ok so Bobby Baccalieri is my favourite character in The Sopranos. at first he’s the slightly goofy guy who looks after Junior: he likes model trains, he’s good with Junior, and people don’t take him all that seriously. he’s funny, but there’s more to him than being the big guy in the room who says something daft.
Bobby has this softness that feels unusual in Tony’s world. he cares about his wife, Karen, and his kids. he’s loyal to Junior, even when there isn’t much in it for him. he doesn’t make a big speech about being a good person. he just seems to have a bit more patience and warmth than the people around him. Steve Schirripa has called Bobby a sweet guy, which feels right to me.
family is his other life
Bobby’s family life gives him something that isn’t just another version of the mob. when Karen dies, you see how much he loved her and how lost he is without her. then Janice gets close to him and becomes part of his life and his kids’ lives. she can be manipulative, but Bobby isn’t just being dragged along: he loves her, and they make a family together. he’s trying to give his kids something steady while the rest of the Soprano world is always making a mess.
the trains matter because they’re properly his. they’re not a way to earn respect or move up. he likes them because he likes them. it’s a small, slightly nerdy thing that lets us see him away from the crew, with his own interests and his own pace.
then the line moves
Bobby isn’t outside the violence, though. he works for Junior, and he accepts the rules of that life. the change is that he doesn’t seem to enjoy hurting people in the way Tony and some of the others do. then, after Bobby beats Tony in their drunken fight at the lake house, Tony makes him carry out a hit in Canada. it’s Bobby’s first time killing someone himself, and he comes home to his daughter. those two parts of his life are suddenly right next to each other.
that’s what makes the episode so rough: Bobby has crossed a line, and Tony has made sure he knows who forced him across it. after that, Bobby gains more standing in the crew, but it doesn’t feel like some clean victory. David Chase said the episode turns on that hit, and on Bobby returning to his daughter. he’s getting pulled further into Tony’s world at the exact moment we can see what that world is taking from him.
the end is so bobby
in “The Blue Comet”, Bobby is killed in a model train shop while looking for the train he wants. it’s so ordinary and so horrible. he’s not in a big dramatic mob scene; he’s doing the thing he loves, in his own little corner, and the violence finds him there anyway.
by the end, Bobby has gone from Junior’s helper to one of Tony’s closest men. he’s tougher and more important in the organisation, but he hasn’t stopped being the dad with the trains. that’s why i like him so much. he belongs to the mob world, but he never feels like it’s the only thing he is. the show lets him be funny, loyal, a bit clueless, a husband and a dad, and then makes all of those parts feel worth grieving.
i don’t think Bobby is secretly perfect. he helps a violent organisation and eventually kills for it. but he still feels like the person in the room who has the most left to lose. that’s probably why he’s my favourite.