I loved the show but im also a mob history buff and in reality the Jersey mafia(Decalvacante} has about half the strength as the new york mob any of the 5 families. I mean in the 1980's Gotti pretty much ran the jersey mob and Gotti was an idiot lol. I just wish they portrayed the jersey mafia more realisticaly in the series

Very true. 3 of the NY families have a bigger presence in New Jersey than the DeCalvacantes. But remember that the pilot was filmed in 1997 and season 1 was done in 1999. This was when the Decalvacantes were going strong and the Five Families were being dismantled by the Feds. The Jersey family was definitely holding down their own turf even though NY still had a bigger presence. In December 1999, the Decalvacante's started falling apart (and hard).

Also, I heard that the Sopranos were not just based on teh native DeCalvalcantes but were an amalgam of it and a 1 or more Jersey crews.

It is fiction after all

Then it woulda been a pretty shitty show

Wait, so how powerful exactly were the Decavalcante's and also what activities were they involved in? I mean how much did the average soldier in the family earn? Would he be in his millions still??

Not really. Its just a small thing that is a FACT. Im not syaing that they should have taken everything out i just would have liked them to be truthful when it comes to jersey vs new york

Well I mean they did get there ass handed to em by NY if you think about it. If they were to make it like it would be in real life, lets say Genovese or Gambino vs Decavalcante, NY woulda slaughtered the whole family and that wouldnt of been to interesting ya kno?

Do you really think all the NY soldiers make millions ?

Yeah I mean, I think they had to do some artistic license. Who would want to watch a mob show about a low level, insignificant group? They had to sell it to HBO...

seriously though they made new york too weak and jersey to strong and weakened the familys on parr with eachother to make the climax of a mob war realistic

Its a make believe tv show. Its loosely based on real life. Of course they are going to glamourize the family Tony is the boss of.

I know its a show and i dont have a problem with embellishing the facts but i think they could have made it a little more realstic

So the only way to do that is to make Tony the boss of the family that Johnny Sack was boss of. Then put Johnny Sack as the head of the Jersey Family.

But that wouldn't have worked cause Tony's family was from Jersey!

And they have to make Tony's family the most powerful for it to work.

Am I the only one who doesn't think the Soprano Crime Family was portrayed on equal footing with the Lupertazzi's? Since we never saw any other NY Families except for the one guy who set up the meeting between Tony and Butchie at the end, I can't speculate on how powerful the Lupertazzi's are in comparison, but I don't think the Sopranos were portrayed on equal footing at all. Going back and watching the show now, with all that I've learned about the Mafia along the way, it seems pretty clear to me that the Lupertazzi's are far more capable than the Sopranos.

Indeed, the Sopranos were much weaker family than the Lupertazzis, this was made clear on numerous occasions. Perhaps they made the NJ mob more powerfull and wealthy than it is in RL, but compared to the NY it was still much weaker. The only reason the Soprano family didn't get "slaughtered" was that the war with NY was a war that only Phil seemed to be interested in. Most of the NY family didn't give a shit about NJ mob/Phil's beef with Tony and many of them probably didn't like Phil in the first place, considering that the family just came out of a "civil war". Nobody profited from this war and that's why Phil was betrayed and ultimately shot. This wasn't a 'victory' for NJ over NY, especially if we consider that they lost 2 key guys. Tony too was probably killed by someone loyal to Phil in that final scene.

at least one,if not two.

both familys had something like 6-7 crews each plus the lupertazzis were plagued by infighting possibly messing the family up

Lupertazzi:
Butchies crew
Santoro crew
Phils crew
Carmine jr crew
Millio crew
Petrille crew

Soprano:
Tony's crew
Junior's crew
Vito's crew
Carlo's crew
Bareses crew
Raymonds crew
Feech's crew (Defunct)

Yeah, I mean how wouldn't they, annually I'm talking about. Think of all the illegal scams they run, not only can they tax associates or people committing crimes on their turf but they're into massive Gambling and Loan sharking rings, and could further be entrenched in drugs, possibly drug trafficking, fraud anything these guys are basically the most entrepreneurial criminals you can get, so yes I would definitely say mob soldiers annual "Pay" would be within the millions. Sure a lot of they money gets kicked up, but a fair amount should stay with the soldiers as well.

Tony mentions at one point in season 6 that the Lupertazzi's have like 200 buttons, or something along those lines. Although it is safe to assume we weren't exposed to the entire Soprano Crime Family, the Lupertazzi's were clearly a much larger force.

Considering at the end of the series, the Sopranos were all but wiped out, I'd say the Luppertazi's were definitely shown as ultimately stronger.

a little bit as in they would of conceded to their ny counterparts. compare em to the jersey luccheses and a bit of the decavalcantes when they were both on top.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/mob_bosses/sopranos/2.html