The Sopranos has received unprecedented praise from media critics. Writing in the Nation, Ellen Willis referred to it as "the richest and most compelling piece of television-no, of popular culture-that I've encountered in the past twenty years." Television critic Nancy Franklin notes, "There has certainly never been anything like it on TV, and on network TV there never could be anything like it-it goes out on a limb that doesn't even exist at the networks." In its third season the show received the highest ratings in HBO's history for a non sporting event. Perhaps most telling, in 2001, huge numbers of Academy Awards watchers switched over in the middle of the annual event to get their weekly Sunday evening fix of The Sopranos. (Christopher H. Sterling, John Michael Kittross, 2002).
Indeed, in towns and cities all over the United States and Europe, there is a "Sopranos effect" on the evening of a new episode. Retail establishments are suddenly deserted. Restaurant patrons make a hasty exit. Social invitations are declined. Answering machines pick up phone calls so not a single word of dialogue is missed. (Ringstrom, Phillip, 2001).
The human condition involves psychological conflict, the inevitability of strife in intimate relationships, existential loneliness and crises of meaning. These psychological struggles are writ larger than life each week on The Sopranos, and we are drawn to the show because of them.
The psychotherapy in The Sopranos is so fascinating is that the writers make no attempt to idealize Dr. Melfi as an oracular source of truth. They have wisely chosen to show her as a professional and competent practitioner who is nevertheless troubled with conflicts of her own and with specific countertransference reactions to Tony. Countertransference-the therapist's emotional reactions to the patient-is an expectable part of any therapy process and a tool to help understand the therapeutic interaction. Dr. Melfi's mistakes and her own emotional struggles with Tony lend further credibility to the series-and are especially engaging to viewers on both sides of the couch. (Franklin, Nancy, 1999)
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