The Sopranos Official Website
By Zoe Agnew
HBO's series The Soprano's is in it's third season and perhaps at
its peak of popularity. With the high acclaim of both critics and
ordinary viewers, as well as a high number of these viewers, the series
has reached the exalted level of a 'shared cultural experience.' I
even saw a Sally Jesse Rafael show today called "Sopranos Mania"
which featured Italian-Americans from New Jersey who talked and looked
like the Sopranos cast. The audience were all seated at small round
tables with red checkered table clothes, pizzeria style.
The Sopranos series has created an intricate and involving story,
replete with an entire Sopranos mythology. The official Sopranos website
lives under the HBO umbrella, offering features like episode summaries,
a Sopranos family tree, and trivia games. The "games" are
very sparse; only one question is currently asked, and a person who
answers correctly might win a TiVO. A more appropriate gift would
have been The Sopranos video collection, and the questions should
be more plentiful and elaborate. The family tree is a nice reference
that includes business, family and "family" connections.
However, linked from this site is the Jeffrey Wernick site, easily
the best feature of , or off of, this site. A self-proclaimed Sopranos
watchdog, Wernick is not a real fan but is actually a very minor character
from the show. Wernick shows up as the newscaster that specializes
in mob related stories.
Wernick's site is like the website of a fiercely devoted fan. There
are links to 'confessional' videos from Tony Sopranos daughter, Meadow.
There are also pictures of the family that the FBI has supposedly
snapped, and information on the family gleaned from FBI "leaks."
Overall, there is a wealth of peripheral information on the show and
its characters.
A television show like Twin Peaks, the hit from the early 90s, fed
its fan base with the story's elaborate and constantly evolving mythology.
The Wernick site feeds the Sopranos mythology extremely effectively,
while Wernick's voice never leaves character. The Wernick site blends
the mythology with reality even further by offering links to sites
on "real" stories like the Boston mobs on Winter Hill.
The official HBO site feels just like a slightly stilted Hollwood
site that operates under corporate and sponsorship constraints. But
the Wernick site truly adds to the mythology of the show and can only
galvanize Sopranos fans even further.