One of the more interesting aspects of Adriana La Cerva’s informant storyline in “The Sopranos” is how poorly she handled it. Rather than insist on a lawyer straight away, she buys the FBI’s largely empty threats against her. By neither telling Christopher (Michael Imperioli) of what’s going on as soon as she can nor giving the FBI any actual valuable information, she cements her own death through one bad decision after another.
One of the more interesting aspects of Adriana La Cerva’s informant storyline in “The Sopranos” is how poorly she handled it. Rather than insist on a lawyer straight away, she buys the FBI’s largely empty threats against her. By neither telling Christopher (Michael Imperioli) of what’s going on as soon as she can nor giving the FBI any actual valuable information, she cements her own death through one bad decision after another.
In fiction writing classes, novice writers are often advised to never make their characters feel incompetent, yet every head-scratchingly terrible decision Adriana makes through seasons 4 and 5 somehow only makes her more sympathetic, not less. Her repeated insistence on standing by Christopher, helping him through his issues even as he beats her and kills her dog (accidentally, but still) is heartbreaking because we know how futile she hopes for a happy life with him are.
“Adriana’s purpose on the show was innocence, and she was filled with love,” said Drea De Matteo, who played the tragic character. Although Adriana wasn’t entirely pure or anything, she was the character most capable of seeing the good side of everyone else. She was one of the few characters who rarely came across as cruel at any point. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the character’s death, show writer Terence Winter explained: “She was guilty by association, but she certainly didn’t deserve the fate she got. So her death was more painful than any of the gangsters who lived by the sword, died by the sword. That her big sin was falling in love with Christopher made it that much more painful. I will be hard-pressed to name another episode that shakes people up more.”
The scene where Adriana dies is disturbing and primal. She clutches to the steering wheel as Silvio drags her screaming out of the car, and she futilely tries to crawl away into the woods. She shows such a clear, overpowering will to live that only makes the futility of her attempts all the more devastating. Yet notably the show decided not to show her actual death. Showrunner David Chase explained:
“It’s the only time in the whole history of the show in which we killed someone and we didn’t show their point of view. It seems to be worse without it; we were imagining what might’ve happened to her and how her body would’ve been destroyed. I don’t think any of us wanted to see Drea in that condition.”
