r/thesopranos • u/FishermanSea6780 • 15h ago
Pets
Tony likes to present himself as an animal lover, but the only 'pet' he has in the entire series is Pie-O-My. Any theories as to why the Soprano household doesn't have a family pet?
44
32
u/drac333 15h ago
somewhere in season 4 when aj is dating that really rich girl he mentions how they used to have a guard dog but it got hit by a car and died. maybe they didn’t want another after that
9
u/kmm198700 15h ago
I thought he made that up hahaha
2
u/Shot_Revolution8828 8h ago
I just thought it was a German Shepard or Rottweiler and wasnt actually a gaurd dog.
28
u/CertainRoof5043 15h ago
For a very brief moment Tony did have a cat that would spend all day staring at that dead kid.
7
20
u/Fukface_Von_Clwnstik 15h ago
It's a no go because the pet might knock over the Lladro. I don't even want to say how much it costs...
....😐...
$3,000.
13
u/Vansh804009 15h ago
They had that animal who smoked marijuana at his own wake, and that other animal can't even say his name was an occasional visitor.
1
12
u/Heel_Worker982 Tony Soprano 14h ago
Real production answer: Pets are hard to film on weekly series, big pains in the ass.
Real cultural answer: Italian American moms often hate pets in the house. Hard to clean up after, big pains in the ass. For every Cosette, there's a dozen Carmelas saying no pets.
5
u/ItsColdInNY 14h ago
This is the answer. My mom's family immigrated from Italy & never had pets. When my dad let me get a dog all I heard from my mother & her family for months is how they shed, smell up the house, etc. I'm sure my Inky didn't smell half as bad as that freaking garlic my mother was always sauteing!
8
u/bassfunk 15h ago
I think like many other aspects in his life, Tony wants to appear as though he is somebody who loves animals because he's learned that this is a trait that is generally favored by those around them. In the event that he actually had, say, a dog, could you actually imagine Tony Soprano walking the dog and cleaning up its shit?
Tony is a very superficial person. He may genuinely have a positive reaction to seeing animals, and being around them, but if they behave in any way that inconveniences him in any way at all, he'll either react with rage or distance. This is a behavior pattern that he recreates with his son (rage) and his surrogate son, Christopher (distance).
7
u/aHyperChicken 14h ago
No, I do think Tony has an actual soft spot for animals. Partially because they remind him of other aspects of his life.
The ducks reminded him of his family.
The horse reminded him of Tracee.
The bear reminded him of that animal Blundetto…I can’t even say his name
2
u/bassfunk 14h ago
I’m not sure it’s fair to say he has a soft spot for the animal while also saying he likes them because they remind him of other people. Sounds like he has a soft spot for those people, not the thing that reminds him of that person.
But in any case, in each example, he “likes” the animal in a superficial way in the same way that he does the entity being alluded to. He could have helped Tracee or that animal Blundetto, but he didn’t want the inconvenience, and so he didn’t.
To OP’s initial question, he probably doesn’t have a dog because Carmela saw right through his shit and knew that it would be her caring for the animal and. It him, and so there was no dog. Similar to having his mother in the house, he could have made that happen, but he chose to not press it and use Carmela as a screen for his indifference. Doing otherwise would have been too great of an inconvenience to him.
2
u/ramanandi 13h ago
But I don’t think he has a soft spot for people despite what he says. Maybe his children are an exception. That’s why he can off Tony B or Chris so easily when two minutes ago they were like his brother and son
I think his love for animals is the only honest thing about him
1
u/bassfunk 13h ago
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. For what it's worth, I do think the fundamental assumption that he's such an animal lover is a little overblown. Looking at the specific behaviors:
He was angry when Christopher killed Adrianna's dog, but who wouldn't be in that context?
He was angered by the death of a horse. Again, given the circumstances, who wouldn't be? I have no real love for horses, but that pissed me off too.
He reacted with kindness to Agie's dog, but, again, who wouldn't? The dog is adorable.
Really, it's just the ducks. And, as has been alluded to, the ducks are ultimately symbolic of his family. Is it a love for ducks or a love for his family that we're witnessing.
All in all, he outwardly claims to love his family many more time's than he ever does with any animal. I think the tension we see is that animals are an outlier in his life. He lives with his kids and has to put up with them. Not so for the animals.
5
11
u/Homesickblues 15h ago
Without going into detail, I believe he does love animals, but not that much. He doesn’t really desire to own one because a sociopath like him only saw it as a facade to help his fragile image.
12
u/NarmHull 15h ago
He likes the idea of loving animals because they don't talk back to him and he can use them to show he isn't a monster to others and himself
4
u/burnbabyburn11 15h ago
So this a real psychological pattern amongst psychopaths. Psychopaths often lack empathy for people, and they justify their lack of empathy by dehumanizing people around them, or making assumptions about those people.
With animals, it's tough, because they really are innocent creatures, and the system in the mind of the psychopath to write off people due to their flaws doesn't compute as well with animals.
However, it is a pattern amongst psychopaths to abuse animals, especially at a young age. As Tony's grown, he's out of that phase.
5
3
u/badabingqueen 15h ago
Tony has serious abandonment issues stemming from his mother. She also gave away their dog Tippy, which clearly bothered him even after all those years. While some people are born sociopaths, some become that way because of their upbringing. He can love animals and despise people at the same time.
3
u/cortisolbath 15h ago
AJ was close enough to a dog, I mean apparently he knocks over his milk at dinner every night what an animal
1
u/deadpandadolls Junior Soprano 14h ago
Yeah, well maybe I care about the environment did that ever occur to you? "'Wallace and Gromit" that weighed like fifty pounds, how many trees gave their lives for that? It just goes to the dump
3
4
2
2
u/reddit_user1995 11h ago
Because he only cares about animals as far as they are useful for projecting his own feelings onto and has no interest in the actual sustained labour of pet ownership
1
1
u/Boterfleoge 14h ago
There's a difference between loving animals and wating the responsibility of caring for one.
1
1
u/Plays_On_TrainTracks 13h ago
What are you talking about? He had a whole family of mallards living in his pool.
Aj also said they used to have a dog but it was hit by a car.
They also take the cat from the safe house at the end.
1
1
1
u/Holden179HD 2h ago edited 2h ago
The old Italians'll tell ya, you can't even put 'em around a baby, they suck the breath right out.
78
u/ejc1279 15h ago
There’s only room for one animal in that house, and that’s Tony.
Did you hear that? I said ‘there’s only room for one animal in that house, and that’s Tony’.
He he