'Sopranos' analyzes masculine insecurity

''The Sopranos" has become so defining in gangster fiction it's easy to forget that the HBO series began as a revision of the mob genre. Creator David Chase provided no picturesque ''Godfather" glamour in the shabby backroom of the Bada-Bing, and very little honor among Tony Soprano's thieves. Instead, he gave us Prozac, Freudian slips, a murderously unsentimental Italian mother, and comic self-consciousness about pop mythology -- who can forget that car horn tooting the ''Godfather" theme song?

The only thing about this crew that was larger than life? Tony's ever-expanding belly.

This season, Chase has stepped up his non-moralistic ''they're just human" approach. In the first seven episodes, he has been depicting the male gangster psyche through a prism of weakness, insecurity, and fear of fading masculinity. He's giving us a sort of anatomy of the school bully. All the guys are being depleted in the power department this year -- Tony by Junior's gunshot, Junior by Alzheimer's, Johnny Sack by a jail sentence, Silvio by asthma, Bobby by an infantilizing Janice, and Christopher, once again, by Hollywood and drugs.

The result is a spectacle of compensation, as the boys' ongoing fight to be alpha dog has taken on a desperate edge. The more their masculinity is threatened, the more extreme their ''masculine" behavior becomes.

This close-up of impotency-meets-macho has resulted in a streak of episodes that prove Chase and his writers are as inspired as ever. First we saw Vito acting like a double jerk, to mask the fact that he's gay. By the time he escaped the tough guys and hit small-town New Hampshire, however, he was just a calm older gay man with a limp. And then we got to watch the New Jersey and New York crews congratulate themselves for being real men by making gay puns about Vito and vowing to off him. As Bobby put it, sounding as kids-on-the-playground as ever, ''We can't have him here in our social club no more."

Only Tony, with coaching from Dr. Melfi, was able to take a step back from the attacks, saying, ''Some people just want drama like high school girls." By feminizing the homophobic men, he was able to keep his male ego intact.

Not that Tony is an ''evolved" man, exactly. The most naked glimpse at Tony's fragility came shortly after he left his hospital bed, when he sensed he was losing his crew's respect. The episode found Tony feeling soft about his daughter (he even defended Johnny Sack's tears) and aware of his own post-op debility. When he wasn't looking fearfully at the soft and flabby Sacrimoni women, he was staring at his crew's hard muscles, knowing he was at a crossroads. At the end of the hour, he chose muscle with a vengeance, picking a fight with his buff new driver. He proceeded to vomit secretly but triumphantly in the bathroom, his dominance restored.

This season, the men's feelings of powerlessness have also taken some self-destructive turns -- most obviously Gene's suicide in the first episode. Not only was the hanging a brilliantly excruciating and memorable scene, one that made even the most violent TV seem romanticized, it showed the series' famous violence finally turning inward. Usually on this show, anger erupts outward into homicidal acts. Indeed, that kind of explosion has been one of Tony's therapy issues; he has even lunged at Dr. Melfi in session.

But Gene's suicide stands as the season's symbol of the other choice, and it has led to other suspicions of impending suicide, particularly regarding Vito, who ran to a motel with a gun after getting caught at a gay bar. Last week, as his restaurant business fell further into decline, Artie Bucco was also on the fast track to self-injury. Rather than the usual wondering about who'll be killed next on ''The Sopranos," viewers might instead be predicting who will kill himself.

At the same time, the women on the show have been ascendant, moving past their lives of luncheons and denial. The symbol for them: Angie Bompensiero, who has succeeded as a businesswoman since Pussy was killed. Not only is she far beyond serving samples at the supermarket, she now runs an auto business and has money ''on the street" with Tony's guys. Angie is a source of wonder and envy to Carmela, who's still trying to make her housing development dream come true. In more conventional mob stories, the women have nothing to do with the family business and everything to do with the family dinners.

For her part, Carmela certainly rose to the occasion of Tony's recuperation, even dabbling enough in his work life to warn him that Vito ''is somebody you should watch." She's the most likely mob wife to follow in Angie's footsteps. And her self-awareness is flowering, a step forward that was clearer than ever during her session with Dr. Melfi, when she talked about how Tony makes their money: ''The day I met Tony, I knew who that guy was."

Meadow, too, is turning into something of a leader as a passionate defender of the underprivileged at the law center. But her hypocritical defensiveness about her father's line of business is still an obstacle to her forcefulness. Perhaps Finn will snap her out of her blind spot, if she doesn't dump him first. Of course, if she does dump him, he's probably not long for the world, since he knows a little too much, particularly about Vito.

One of the funniest images of the season has become one of its most unexpectedly resonant. While Gene used his garage to hang himself, Bobby turned his garage into a safe haven, a playpen of sorts. There we saw him as an all-powerful conductor with an elaborate model train set. He's a nobody in Tony's crew, as he floats by on his brother-in-law cred; but with his conductor's hat on he's a big shot. He's a boy with a toy. He has found a solution to his feelings of male inadequacy that probably won't hurt anyone, including himself.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.