re: Just started the Sopranos

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Breaking Bad is all flash. I hate seeing it mentioned with brilliant shows like the Wire, Sopranos, or Mad Men.

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I used to be of the same opinion honestly, but after rewatching breaking bad... 10 times lol, I honestly believe that to date it's the best TV show ever written and from..... the last 3 episodes of season 3 until the Ozymandias eposide, it's the secretariat of TV shows; no show can come close to touching the perfect blend of pace, plot and action


The reason I say this is because it's the only show, that is perfect for every audience.


There is not a show on TV that can touch the complexity and the deepness of the wire, but at the same time, tell me the last time you only had an hour to kill and watched to "catch an episode of the wire" lol. Watching the wire is an event, it's not something you just do. You have to be set in and settled and ready to digest what's truly going on. The older you get, the more responsibilities you have in life you dont' always have that type of time.


The sopranos, which I love.. let's be honest,.. really isn't all that fricking deep of a show lol. Tony is really not all that fricking complex of a guy; he's a fat crime boss who cheats on his wife and faints from time to time lol who at the same time is a loving father and a good friend. It has the most "action" to me, but it's no where near as complex as people make the show out to be. Tony is the exact same person he was in the polit as he was in the fanalie. I tend to watch the sopranos after i've had a shitty day of work and like to watch it when someone gets whacked lol. For some reason Funhouse is my fav eposide, don't know why.


The West Wing, which is my 2nd fav TV show of all time is great and brilliant.. if you get it lol. You either get it or you don't lol. And even that show, the writing really goes haywire when Sorakin leaves after season 4 though I enjoyed the second half of season 6 and season 7.



Breaking Bad, has it all. It catches every demographic

15-25 year olds - "OMG Meth lol"


26-40 year olds- sees a man who transforms from a school teacher to a guy who has 8 people killed in less than a minute without any second thoughts or regrets.



41+ year olds - sees a man who when faced with terminal cancer is forced to face the past decisions that lead to him having underachieved in his life and tries to make up for it. How one decision in his life 25 years ago was the difference between being a billionaire and being a high school teacher and this is his chance to redeem himself and make his life mean something.


In fact, the older I get while it's still a great TV show, I really keep downgrading the sopranos. It was a unique concept and def a great show, but it's not as good as the wire or breaking bad or the west wing.


Also the older you get, the more responsible you have, the less time you have and breaking bad is the perfect blend of pace, action and plot, yet everytime I watch it, I pick up something I didn't notice before. every time. It's veritels enough where I can binge watch it or just watch one show. That's one of the reasons I despise Better Caul Saul; Yes I get that the show has a lot of subtle plot lines in it but I don't have fricking time to get emotionally invested in a show for 2 months to worry about fricking Easter eggs lol.. I need my entertainment to actually entertain me lol. Better Call Saul to me is like the Ulysses of TV shows lol. It's not that I don't or can't understand the book or don't understand the complexity of the dialogue of the book, bitch I have shite to do lol get to the fricking point.
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I mean think about this for a minute. In the Wire, the bad guys are exactly who you think they should be. Marlo, a black guy with a scar on his face who deals heriorn lol. Tony Soprano, a fat Italian crime boss.

But then look at breaking bad, and if you really look at it the way the show is written and it took me a few watches to really notice this but they throw the notion of the archtyvial arch nemesis out the window and what that should be.


In other words, the higher up the food chain Walt gets, the more dangerous his arch nemesis are, yet the higher up the food chain he gets, the more normal they appear to be.


Tuco is exactly what the frick you think he is lol. A Mexican meth snorting crazy guy. But they made it a point to show that he cares about the elderly and how much he cares for his uncle. Crazy as Tuco may be, Tuco had a set of morals they might have been fricked up lol, but he had them.


The next is Gus. Gus while he is Chilalian and stands out in the sense that he's blackish in New Mexico and a business owner, otherwise is seen as an upstanding citizen. But runs a multi million dollar meth operation. Has no problem at all exploiting children or at the very least, is willing to look the other way in regards to how kids are dealt with if it means protecting his operating.


The last and most dangerous of the them all is the white power gang who to me, the face of is Todd. If you saw Todd at starbucks you would not look twice at him he would fit in anywhere. Yet, did not remotely hesitate to shoot a kid with his own hands and literally had Jessie chained to a fricking rail like a dog cooking meth lol and kept him in a fricking cage.


The best scene in the entire series to me, the best one single scene is at the end of season 4 when he realizes he's about to probably die and goes for the money and she tells him she gave it to her boss and him being on the floor, that, right there, that very moment the mix of emotions, and he just starts laughing because there's nothing else to do... that was so fricking perfect.



But no, the show is not deep.


People always say the sopranos was the first of it's kind, when really it was Oz, not the sopranos that was the first of it's kind. And the wire debuts just 4 years after the sopranos IMHO the two most important TV shows that were "backbone" shows were the west wing, as it shows that americans could stomach an intelligent TV show, and Mad Men, which showed that Americans could stand a slower pace but deep plotted TV show.

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So far, not that impressed. After all I had heard about it, it just has not been very good. I will keep watching but please tell me it gets better

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I felt the same way when I started it last summer. Really slow and huge cast to keep up with. I was also coming off binge watching The Shield, so that did not help.

By S2 I was hooked and didn't want it to end. Phenomenal series, I can't wait to watch it again in a year or so.

Season 1 is probably the worst season honestly but u have to watch it

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I just finished Mad Men from start to finish. I agree. It also had me a little off at first but I got into it and really enjoyed it. The ending of Mad Men was nothing spectacular but Im not sure there was anything spectacular there to do.

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a lot of the same people that work on Sopranos made Mad Men so there is a real connection

Just saw this thread. Sopranos is excellent. I still think about how fricked up season 4 was with Janice and Ralph. Oh, OP is a fig.