#worrying about this fucking baby while scrounging for berries and running from tigers and being raped by neanderthals

[sincetheducksleft]

S3E6 "University": Sympathetic characters and intergenerational trauma

Tracee burning her son with a cigarette because her mother held her hand on the stove is like the entire fucking thesis of this show, even more so because it specifically undercuts Tracee as one of the most straightforwardly sympathetic characters we've seen.

(800 words; spoilers for all of season 3)

I'm currently rewatching The Sopranos with my mom, and one of the first things she mentioned (not as a complaint, just as an observation) is that there really are no purely sympathetic characters on the show. By the end of the first episode we've seen our main character commit acts of extreme violence -- but it would be misguided to say we're supposed to root against him, because the mafia-aligned characters who oppose him are usually just as bad, if not worse.

Rather, I think The Sopranos is supposed to make us question what makes a character sympathetic or villainous, and how this relies on narrative, perspective, and arc (or the lack thereof).

Tracee enters this episode as something close to a purely sympathetic character -- a single mother, presumably a former teen mom, baking bread to thank Tony for helping her son. It's a specifically feminine/domestic act, both motherly and naive, that also positions Danny (the son) as a priority in her life. She almost represents the mother figure that was so missing from Tony's life, except that we're also supposed to see her as a naive child, making her tragic instead.

Speaking of tragic, we find out quickly that she's in a relationship with Ralph, which stops your fucking heart if you've been paying attention and know he's straight up violently insane. (Not to say that the escalation of his behavior in this episode isn't supposed to surprise us -- just that it's an escalation of existing behavior, not an introduction of a new trait to his character).

But right as we find out Tracee is pregnant, presumably setting us up for the tragedy of her death (which, yes, is exactly what ends up happening), we also find out that Tracee has a history of abusing her son to the point that a social worker got involved. And we also find out, in the exact same breath, that the social worker and Tracee herself believe she burned her son with cigarettes because her mother held her hand on the stove when she was little.

It's such a perfect parallel to the overall theme of intergenerational trauma and the cycle of abuse and dysfunction, and also to Tony specifically as a product of his own father, and it completely undercuts the simplistic, arguably stereotypical depiction of a helplessly naive little girl we've seen in Tracee.

Although she's generally being used as a highly feminine, mother-adjacent victim in the context of Tony's story, there's another story out there (Danny's story) where she's the abusive parent who fucks him up for life, and another where she's an abused child whose mother fucks her up for life. She's both a source of pain and someone forced to absorb pain, and it's like a perfect microcosm of how the human condition is portrayed on The Sopranos.

Every character has the potential to be a main character, every character has depth and complexity that is revealing of the human condition. Everyone has the potential to be sympathetic or villainous, and how we see them in this story relies heavily on how they're used in a narrative sense, but if there's a truth at the heart of that narrative it's that everyone is both.

Even Ralph has his moment of sympathy in this episode, reminding us (again) that he had to drop out of school in 11th grade. Unlike Tony, Ralph actually was forced into this life.

And it's just so fucking typical that Tracee, who's apparently just starting to gain some insight into why she abuses her son and starting to do better, would have her story abruptly ended as a minor plot point in the story of some other asshole's unresolved issues and childhood trauma.

Tracee's story may be profound and revealing, but that doesn't mean it will be told in full. That life will treat her like more than a side character, that the people around us care about our own narrative satisfaction. That's not how The Sopranos works because it's not how life works.

It's not a profoundly meaningful tragedy that leaves us reeling at the end of this episode. Rather, it's the fact that Tracee's story ends abruptly, in the middle, without resolution or satisfaction, that leaves us empty and cold. Wondering what the fuck just happened to Tracee, and what the fuck is going to happen to us in our own lives, and whether we'll get a chance to put meaning to it before the big nothing.

Everyone we meet has enough depth and complexity and narrative power to be a main character, to have their story told in full with an arc and a meaning and a true profundity of purpose, and most of them never are.