Auntie Anne’s, and Nathan’s Hotdogs, sitting on a toilet in the James Gandolfini Rest Stop, scrolling through Instagram, that I saw a post of James on the beach with his son, Michael. In the caption, Michael wrote that it was nine years ago today that James Gandolfini passed away.
I’m glad I was able to spend the day reflecting on the art he gave us. Happy Fathers Day, James Gandolfini.