Here's the irony in having a quartet of psychiatrists review each episode of the Sopranos: near as I can tell, one of the principal themes of the show is that psychiatry is bullshit. Right now, Slate's team of therapist-commentators is in a tizzy over Dr. Wendy Kobler, the therapist that Melfi recommended for Meadow, and that Meadow saw in the last episode. The Slate crew is calling Kobler a "cliche-ridden parody of a psychotherapist."
It's true that the Sopranos writers lay it on a little thick--Kobler asks Meadow whether her father or mother have ever molested her and tells her, essentially, screw college: get a Eurail pass and go find yourself--but the Slate Shrinks' impression that the show portrays their profession positively is tough to swallow. From Tony's encounter with jargon-armed school administrators who tell him A.J.'s got ADD ("what would be appropriate fidgeting?" he growls) to Melfi's loading a mob boss up with Prozac and turning him on to Sun Tzu, the psychiatric perspective is portrayed as one of the things that’s wrong with the world in the world of the Sopranos.
The main reason the Slate Shrinks have that view is that they don't understand the show. And they're not alone in this. In the intro to the book The New York Times on the Sopranos, critic Stephen Holden writes:
the closest Tony comes to admitting evil is during a therapy session in which he offers the lame excuse that what he does is no worse than a businessman illegally dumping toxic waste. But isn't that how we all get by in life without tearing ourselves to pieces? For aren’t all values relative?
Well, no, they're not. In fact, the show's perspective is close to the opposite of what Dr. Melfi's ex-husband calls "the cheesy moral relativism" offered by psychotherapy. One of the many things that makes David Chase a genius is that for the first two seasons he let the audience develop affection for the motley cast of mobsters—and then in the third season, he rubs our face in it. Through the first two seasons, we come to know and love Tony's crew, with all their quirky little habits. Look: Paulie Walnuts, tough hit man that he is, is a connoisseur of hand creams; isn't that cute?
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