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| | Encyclopedia of Television |
 | | The story of a New Jersey mafia boss and his nuclear and criminal families, it was the first cable series to achieve larger audience ratings than its broadcast competition. |
 | | The program mobilizes a sustained, ongoing experience of moral ambiguity, as Tony and some of his criminal cronies display a range of comic, sentimental, deeply ordinary traits in their dealings with aging parents, wives, children, mistresses, and then in other moments perform acts of sickening disloyalty, brutality and murder. |
 | | The series format- traditional television's essential feature- is The Sopranos' fundamental resource as well, permitting the program to dramatize the unsteady maturation of Tony's children, for example, the ebb and flow of his cankered intimacy with his wife Carmella, the murderous shifting alliances and hostilities within his own crime family and among rival mobsters. |
| www.routledge-ny.com /ref/television/sopranos.html (1275 words) |
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