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Originally Posted by ilduclo
this carried over from the movies thread, more apropos here.
I think the Sopranos was the best tv show ever. Disputed by another. Please share thoughts? Certainly not Breaking Bad or The Wire, I hope....
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Rolling Stone recently came out with a list of the 50 greatest television shows of all time, and yep, Sopranos was #1. So I think yours is a very popular opinion among critics.
I myself would not call it the greatest of all time. I feel like it's more of a Kobe than a Michael, if you know what I mean. It started so strong, and hit some just obscenely great highs along the way, and I actually think it ended on a really strong note as well, but some of the seasons got bogged down a bit by some really fucking depraved audience mind game shit that I personally didn't dig. Like when Tony was recovering from being shot, and you started to see him as a victim, almost feel sorry for him, until he goes and beats the living pulp out of his bodyguard just to show his goomba friends that he's still tough n' stuff. That was horrifying to me.
I think the Sopranos missed out on a few golden opportunities. All those moments when Tony's staring out at his empire, watching it thrive or crumble or whatever, and we as audience members are wondering, "What is that? Is that remorse? Is that sadness? Does he get it?" All of those moments were ultimately wasted because there was never an answer. Not a firm one. And in that sense, the character never grew, and in the end lead his own family to the fucking slaughter like lambs (at least, that's what I got from the "Don't Stop" ending of the final episode... 'twas no happy ending, not to this guy. Things went black unexpectedly for a fucking REASON.)
There's no denying it was a great show. A tremendous show. But I don't like being toyed with as a viewer... not in that way. I don't like laughing at Pauly's dumb hijinks one minute, and then watching him do something absolutely terrible the next. Yes, it's moral ambiguity and I'm fine with that, but I feel that Sopranos was missing a "true north," so to speak. There was no redemption in that story.
I'm not sure I'd say Breaking Bad is the best ever, but at least it had a true north. It had a conscience, and there was resolution at the end. It was also more engrossing from a filmmaking perspective, and I think the filming techniques were more advanced and the story was more centralized. The ending was painful and parts of it were extremely hard to watch, but I think it has a leg up on Sopranos when it comes to direction and cinematography, tension and release, and, sorry, but overall performance quality as well.