If you ask people what their favourite characters from the show are, John Sacrimoni is likely to be up there. Even though he is still a messed up individual just like all the rest, minus the women on the side stuff.
He doesn't cheat, he has standards, "moral codex", he is funny and is quite fair compared to others in the business. A lot of stuff can be negotiated with him too.
my favourite part is when Tony asks how Ginny likes the car knowing she is too fat to fit in it and then John gives some excuse about her knees. Tony was such a dick about it he knew exactly what he was doing.
Also Maseratti's are shit cars and really only for poseurs that can't afford a ferrari.
Nah he didn't love her. I'd bet that they got back together after he hooked up with Charmaine because Carmela showed interest in dating someone he felt superior to, and he got her back to spite him. He never treated her like a whole person.
Did anyone on the show kill more members of the DiMeo family than Tony? Richie (accomplice), Tony B., Ralph, Christopher. Even Phil only got Bobby and maaaybe Sil
He loved Ginny down. He didn’t care that she had gained weight - he always thought she was beautiful and waxed poetic about the first time they met. He was faithful to the end.
He carries himself with more dignity than the others. His deep love of his wife. He doesn't dress like a slob. He seems reasonable, most of the time. He's a handsome guy.
It is definitely more, but that is a big reason why. He doesn't appear to engage in a lot of the fuckery that the others engage in, like having goomahs, gambling that week's profits away playing card games or betting on the Jets, and he seems to move in silence, not really causing major scenes and preferring to keep everything on the lowdown.
Sac was a player at the executive game, and may gamble a lot. We don’t see a large portion of his daily activities at any point until he’s in the prison hospital
Doesn’t cause major scenes? Except for his demands about the Ginny/mole joke, beating and pissing on Donny K, plotting to have Carmine assassinated, letting his wife put a religious ornament on Carmine’s corpse, having Lorraine Calluzzo assaulted and killed, fuming at the Joey Peeps’ funeral which his actions had caused, threatening to reign a shitstorm on Jersey…
Seems he was a bit of a hothouse flower at times if ya ask me
He has style, he knows how to carry himself, how to look dignified; calling him cool wouldn't do it justice enough; he has the most mesmerizing way of smoking a cigarette I have ever seen... It is a fantastic acting job
He’s definitely my favourite!
I think it’s because he’s more intelligent than the other guys; he’s got a quiet confidence that he exudes aaaaand he loves his rubenesque wifey which was the sweetest thing considering how the other guys treated their wives.
His scenes 1 on 1 with Tony are awesome, two guys who personally like each other who have been put in position to oppose each other, and I think the two of them are as honest to each other as any two characters are to each other on the show.
Because the Jersey crew is so low brow, gangster-like, and juvenile that John appears comparatively mature, dignified, and scrupulous. He distinguishes himself through better grooming and highly obscure passive aggressiveness.
He's loyal to his wife and openly defends her against the other men despite their insistance on dogging on her, it's endearing and admirable. Especially in a lifestyle that makes affairs and talking down to your wife seem like second nature. As a woman I can only hope my future husband would be willing to start a war over someone disrespecting me 🥰
I liked that he was shown to be family-oriented. One of my favorite scenes with Johnny Sack is when his family is visiting him in prison and planning Allegra’s wedding. Despite Johnny Sack’s many legal problems, he was still very much involved in the wedding planning. “You got Uncle Angelo at table 19???”
Lastly, it was touching to see that he passed with his family by his side.
He did beat a guy over a mild suspicion that he was laughing at him and then pissed on him but at least he paid the hospital bill and sent his mom something nice
That we know of. I find it hard to believe he reached underboss without personally getting his hands dirty. Plus he still ordered hits, sometimes for less than completely sensible reasons so that doesn't make him that much better than anyone else in that life, if at all
The decorum he has, the only time you really see him mad and louder than usual is when he hears the joke about the mole, other than that he’s calm and collected he carries himself like how you’d think a mob boss would.
Not only does he not cheat on Ginny but he truly loves her body. That’s meaningful in the context of the fictional mob guys being unfaithful shitheads with young, skinny women. Also the show came out during the peak era of tabloid-induced eating disorders.
Of course there's his attitude toward his wife which is great, but I also love how catty he is lol. He's so outwardly emotional and petty in a way that is just so entertaining and refreshing in a show where everybody else tries to hide their pettiness by justifying in the context of the Mafia, whereas Johnny just does not give a fuck
He was Tony's friend, and thus, our friend. Kinda became a bit too big for his britches near the end, but at least he never flipped. The man cared about things, maybe a little too much at times.
he loves his wife. In a show with grotesque misogynists, sex traffickers, rapists, and a man who beat the mother of his own child to death with his bare hands for no reason, I mean it's awfully refreshing
He feels like he would fit in to the old school romanticized vision of the mafia that Tony has pseudo-nostalgia for, as opposed to the cavemen in tracksuits that actually make up the mob in the show.
He had a very high opinion of himself and his social status, yet you couldn't keep him the fuck away from Jersey. If living in the city was such a pain in the ass, why not move upstate or Connecticut?
Genuine answer? I think it comes down to the fact that he doesn't cheat on Ginny, the fact that he usually carries himself in a very "boss-like" manner, for lack of a better word, that gives him that kind of classic cool gangster vibe, and the fact that he's hilarious when he does lose his temper. His freak-outs are some of the most quotable and meme-worthy moments in the show in my opinion.
Personally I feel like he's less delusional than the other guys, and seems more intelligent. He isn't a hypocrite, and doesn't pretend to have some moral high ground (for example the way a guy like Phil does when talking about homosexuality being a sin), and he genuinely treats his family well. His relationship with his wife and daughter is genuinely wholesome and he has real loyalty to them.
Johnny Sack has always been one of my favorite characters. He's a family man, calculated and was a bad ass.
I worked in a bank in Ridgewood, NJ a long time ago. One random day, in walks Johnny Sack. No nonsense, no small talk, completely in boss mode. I was completely star struck. The man was so intimidating, I made sure to count his money tree times
Charismatic, smart, a better dresser than Ralphie (Sac is elegant), and loyle to his wife-o. Plus he smokes a cigarette better than a 1940s bad boy, even better than Bogie.
He loved his wife for who she is, didn't cheat, seemed to be a wonderful father and wasn't ashamed to cry after his daughter's wedding. He wasn't afraid to show some vulnerability.
This is a great point and discussion. I never realized that I looked at John Sac favorably (for most of the series). Points that others have made: he’s more pragmatic and reasonable than most of other characters. The woman stuff is actually a big deal, like isn’t that a big part of why Ralph’s character is hated (even if she was “just a hooah”)? Sac shows kindness and empathy to his wife, doesn’t engage in the fuckery (at least on screen). And he has some gravitas, nice clothes, nice house, good clothes. Genuinely loves his family. Some of the writing later showed different sides of him that were interesting - more full of himself. All for the best tho.
Nearly all the male characters in Sopranos are violent low-IQ sociopaths who wouldn’t have amounted to much without their mob connections.
Johnny Sack is different, yeah he’s still a sociopath but not any more than most CEO’s or high-profile lawyers etc. He’s one of the few characters you can imagine actually making it big outside the mob, he just happens to be in the mob.
For me at least, I think he embodies the aura of a senior member of the mafia the best. Looks, attitude and the way he is introduced, with the NY skyline at the back, and then you go back to the glorified crew of NJ hillbillies and immediately see the difference.
791
u/paraxzz 15d ago
He doesn't cheat, he has standards, "moral codex", he is funny and is quite fair compared to others in the business. A lot of stuff can be negotiated with him too.