So how exactly did Tony Soprano become a New Jersey mob boss? It’s 1967 and young Anthony is struggling to find meaning and purpose in his life. Luckily, his doting uncle Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) offers the love and support his feckless parents are incapable of giving. Unluckily, Moltisanti is not quite the role model he’d like to be.
Dickie complains about this on a visit to his uncle, Aldo ‘Hollywood Dick’ Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), who is languishing in jail for having killed a made man. Why is it, he wants to know, that even though he does conspicuously good works — bringing Aldo jazz records; coaching a baseball team of blind children (the ball makes a bleeping noise, in case you were wondering) — terrible things still keep happening to him? ‘You know that song “Favourite Things?”,’ replies Aldo. ‘Maybe some of the things you do ain’t God’s favourite.’
It’s their untrammelled desire that causes otherwise decent, law-abiding folk to become hideously unstuck
It’s a good point well made.
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