The Sopranos introduces so many cruel and heartless mobsters that it’s easy to forget how evil some of the “average” characters are. Tony Soprano’s materialistic wife, Carmela Soprano, is one of those restrained villains — a silent threat to the declining household of the Soprano family. It may seem unfair to compare Carmela to the cold-hearted killers in The Sopranos, but although she never killed or physically harmed anyone, her moral compass is as questionable as the likes of Tony Soprano.
There are no saints in The Sopranos. The flaws and qualities of each character are explored in detail, from monsters like Phil Leotardo to innocent characters like Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Through Carmela’s eyes, the audience gets to see an avaricious reality hanging by a thread: a perfect make-believe world that benefits from the misery of others to engulf every great thing money can buy. The dark side of Carmela is an overlooked aspect of The Sopranos.
Carmela Soprano Turns a Blind Eye to Tony’s Illicit Affairs
One of the most important attributes of The Sopranos is how it portrays the deterioration of a household. This guilt is often attributed to Tony and his misogynistic habits. He truly believes that, as long as he keeps providing food and comfort to his family, he’s entitled to a hedonistic existence outside the house. In Tony’s head, he doesn’t need to be present as a parent as long as he pays for all of Meadows’s courses and projects, or keeps giving AJ all the games and objects he wants. However, this obsession with materialism is very much cultivated by Carmela herself. They are both complicit in AJ and Meadow’s spoiled behavior, a destructive habit that only directly impacts them when AJ starts suffering from depression.
Carmela’s tendency to turn a blind eye to Tony applies to his relations with the mafia as well. In fact, that’s how it all began. Carmela grew up around the mafia lifestyle and knew of Tony Soprano’s connections with organized crime long before they got married. She also knew that Tony’s illicit affairs could grant her a comfortable life surrounded by wealth, and that was the only part that stuck out to her. Not once does Carmela confront Tony about his involvement with the mafia in six seasons of The Sopranos, because the harm he did to others never affected the money-oriented reality that Carmela built for herself. Every time a character disappears, every “freak accident” that occurs, every crime in the news — the truth is crystal clear to Carmela. She chooses to ignore it.
The only times Carmela refuses to bury her head in the sand are when Tony’s actions tarnish her own image. Tony’s infidelity is the one recurring problem that causes their wedding to hang by a thread. Still, Carmela only decides to file for a divorce because she believes she can obtain a fair share of his assets. When this possibility dwindles, Carmela immediately crawls back to her superficial, yet comfortable life with Tony.
Carmela Could’ve Sought Justice to Adriana, But She Didn’t
Many characters close to Carmela Soprano disappear right before her eyes in The Sopranos, and she rarely questions what happens to them. The only time that she breaks character is when Adriana is executed by Silvio Dante for being an FBI informant. Though she initially accepts the absurd story that Adriana ran away and left Christopher behind, Carmela experiences a bizarre dream in Season 6, Episode 11, “Cold Stones.” In the dream, Adriana is walking her dog in Paris when a police officer appears and says, “Someone needs to tell her she’s dead.”
The dream, added to the news that Adriana’s mother tried to take her own life, causes Carmela to hire a private eye to look for Adriana’s whereabouts. This brief Adriana storyline exposes how entangled in denial Carmela’s psyche is. Her character is one of the most psychologically complex in The Sopranos because Carmela has lied to herself for so many years that she can no longer tell what’s true. In a sense, she becomes a victim of her own passivity. She learns how to ignore her conscience by feeding her ego, a practice that Tony encourages. Frustratingly, Carmela forgets all about Adriana when Tony arranges for her spec house to resume construction.
Carmela Always Gets What She Wants
In the violent world of The Sopranos, characters lose everything in the blink of an eye. Those who can’t climb their way to the top of the pyramid are constantly devoured: Tracee, a pregnant stripper at the Bada Bing, is beaten up to death for defying Ralph Cifaretto. Ralph, in turn, is killed by Tony in the same week as his family needs him the most, as his son is accidentally hit in the chest with an arrow. That’s how the cycle goes. Many viewers assume that even Tony Soprano gets what he deserves in the ending of The Sopranos. Carmela, on the other hand, never suffers the consequences of her actions.
Throughout the show, Carmela constantly uses Tony’s influence to manipulate others for the most trivial things. She wants nothing to do with mafia violence, but she shields herself behind the protection of the dangerous men who surround her. She’s not only after money and status. Her position as a mob wife allows her to scare off those who defy her. There are many instances in The Sopranos where Carmela uses her position in her favor.
In Season 2 of The Sopranos, Carmela implicitly threatens Joan O’Connell to write her daughter a recommendation letter. In Season 5, she manipulates AJ’s professor, Mr. Wegler, to improve her son’s grades. Carmela does all these deceptive things with a big smile on her face and a “humble” gift like an apple pie, typical traits of a passive-aggressive schemer. She’s a villain of the mundane life, an elitist who can’t see value in people, only price tags. She weaponizes her privileges to build a perfect reality, a place where she can safely use her many masks and forget about the dark truth around her. Her obsession with the spec house mirrors Carmela’s obsession with feeding this illusion.
Carmela Is a Victim of the Mafia’s Corrupted System
Carmela Soprano is an overlooked The Sopranos villain, a perfect example of a tiger in sheep’s clothing. However, the same applies to the majority of characters in the show. There’s no way out of the mafia’s systematic oppression. One either learns how to live in denial or loses every bit of humanity in the process. At the end of the day, the two extremes aren’t so different from one another. Carmela is a horrible person, but she embodies the corrupted roots of her alienated family circle. Her obsession with elitism and material things can be traced back to her compulsive mother, Mary DeAngelis, even though she resents Carmela for marrying Tony.
The Sopranos is mainly about the toxic masculinity that permeates the mob world and the cycle of self-destruction that falls upon its members. Yet decay pervades the household as well. Carmela, just like every other mob wife in the show, is encouraged to live in complacency. There’s nothing they can do to change this systematic corruption. At the same time, there’s no way to escape it once they get in. Carmela takes out her powerlessness before the mafia reality on innocent people, and she’s encouraged to do so.
Carmela’s systematic flaws are also projected in her parenting. She implicitly resents Meadow for leading a successful, independent life because she was never able to abdicate her position as a mob wife, even when she had the chance to. Carmela holds a grudge against her own daughter for finding an exit she never considered existed. Carmela is a deeply flawed The Sopranos character, but she’s also a tragic person.
Curiously, she isn’t nearly as hated as another popular TV show wife: Skyler White, from Breaking Bad. That’s because Carmela is never seen as a threat to the affairs of the anti-hero audiences love to root for. She enables Tony’s worst habits, even if indirectly. She’s not a symbol of rebellion; she’s happy with being the face of a faded reality. Skyler goes as far as actively assisting Walter White in his illicit business, but even with all her flaws, she stands up for herself and her family in the end. The same can’t be said about Carmela Soprano.
The Sopranos
- Release Date
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1999 – 2007
- Network
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HBO
- Showrunner
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David Chase
- Directors
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Tim Van Patten, John Patterson, Alan Taylor, Jack Bender, Steve Buscemi, Daniel Attias, David Chase, Andy Wolk, Danny Leiner, David Nutter, James Hayman, Lee Tamahori, Lorraine Senna, Matthew Penn, Mike Figgis, Nick Gomez, Peter Bogdanovich, Phil Abraham, Rodrigo García
- Writers
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Michael Imperioli, Jason Cahill, Lawrence Konner, David Flebotte, James Manos, Jr., Salvatore Stabile, Toni Kalem, Mark Saraceni, Nick Santora
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James Gandolfini
Tony Soprano
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Edie Falco
Carmela Soprano
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