I haven’t watched The Sopranos since it ended in 2007 and have been meaning to get back to it for some time now. With a lull of movies and TV shows recently, I pushed the first season up in my Netflix list.

I’m 7 episodes in and realized that I’ve never seen all of season 1 before. That, and I don’t think I watched the show as it aired until season 3. Most of this feels new so it’s really exciting and entertaining in that “great new show” feeling. I’m picking up all the seeds that show up in the later seasons (like Christopher’s Hollywood aspirations) and it’s a marvel at how well casted this show is.

It’s a real shame that we lost James Gandolfini two years ago, he’s a magnificent actor. He’s also surprisingly thin at the start (though he’s never been a small guy) while AJ (Robert Iler) was a rather round kid! I forgot how funny the show is too. It’s not jokes per say, but the off handed comments that they fire off (usually from Tony, but the Paulie, Big Pussy and Silvio troop are always strong contenders with their banter). Christopher often steals scenes, he’s such a great (and integral) character, it’s hard to imagine anyone else but Michael Imperioli in the role. I totally forgot about what a 10 ton anchor Tony’s mother was too. She’d drive anyone up the wall with her nonsense (the show would probable ended up much differently if Nancy Marchand didn’t die in 2000, her loss was a great one).

The show really holds up 16 years from its debut. The only bit of production that seems oddly places are the paused scenes/fade to white of the child Tony Soprano scenes. Comes off as really amateurish. Gotta love the low angle shots when someone is being punched and kicked on the ground just off of camera.

It’s good to visit the great past works, I’m looking forward to watching more.