Why You're Wrong About Bobby Bacala | The Sopranos

hbo's of the sopranos follows the trials and tribulations of new jersey mob boss tony soprano the show contains a wide variety of interesting characters with depth and nuance from christopher molosanti johnny soprano rucia preel ralph stefaretto johnny sack and much much more many of the supporting characters of the show are now legendary and iconic and there is perhaps no character more beloved to sopranos fans than bobby bacalieri better known as bobby baccala played by steve steripa first appearing in do not resuscitate the second episode of the second season of the show bobby has gone on to become perhaps the most loved character in the entire series he's a big guy but he's got a big heart he's shy naive and thoughtful he is a little dumb which makes him endearing and he gets made fun of a lot of in the show and is something of a pushover he also formed a dynamic duo with junior soprano the two characters sharing excellent chemistry and playing off one another in entertaining fashion this all shocks attitude of the character sticks out in a bizarre but loving way given how bobby is surrounded by vicious sociopaths and bloodthirsty killers this gentle giant has won the hearts of sopranos fans everywhere with notable reasons being his love for his children and his faithfulness to his wife karen the fact that he as a grown man in the mob played with trained and his tragic death which came via a mob execution as part of a mob war which bobby thought was over but he had been misinformed bobby is remembered by fans of the show as a lovable big goof the only decent guy out of the main characters in the show one who only truly became unshakably angry when the lives of his children were in danger today however i wanted to offer an alternative take one that will perhaps be controversial for sopranos fans i've done similar videos in the past like one called the case for phil leotardo where i essentially break down phil's side of the story from his point of view and in spite of him being a clear villain and antagonist in the show in some ways if you look at things from a different angle you can kind of see where he's coming from and i wanted to do something similar here such is the richness of these characters that the likes of david chase created that today i'm arguing that perhaps the only sopranos character that everyone loves was just as much of an insensitive [ __ ] as the boss of the glorified crew before we continue please consider subscribing to the channel for similar content and hit the notification bell so you don't miss out on future videos so bobby is a character who is revealed worked for junior soprano after being groomed by his own father bobby baccalacinia into life in the mob after living a life as a headwaiter a simple well-liked and sweet individual who was always respectful bobby evoked sympathy even from the likes of tony soprano who at times apologized to bobby after making hurtful remarks despite being in junior's crew bobby holds no grudges against tony christophe or paulie after they take out most of junior's crew in a fight for power between junior and tony in fact during christopher's initiation ceremony into the mob bobby looks genuinely delighted bobby eventually reports to tony and he's made to be junior's assistant and driver while he is under house arrest a task which bobby pretty much continues to do so all the way up to season six when junior shoots tony and even then he comes to visit his old boss in the mental institution he is placed in bobby is noted by characters in the show even ridiculed for not having a gumma and instead being faithful to his wife who tragically dies in a car accident which results in heavy trauma for bobby several women make a move for bobby after this the winner of which is the highly manipulative janice soprano who's out for another man after her bastard husband ruchiya preel went into the program janius has at worst explosive and at best a slimy relationship with bobby's children once even scaring them with a ouija board to prove to bobby that his grief was having an effect on his children whether you think janice calculatingly worked her way into bobby's household whether you think that somehow the dumb [ __ ] bobby was thinking three steps ahead by hooking up with the boss's sister or whether you're bombing enough to think that this was a genuine hollywood romance to the screams of fans everywhere bobby and janice are eventually wed even having a child together an emotional bobby comes to the defense of his father who is ordered to carry out a hit at an elderly age and while sick and is only too eager though bobby fears for his safety bobby and tony grow close the two rescue poorly and christopher when they get lost in the pine barrens for example tony feels that bobby needs to prove himself that he doesn't earn enough compared to other mobsters and is using his position as brother-in-law to his advantage but occasionally tony did feel guilty of the way he treated bobby to make things easy for him such as when he brokers an agreement with johnny sack that allows bobby to purchase sacks house for a reduced price one of bobby's best moments comes in season six when bobby punches tony after tony repeatedly makes improper comments about bobby's wife though she and tony felt it was simple sibling bantering a drunken fight between the two men results in bobby essentially battering tony who laments that he would have won the fight had he not been drunk and injured from a gunshot wound bobby is shortly sent by tony on his first ever hit it's incredible that bobby could even be so high up in a crew a made guy without ever having killed anyone as is tradition in the mob even janice nabbed her first hit before bobby but it's widely believed that bobby rose up the ranks without killing anyone as a result of the influence of his father anyway tony is bitter about the fight and it's most likely why he sent bobby on this hit to reassert his dominance over bobby and so that bobby's soul is corrupted just like the rest of the mobsters so that he gets a taste of killing bobby defended his wife and kicked tony's ass in front of the family so tony took bobby's soul and instance tony even says it's a pain in the balls to kill someone the two men talking about about how difficult it is in today's day and age everyone knows bobby's character and he's tony's brother-in-law and yet he's still ordered to do it even the photo of the victim bobby's given is of the man with his family as if tony just wants to rub it in and make things even more difficult for bobby tony even looks like he's having the time of his life in the car after telling bobby he'll do the hit meanwhile bobby looks like he's bricking himself bobby's not made for killing and he clearly is distraught during the hit he's pretty much crying and his change in character is signified by the scene before this where in a rare instance he loses his temper at his wife and tells her to stop [ __ ] nagging him after the hit he returns home greets his loving family stares out into the distance over the lake but something is different in bobby's eyes he himself is different he has stepped over a threshold he's gone into a world where there's no turning back and he knows it but the thing is yes we all know tony had ulterior reasons for sending bobby to do the hit but to all intents and purposes tony was completely justified in his actions it was completely fair for tony as a boss to command bobby to carry out his first hit the man got to the number three position the underboss of a family without ever killing anyone in his life and all because his father the terminator didn't want it for him and his reputation got bobby jr made that's jackie jr levels of nepotism bobby isn't a choir boy that tony sent on a dangerous task he's a fully fledged gangster and it's high time he stopped coasting off his father's reputation and who can blame tony when repeatedly bobby asks for more responsibility he comes to tony and wants to work his way up and in the mob this is how you work your way up and when bobby is given a higher position his comment is i think it should have happened sooner this notion that bobby was some poor soul forced to do evil actions is absurd to hijack bobby's own dialogue he should have killed someone way sooner in the series it's insane that he didn't not even quasimodo could have predicted that and boohoo he felt bad during his first hit i'm sure many mobsters did it can't be easy to take a man's life but this is the world bobby lived in and the world he wanted to rise up in what did he think he'd be able to be the right hand man of a boss without getting his hands dirty when the likes of christopher paulie and silvio have had to perform gruesome tasks to get where they did and they did so unflinchingly and even before the murder it wasn't as if bobby was just junior's driver it's established that he controlled junior's loan sharking business that's a criminal racket that takes advantage of vulnerable people in society and destroys lives and bobby's in charge of it all and just because he hasn't killed anyone doesn't make him a good person he's done plenty of evil things over the course of his life and bobby as a character highlights the moral relativism in the show he comes off as a likable doof because the rest of the mobsters are such sick psychopaths he's only a little less so and like everyone else in life has some redeemable qualities if you picked up this character and put him in a show like i don't know the teletubbies he'd come off as an absolute monster so bobby never had a gummer so what we still see him hang around the bing talking to strippers with his arm around them there's nothing to suggest he still didn't cheat on karen so he's a sweet sensitive guy well is he he didn't come off as so sensitive when he barked with laughter along with the rest of the crew at poorly joking about christopher's baby daughter bobby as underboss is a completely different man from bobby of the earlier seasons that much we can all agree on he comes off as an absolute scummy jerk like the rest of the mobsters there's the scene at the construction site with him in the car there's him telling tony to tell hesh to go [ __ ] himself over the 200k tony owes him the examples are numerous and i'm sorry to say that's the state bobby died in not as a gullible goof but as a stone cold gangster do you remember michael corleone as a jolly college boy or as an ice cold mob boss and some might say well bobby's natural personality was sweet and that it was the life that made him the way he ended up becoming but even that i think is debatable and i'm reminded of a thought-provoking quote that power and wealth do not corrupt a man they only reveal his true nature bobby saw no problem in threatening a man with murder when all the union rep wanted to do was stop his workers getting ripped off he saw no problem with caring for his father who was a mass murderer in fact he rose in rank because of his father's reputation he saw no problem beating up protesters with about a dozen other guys with him his hypocritical nature is again emphasized when he expresses his wish for the united states to build a wall to stop immigrants coming in perhaps forgetting how his own father entered the country the asbestos scheme that involves uneducated workers handling the content unsafely which could lead to health issues and death and bobby just wants his envelope was he crying then too and even the whole thing with him killing someone could it not be argued that his hesitancy is actually a negative not a positive that he's actually weak for being surrounded by killers and yet never having the balls to do it himself there's only so far being a happy fat fool can get you in life his naivety towards janice potentially made his kids lives torture after his death for example with such maturism on display in the show you'd think a man allowing himself to be manipulated in such a way as he did would be seen as weak just as people saw junior as weak for being manipulated by olivia we can see the fire in bobby even way early on in the show tony makes fat jokes and bobby just looks sad and sappy but after tony's gone he calls him a [ __ ] so it wasn't as if he was a happy-go-lucky jolly fellow who took things on the chin he had that rage early on but didn't do anything with it only when he had the high position some might call that cowardice the man had the easiest most comfortable role in the mob as junior's caretaker and he himself asked to be on the street more i.e get out there and get money off vulnerable people so all in all bobby may be the sweetest guy in the mob but that doesn't take away from the fact that he still isn't the mob though i can see why he gets a pass from so many sopranos fans to skim past his faults is to not do the character justice so what do you think of bobby as a character did this video influence or change the way you think of him am i being way too hard on the guy let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching

Channel: CineRanter

Views: 766,556

Keywords: the sopranos explained, bobby bacala, bobby bacala dies, bobby baccalieri, bobby underboss, bobby and junior, the sorpanos, tony soprano

Id: RQQnIpcxYnU

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Banco1973]

Just because Bobby was a simpleton doofus doesn’t make him a good guy.

[u/BaullahBaullah87]

Lol no one is saying he is good guy but compared to everyone else in the story, he is the most redeemable and easy to like.

[u/Stoned_Cold_Silver]

Dumb

[u/Arra13375]

He just treated his wife better than any of the other guys

[u/RabbantheBeast]

he's still a murderer and a criminal

[u/BruceGaunt]

He killed one person

[u/BruceGaunt]

is he a criminal yes. but out of everyone in the Soprano/DeMaio crime family he is the lesser evil so to speak.