Five seasons in, and I'm still torn on how I feel about The Sopranos. There is a lot to praise here, especially James Gandolfini's excellent performance as mob boss Tony Soprano- maybe the greatest character in television history; there are so many layers to the guy that you keep going back and forth between loving and hating him. The supporting characters and their actors are great, the writing is really good, but I still can't help but feel a bit underwhelmed anyway due to the immense hype I know this show once generated. This was the cultural phenomenon that people went crazy for? Some shows just beg for viewing parties and week-long discussions between episodes- Lost, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad; but watching The Sopranos reminded me of how I watch Mad Men- I always enjoy it, but when an episode ends I'm rarely begging for more. I guess it's just not trying to be that type of show, and it's tough to say "that type" of show even existed before The Sopranos aside from cult hits like Twin Peaks or something. Still though we're in the home stretch- I've heard varying reports on whether the final split season was as good as the others, so we'll see in due time. Oh yeah one last thing, Steve Buscemi shows up this season as a recently-released-from-prison cousin of Tony's who had never been mentioned before, and I was surprised how easily he fit in with the rest of the cast and how well that decision worked. Much better than anything I've seen on Boardwalk Empire! Next up for me will be The Wire's final season.
You touched on it a bit, but so much of the Sopranos legacy has to do with how much the show directly influenced the glut of quality dramatic television that came afterward. Think of "the greatest movies of all time" and you can picture stuff from all over the past sixty or seventy years. "Casablanca" may not be your particular cup of tea, but its just as widely regarded as, say, "Pulp Fiction," to movie nerds. TV is different, though; even though the medium has existed for like seventy years, if you took any sort of consensus "top 10 TV dramas ever," they'd all be post-2000. The Sopranos opened up the floodgates and is the "godfather" (mob pun!) of the entire canon, so to speak. So that's why it's the most hyped show in history.
ReplyDeleteNow, granted, legacy doesn't mean anything when it comes to individual tastes. I respect what "The Legend of Zelda" did for video games, but that shit was borderline unplayable to my more modern sense of gaming. So if the show isn't doing quite as much for you as you had hoped it would, I can't just sputter and point to its importance in defense.
We can talk about the show's thesis and messages and such once you're done (ditto The Wire) and I really look forward to that - everybody, lend your thoughts! - but if there's one central message I'd say you should recognize in Season 6 (both parts), it's that "people don't change." You can mix things up, ditch your wife, start a new job, adopt a new philosophy, and so on, but at the end of the day you're still you and all of your bad vices aren't going away. It's a horribly cynical take, but it's also comfortably humanizing. "Of course Tony would do that!" "Oh, Carmella - again?" "Well, that's Janice!" "Classic Paulie!" "Come on, Meadow. You're better than that!" And so forth and so on.
We'll discuss! But not yet... not yet.
Yeah, I worry that I'm underselling the Sopranos when I do think it is an excellent show, just not my favorite. It definitely lives up to its legacy as a game-changer and resulted in much better shows getting produced in the years after than in the years before.
ReplyDeleteStill though I got curious about some "all time top tv shows" lists and holy shit is IMDb's bad-
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_rating,desc&title_type=tv_series
I can forgive the heavy emphasis on mini-series which only have to be good for like ten episodes, but Dexter and four different anime's make the top 25, ahead of Seinfeld and the Simpsons. Also Angry Video Game Nerd shows up in the top fifty. This is why these things should never be left to popular votes.
Oh yeah, it's a mess. I've thought about this before, like when seeding some of my tournaments, and I think I understand this phenomenon. It's really easy to see a movie, and you can love or hate that movie, and either way, you're probably equally likely to sign in and give it a rating. TV, on the other hand, you really aren't able to rate shows unless you watch them, so to me it almost makes more sense to think of IMDb's TV ratings as "most devoted cult followings," if that makes sense. Dexter still baffles me, but maybe those who rated it highly early on never bothered going back to change their votes.
ReplyDeleteThat's another thing - TV shows kind of have shapes associated with them. "Season 1 started strong, but 2 was kind of hit or miss. Then 3 was off the rails entirely. Good thing they righted the ship in 4, just in time to end things on a good note!" That's how I'd describe The O.C. But what grade would I give The O.C.? Is it just the average of the four seasons? Or is it the sum total end-of-series experience I'm left with?
The TL;DR version here is that movies happen, and you react to them, while shows can keep getting better or worse long after you've made up your mind on them.