In this article:
Italian-American characters of greater complexity
"The Sopranos" aren't negative stereotypes

Michael Imperioli, left, of HBO's "The Soprano's" and Matt LeBlanc of NBC's "Friends."

Christopher and Joey
They're just two of the reasons that, from network TV to cable, drama to comedy, Italians are molto hot this season.

By Frank DeCaro

We have a joke in our house that we tell every time we see our favorite restaurant commercial. It's the one where the guy says his Uncle Giorgio came over from Italy, so he immediately took him to the Olive Garden. We always cut him off and say, "Then he beat me within an inch of my life." No Italian American would take a genuine Italian there.

When I shared our little routine with Michael Imperioli, who plays the eager young made man Christopher Moltisanti on HBO's "The Sopranos", he laughed and shook his head. That commercial, he said, "makes me sick."

It may seem ironic that a featured actor on a TV series about suburban New Jersey mobsters -- a show that since its 1999 debut has been called demeaning by a small but vocal group of Italian Americans -- should get ticked off about a 30-second ad. But for Imperioli, the image of Italian Americans raving about the food at the Red Lobster of red sauce just doesn't ring true. They may call it "hospitaliano" at the Olive Garden, but Italian Americans know the experience is a lot closer to "hospi-Tallahassee."

Chain restaurant commercials aside, TV's portrayal of Italian Americans has come a long way, bambino, since the days of "Life With Luigi," the 1952 CBS sitcom about a fresh-off-the-boat antique-shop owner. That program, which followed a show called "I Love Lucy" on Monday nights, was to the immigrant Italian experience what "The Goldbergs" was to middle-class Jews -- until complaints of ethnic stereotyping and sponsor troubles forced it from the air the next year. In 1975, TV made the same mistake with "The Montefuscos", a short-lived NBC sitcom that had Sunday dinner as its centerpiece and characters named Joey, Angela, Rose, Tony, Gina and Nunzio.

Likewise, the thick-as-Bolognese-sauce Barone family on "Everybody Loves Raymond" enjoys its Italian-ness -- no one makes a better braciola than mama Marie -- but they're so much more well-rounded than we're used to. Today, we're being given Italian-American characters of greater complexity than ever before. They aren't ethnic stereotypes; they're interesting people. For the first time, we're seeing ourselves.

Italian images -- unlike, say, gay images -- always have been part of TV's landscape. I grew up surrounded by funny Italians who liked nothing better than to watch even funnier Italians on our black-and-white Zenith. We howled at standup comedian Pat Cooper's "Italian Wedding" routine, with its talk of capicola sandwiches being tossed across banquet halls and 4-foot-11 Italian mamas. Later, we took to John Travolta as the dimwitted hottie Vinnie Barbarino on "Welcome Back, Kotter,",Henry Winkler as the good-natured thug Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli on "Happy Days," Penny Marshall as the gold-hearted fast girl Laverne DeFazio on "Laverne & Shirley" and Tony Danza as, well, every character he's ever played on television. None was book-smart -- "What?" was one of Vinnie's catch phrases -- but they were earthy, sexy and good.

For clever, we had to wait until the 1985 premiere of "The Golden Girls". The sitcom about four older women living together in Miami gave the world an Italian-American grandmother the likes of which TV had never seen. Sophia Petrillo, the outrageous octogenarian played by Estelle Getty, was the grandmother so many of us had. She could cook, carried a pocketbook everywhere and had no censoring mechanism in her brain. "Picture it: Sicily ..." her stories often began. And, like my own grandmother, she could stuff more sexual innuendo into the word "cannoli" than any nonna should.

Today, I see my family in "The Sopranos" -- even though we have no mob ties, except for one very muscular cousin and a couple of dead uncles who wore fedoras long after they had gone out of style. The series about a Mafia don and his family, back for a fourth season this Sunday, is filmed in my parents' neck of the North Jersey woods. Remember the episode when the mob redelivered a truckful of garbage to that convenience store owner? That was my hometown. Every time I drive by the R Towne Deli, I feel so proud.

Created by David Chase -- an Italian American from New Jersey whose family name was once DeCesare -- "The Sopranos" is like a McMansion of pathos built on a foundation of comedy, much like real life in 2002. Its characters -- the Prozac-popping mobster, his hooligan son, his "spiritually thirsty" wife and his London broil-flinging comare -- may not be admirable, but they're stewed in genuine marinara. They're not role models, but they capture the suburban Italian-American experience better than any other show -- or film -- I've ever seen. And they use curse words I'd only ever heard my grandmother say. (Give the woman a Pabst Blue Ribbon and she had the mouth of a truck driver.) When Christopher used a certain Italian slang word for the female anatomy in the episode about the movie business, I know of several Italian Americans who fell off their couches laughing. It was the kind of thing I never thought I'd hear on national television.

Tony Soprano and company may be a little overdone -- the men's jewelry too flashy, the women's hair too big -- but they're never, ever boring. I heartily disagree with critics who say the show perpetuates negative stereotypes. "The Sopranos" gives us a wide assortment of characters, from lower-class thugs to upper-middle-class professionals with country club memberships.

The show has done the impossible: It has made it cool to be from New Jersey. In my case, it also has been an excuse to re-embrace my heritage. There is a scene where Tony takes his daughter, Meadow, into a church and makes her look at its beauty. He reminds her that her relatives may not have designed the church, but they had the artistry to build it. Seeing something as well built as "The Sopranos" makes me just as proud of the Italians who craft such gripping television.

Frank DeCaro is a regular on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and a consulting editor at "TV Guide".