The Sopranos: A Defense of Janice

Janice Soprano is one of the most hateable characters on The Sopranos, you’ll get no arguments from me there. She is an incredibly toxic, manipulative person, and is a source of misery for everyone around her.

But as you can tell by the title of this video, I’m going to be defending her. Not as a person, no she’s awful. But in relation to the other characters on the show. Because as bad as Janice is, she’s really no different than the people around her. And I think she’s one of the most misunderstood characters in the show.

So in this video, let’s examine Janice as a character, and see if we can unravel the true meaning behind her role on the show.

Janice Soprano is the eldest child of Johnny Boy and Livia, born about 2 years before Tony. Though she and Tony would fight like any other siblings growing up, Tony really liked Janice and admired how she stood up to their mother. Janice was able to easily manipulate Tony, even getting him to eat a dog treat when they were kids.

Growing up, Janice was very popular, particularly with boys. She attracted a lot of attention, including from Richie Aprile, the older brother of Tony’s friend Jackie. She and Richie dated for a while before Richie was eventually arrested and sent to prison.

Janice did not get along with her parents. She fought with Livia constantly, just like the rest of the children. Though her father Johnny doted on her when she was a girl, he later became controlling when she was a teenager and Janice felt he picked on her. Like Tony she also saw the violence that their family was a part of, and it instilled in her a cut throat survival instinct.

Eventually Janice left home when she was 18. She spent her youth partying with bands and doing drugs, before eventually landing in an ashram on the west coast. There she changed her name to Parvati Wasatch and became a practicing hindu.

Sometime during this she traveled across Europe and married a Canadian man named Eugene. Together they had a son named Harpo, who Eugene took with him to Canada when they broke up. Though Janice claims to have fought for her son, we never see him on the show, and it’s hinted that she likely abandoned him.

Now, again before we get into the defense, I want to emphasize that Janice is an awful human being. She does many despicable things throughout the show, the worst of which is gaslighting Bobby into marrying her by secretly tormenting his children. There is no defense of her character from this. But I do want to challenge some of the assumptions I think the audience makes about Janice and her actions.

Throughout the series, Janice is consistently portrayed as lazy and always looking for the easy way out. One of the reasons for this is her tendency to fake or exaggerate injuries. In Seattle she’s said to be living off of disability checks for the Eppstein Barr she developed from her coffee shop job. Later she would exaggerate the injuries she received at the festival in order to seek compensation. Tony would consistently mock her for this behavior.

The real reason she even returns to New Jersey in the first place is to seek money through their mother. Though she claims to want to take care of her, in reality she’s squeezing what money she can from Tony and trying to find the money hidden in their mother’s estate. Tony knows this, as she’s done this her entire life.

However I don’t think her being characterized as lazy is correct. In fact, we know she’s actually very hard working, having worked a number of different jobs over the years. She mentions how she was a waitress at Kenny Rogers, and we actually see her in the uniform. Also in that same scene when she picks up the phone, she answers it as Ace Garage, showing that she is working some kind of other job on top of that. Even Tony is impressed at how many odd jobs Janice has seemingly worked.

Rather than out of laziness, her schemes are just a smart way to make quick and easy money. And while that’s not a great trait, it’s one she shares with her brother and the other members of the mob. How many times throughout the series did we see Tony doing something small and petty to make a quick buck. Yet with them, it’s portrayed as just business.

Just like with my Defense of AJ video, a lot of the negative traits the audience ascribes to Janice, are really things that Tony has as well. And in fact we’re meant to see Janice as another version of Tony. In fact, let’s take a look at some of the bad things that Janice has done over the series and compare them to Tony.

She pushed Richie to have her own brother killed so he can take over as boss and provide for her. Sounds terrible, but let’s remember that Tony actually killed family members, including Christopher who was like a son to him. He had his reasons of course, but just like with Janice they are just justifications so he can do what’s in his best interest.

She breaks up with Ralph by pushing him down the stairs right after he left a grieving Rosalie to be with her. But A: Ralph absolutely deserved that. And B: Tony left Valentina right after she was burned making him some eggs. And he also stole her from Ralph, so again a scumbag thing to do.

Even her manipulation of Bobby and his kids, which was terrible, isn’t that different from things Tony has done. Tony has Vito Junior sent to a camp where he will be beaten and abused because he decided to gamble away the money he was supposed to use taking care of Vito’s widow Marie.

And just like with Tony, Janice also had struggles with identity. After leaving home at 18, she joined an ashram and changed her name.. She then became a practicing Hindu, eating asian foods and doing yoga. This is usually seen as both very cringy and insincere, considering that she later abandons the identity and becomes a born again Christian, later abandoning that persona as well.

However it’s all part of her quest to find an identity for herself. It’s consistently pointed out that Janice ran away from the problems of growing up Soprano. She tried to reinvent herself in the west, literally creating a new name for herself and trying to leave everything from New Jersey behind.

Her forays into Christian rock music and eventually being a mob wife are all a part of this as well. She’s seeking an identity, one that she can be comfortable in. As we saw with Tony, being a part of the mob and the Soprano family isn’t easy. Tony himself at times wishes he could have run away like Janice, but instead he chose to stay and devote himself to the family. This is why he is so bitter towards Janice, whom he is jealous of for having seemingly escaped their family.

But try as Janice might, she cannot escape the damage her family inflicted on her. In fact by the end of the series, she becomes exactly like her mother Livia. She even has lines of dialogue that mirror Livia exactly.

Melfi herself points out that Janice’s attraction to drama and misery are exactly like their mother as well.

Interestingly, her Hindu name Parvati is a goddess of fertility and motherhood. Even when she tried to create a new identity for herself, it was inextricably tied to her relationship to her own mother. That, or it’s a reference to her body looking like a fertility goddess statue.

And though again this similarity to Livia is definitely a negative trait, it’s one that Tony has as well. He too took after their mother, adopting many of the same habits as her. He fixates on negativity, constantly bringing it up to everyone around them and making them miserable. And like Janice, he too has dialogue that mirrors Livia.

Janice herself also points out how much like Livia Tony really is.

Again, my point with all of this is not to say that Janice is a good person. She is a horrible human being, but she’s just as horrible as all the people around her. Just like with AJ, Janice and Tony are almost fundamentally the same person. Tony just has his persona as a mobster to disguise some of his negative qualities. And if we’re going to judge Janice for her shitty behavior, we should be more fair about how we apply that judgment to all the characters.

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Actually though she did use Ralph’s dildo on herself right after it had been in him, so I take back everything I said. She’s the worst human being on the planet.