12 Main Character Deaths That Killed Great TV Shows
6. Christopher Moltisanti (The Sopranos)
Episode Of Death: S06E18 - "Kennedy and Heidi"
Sometimes a show gets a character death just right - it's justified dramatically, it moves the plot forward, it does everything that killing off a cast member is supposed to achieve - and yet it alters the show's dynamic in such a way that things aren't ever quite the same.
Fortunately for The Sopranos, the demise of Christopher Moltisanti came just three episodes from the show's conclusion. After struggling with drugs and alcohol, being shot, his conscience, and generally just being a bit of an a**hole, Chris finally met his end behind the wheel a crashed truck.
With his nephew begging him to help avoid losing his license, unaware of the (fortunately empty) baby carrier impaled by a tree branch in the back seat, Tony finally rid himself of a worry and a burden and suffocated the injured Christopher. Though Tony's sociopathic tendencies had always been a big part of the show - his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, came to fear she was enabling him - they were never more evident than when he effectively murdered a member of family.
Like so many characters in The Sopranos, Chris had always been capable of evoking both sympathy and repugnance, full of rage and insecurity. His relationship with Adriana arguably brought the best out in him, fraught with tension and betrayal though it was. After Adriana's death at the hands of Soprano consigliere Silvio Dante (she'd been planning to turn state's evidence), it seemed unlikely that Chris would recover, only for him to settle down with a wife and kid.
Chris' character arc was arguably the most turbulent in the show's run, full of highs and lows - appropriate for a recurring addict - and then he was gone. Of all of Tony's associates doomed not to live out their natural span, Chris' passing was, perhaps, the least painful, the most "natural", and, some might argue, more than he deserved.
It also served as a confirmation that - as with Adriana, Tony Blundetto, and scores of others before him - anyone on the show could die, foreshadowing, perhaps, Tony's own possible demise in the final moments of the series finale. However, after Chris' passing, there was nothing left to surprise us.
Silvio left in a coma? Okay. Phil Leotardo having his head crushed at a petrol station? Why not? Bobby Baccalieri gunned down in a toy store? It was probably inevitable. With Chris' death, it began to feel that, after six seasons, The Sopranos was beginning to wind up. Good TV, sure - great even - but from the instant Chris stopped breathing, there was a sense of inevitability to all of it.
Chris' murder, the murder of family (lower and capital letter) - not out of mercy as with Tony B. or necessity as with Adriana, but for the sake of convenience - wasn't necessarily "worse" than anything Tony had done before, but it reminded us of what he was capable and that his own end might well be fast approaching.
Don't Stop Believing, indeed.