Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Raise a glass to Livia Soprano, the meanest mother on TV.
May 3, 1999 | As Mother's Day approaches, consider the dilemma of Tony Soprano, the anxiety-ridden hero of HBO's wickedly good Mafia serial "The Sopranos." Tony (James Gandolfini) is the dutiful Italian son, but widowed 70-year-old Livia Soprano would test the patience of a saint. Livia (Nancy Marchand) is a manipulative martyr, a sour, suspicious-eyed old bird who never had a kind word for anyone. She's too addled to live alone anymore (she almost burns down the house frying up some calamari), but she dramatically threatens to kill herself -- actually, she demands that Tony do it for her -- rather than move to the retirement community he's chosen for her.
It's a very nice retirement community, but still, Livia is angry at being farmed out -- so angry that she puts a hit out on her only son. Not in so many words, mind you, but in the passive-aggressive "Who, little senile me?" way that has become her MO. She rats out Tony to her dim brother-in-law Junior, the boss, telling him the top-secret information that Tony is seeing a shrink (a no-no in the Mob, for obvious security reasons), then suggests to Junior that Tony is plotting a coup. When Junior (Dominic Chianese) swears vengeance, Livia puts on a superb show of histrionics, twisting her handkerchief, beating her breast and crying, "I should have kept my mouth shut, like a MUTE! Then everybody would be happy!"
There are some mighty (and mighty difficult) moms on TV these days, like the meddlesome and smothering (but adorable) Marie on "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the deceptively sweet, white-haired, granny-gowned "Mom" on "Futurama," who's really a crude, avaricious industrialist bent on intergalactic market domination. But Livia Soprano trumps them all. Played with a fearless unlovability by the indomitable Marchand, Livia is part Medea, part Lady Macbeth, part Rhoda's mother, hitting operatic heights of maternal fury and self-pity. By the end of its terrific first season, "The Sopranos" (reruns begin June 1, with the second season launching in January 2000) was as much about the power struggle between parent and child as it was about mob moves -- as much about family business as Family business.
