Why Are Tony & Artie Friends?

The Sopranos features many powerful and charismatic characters. Gangsters with money and guns. Powerful men, with beautiful women on their arms and the world at their feet. And then there’s Artie.

“Oh, Prince Rogaine.”

-Tony to Artie

Arthur Bucco is the owner and head chef of Vesuvio, a fine dining Italian restaurant frequented by many of the characters on the show. He’s been a companion of Tony’s since childhood, and throughout the series remains Tony’s closest friend. Which is odd when we consider the differences between them.

Unlike Tony, Artie is not a member of the mafia. In fact in many ways, he’s the exact opposite of Tony. Where Tony is rich, Artie struggles to pay his bill. Where Tony is powerful, Artie gets little respect from his friends and even his employees. And where Tony can have any woman he wants, Artie is basically a simp, endlessly pining for the attention of the young women around him.

So given how different they are, why does Tony keep Artie around? Why are these two opposites best friends? And is it possible Tony is actually the one jealous of Artie? Let’s take a look.

Like I mentioned before, Tony and Artie have been friends since they were children. Interestingly, in Tony’s dream, his high school coach says that Artie was actually the worst one among Tony’s little crew. This is corroborated by the Many Saints of Newark, which shows Artie stealing the ice cream truck alongside Tony and a young Jackie Aprile Senior.

However despite these youthful indiscretions, Artie did not enter into the mafia, and instead took over his father’s restaurant Vesuvio. He ended up marrying Charmaine, an ex-girlfriend of Tony’s. Together, the two would have 3 children and run the restaurant as a team.

We’re first introduced to Artie in the pilot, when Uncle Junior plans to do a hit in the restaurant. Worried that it would ruin his friend's business, Tony has the restaurant burned down in order to prevent this. This causes considerable strain for Artie, who is out of work until the insurance money comes through, and also has to deal with the emotional strain of losing his family’s legacy.

Eventually Livia reveals to Artie that it was Tony behind the fire. Feeling betrayed by his friend, Artie points a gun at Tony. Tony is able to talk him down though, and Artie ends up leaving without suffering any consequences for threatening Tony’s life.

In the third season, Artie hires Adrianna as a hostess for the restaurant. Artie ends up falling in love with her, and when Christopher makes Adrianna stop working after they get engaged, Artie almost gets into a fight with him. Tony has to calm Christopher down and keep Artie from doing something stupid that would get him killed.

Tony and Artie’s relationship would have its ups and downs throughout the show. In the fourth season, Tony ends up loaning Artie 50k for a deal he wants to make. When the deal goes badly for him, he tries to commit suicide. When Tony uses the situation to wipe his tab at Vesuvio, Artie accuses him of knowing what would happen and preying on Artie’s incompetence.

Though Tony gets angry at the suggestion, it is the exact same thing he admitted he did to Davey Scatino, another childhood friend he took advantage of.

“It’s my nature. Frog and the scorpion, you know?”

-Tony

Tony and Artie then don’t speak until the next season when both men are going through separations with their wives. Tony invites Artie to live with him, and they become friends again, sharing a house like roommates. Eventually, both men patch things up with their wives and go back to their normal routine.

In season six, Benny pulls a scam to steal Vesuvio’s customers' credit card information, with the help of Martina, a young hostess Artie has again fallen for. Artie ends up beating Benny up in a fight, and Tony again has to mediate to keep Artie safe from reprisals.

“Beside the fact you knew I grew up with the man, you don’t shit where you eat. And you really don’t shit where I eat.”

-Tony to Benny

The credit card scam really hurts the business, along with Artie annoying the customers with his personality. Tony gives him advice that he needs to stay in the kitchen and focus on the cooking, which he had been neglecting. Eventually Artie heeds his advice, and rediscovers his passion as a chef.

Overall, Artie gets a very good ending, especially considering all the times things could have gone very wrong for him. Throughout the show, Artie points a gun at Tony, makes a move on a made guy’s fiance, loses the money Tony loaned him, and quite possibly worst of all, throws food at a capo.

Yet despite all of this, Tony never does anything to Artie. The man is pretty much untouchable, even to other made guys because of Tony’s friendship. Ralph knows this, which is why he refused to loan Artie money.

“Because if you don’t pay me back, I ain’t going to be able to hurt you.”

-Ralph

The obvious explanation for this is that Tony values Artie as a friend, more so than even his fellow mobsters. But why? What merits this kind of devotion when Tony is willing to kill his actual family members?

Throughout their relationship, Artie is consistently jealous of Tony. Artie is rejected by every girl he falls for, and wishes he could be like Tony.

On the surface, it seems clear that Artie is a loser compared to Tony. Not only is Tony great with women, he also has money and power where Artie has none. But there is a deep irony in how Artie views Tony. Because in reality, I believe Tony is secretly jealous of Artie.

It’s clear from the show that Tony does not enjoy being in the mafia. It’s one of the primary drivers behind his depression and panic attacks, and the fact that he has to pretend to be something he is not fills him with anger and sadness.

“Still I got to be the sad clown.”

-Tony

His coma dream is a great example of this. In the dream, Tony imagines a life he might have had if he didn’t go into the mafia. Instead he lives an average life as a salesman, something he speculated he would have done if he never became a mobster.

“Maybe being a rebel in my family would be selling patio furniture on route 22.”

-Tony

The dream is in many ways a fantasy of what his life could have been, and this fantasy is further personified in Artie’s wife Charmaine.

Throughout their lives, Charmaine did not like that Tony and Artie were friends. She didn’t want Tony and the other mafiosos hanging around the restaurant, and would shut down any attempt at Artie getting involved in anything with them in business.

Charmaine didn’t want a criminal life, which is why despite the fact that she and Tony slept together when they were younger, she did not want to marry him. She knew the life they would have, and instead preferred an honest and less glamorous life.

Throughout the show, Tony would occasionally pine for Charmaine. In The Test Dream he starts thinking about a relationship with her, and ends up calling her without saying anything. And one of his dreams in that episode is having sex with her. It’s clear he still wants Charmaine. But why, aside from the obvious reasons?

Carmela always wanted the finer things in life, which enabled Tony’s criminal life. He was encouraged to break the law if it got their family expensive things, and he could always buy his way out of trouble with a piece of jewelry or a house. But Charmaine wanted nothing to do with that kind of stuff.

In his alternate life in the coma dream, Tony has a different wife judging by the voice. Though it has never officially been confirmed whose voice it is, I hear Charmaine's voice, which fits given that the dream is about Tony’s non-mafia life. If he had ended up with her, she would have kept him out of the mob.

So despite Tony having everything in life Artie wanted, ironically he had everything that Tony wanted. A wife who supported him. An honest trade he was good at. And a life where he didn’t have to constantly look over his own shoulder and be someone he wasn’t.

So if there is any lesson to take away from this, it's to appreciate what you have. Don't be a beta male like Artie simping over thots, especially if you got a piece of ass at home. There, I've said my piece. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a reservation at Da Geovannis