Research Paper on:
The Sopranos First Episode Analyzed

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of crime and criminals as people who happen to be in a very different "business" but who still have the problems, fears, and foibles of people that the average American  actually knows. In only three years, it has become its own form of entertainment phenomenon and has, along with other original series such as "Sex and the City" revived HBOs  floundering status as a viable, much less "premium," entertainment medium. The unlikely stories surrounding a northern New Jersey mobster and his friends, family, and "associates" is one that is as  popular with critics as it is with its millions of fans. The show is a powerful representation of the ways that media influences culture and cultural concerns direct the  focus of the media. Viewers see the duplicity of a society in which a professional crime boss is also a family man, a business owner with apparent nerves of steel  but a man who still needs to seek out mental health counseling because of the stress his two "families," wife and children along with the Mafia, cause in his life  individually and collectively (blood relatives and "blood brothers"). There is always a twist in "The Sopranos," not the least of which comes from the contrasts that are presented in every  episode. Episode One The first episode of the first year of the series is an excellent starting point from which to discuss both the "The Sopranos" and a theory  regarding modern media and the role it plays in individual viewers perceptions, as well as the ways in which forms of entertainment have crossed boundaries between comedy and drama, horror  and pathos. As Mimi White points out, television provides a means through which it is possible to "understand culture as a form of social expression" (pp. 163). Such being the