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I don't think The Sopranos is very good, does that make me a cunt?

Started by cliggg, December 10, 2019, 08:41:10 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

cliggg

I recently started watching The Sopranos and am not really enjoying it. It's kind of a slog to get through for me. I just finished the third episode of season 3 and I haven't even once had that must watch next episode immediately feeling. I'll persist with it and finish it over the next few months but I'm not expecting improvement. I do love The Shield & The Wire both of which are often mentioned as being influenced by The Sopranos. So am I a cunt?





Funcrusher

The Wire is better than The Sopranos. The Sopranos is good though.

Famous Mortimer

I got bored of it a bit into series 2 and stopped watching it.


Famous Mortimer


Urinal Cake

The Sopranos is a lot funnier with a lot of relatable characters and lines. Tony Soprano as portrayed by Gandolfini is brilliant. I think in it's hey day it got overrated because it was able to tap into the deep disatisfaction people had in the early 2000s. Sort of the Seinfeld effect it was successful so it got copied a lot.


bgmnts

Gandolfini made Tony so unbearably nasty and hard to like in the last season or two it was genius.

Even just his voice getting more annoying and his eating become louder and more piggish.

This is the apex of Tony's later season pointless cruelty and winding up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCTabRtTQpQ

The smug look on his face.

Custard

Not just a cunt, but a silly, hideous one

SHAME

SHAAAME ON YOUUUUUU

Norton Canes

Quote from: cliggg on December 10, 2019, 08:41:10 PM
I recently started watching The Sopranos and am not really enjoying it. It's kind of a slog to get through for me. I just finished the third episode of season 3

Right

cliggg

Quote from: Shameless Custard on December 10, 2019, 09:30:01 PM
Not just a cunt, but a silly, hideous one

SHAME

SHAAAME ON YOUUUUUU
I'm not hideous, I'm very good looking. I look like an older Junior Soprano. I have no issue with the rest of your post.


Rizla

Me n missus started watching it a few months ago, we're 4 or 5 episodes away from the final one. First time watching it for both of us. We both loved the Wire and Breaking Bad and thought "surely these two programmes are the best that telly (well american telly) can get?" No, it is the Sopranos. It is a masterpiece. BUT. You can't be watching 4 episodes in a row, whilst checking your phone and talking over it. It's worth your full attention, it's worth rationing episodes out. It's absolutely superb. And you are a cunt.

colacentral

I think you need to let go of watching it expecting an experience similar to The Wire or other modern serialised dramas where they tend to want you to watch them a season at a time and experience a big payoff at the end which has been methodically built towards. The Sopranos is much more episodic in nature, with quite loose serialisation, particularly in the first three seasons. There aren't any cliffhangers or major revelations at the end of an episode.

Take an episode like "University" as an example of how the Sopranos is quite unique in that balance of episodic versus serialised - it obviously moves particular character arcs forward and vaguely has some payoff down the line (not wanting to spoil anything for future episodes), but ultimately it's a self-contained story, largely about a character we've never met up until that point.

"Another Toothpick" and "Employee of the Month" - also season 3 episodes - are like this too.

Keep watching and I'm sure it will click eventually, and you'll enjoy the earlier seasons more on a rewatch.

The later seasons are much closer to the tone and style of The Wire, particularly the final 9 episodes, which to me are the greatest 9 episodes of TV ever made.

The Seinfeld comparison is apt and one that I make often too.  Both shows have a similar kind of humour and sensibility. "Full Leather Jacket" from season 2 could easily have been an episode of Seinfeld.

In every Sopranos thread I recommend https://sopranosautopsy.com/ - a really great episode by episode analysis, up to the last few episodes now. Though they contain spoilers for future episodes, so beware if it's your first time through.

For entertaining and insightful episode reviews without spoilers I'd recommend the AV Club's:
https://www.avclub.com/c/tv-review/the-sopranos/season-1

Both will enhance your appreciation of the series.

cliggg

Quote from: Rizla on December 10, 2019, 09:43:09 PM
Me n missus started watching it a few months ago, we're 4 or 5 episodes away from the final one. First time watching it for both of us. We both loved the Wire and Breaking Bad and thought "surely these two programmes are the best that telly (well american telly) can get?" No, it is the Sopranos. It is a masterpiece. BUT. You can't be watching 4 episodes in a row, whilst checking your phone and talking over it. It's worth your full attention, it's worth rationing episodes out. It's absolutely superb.
I give it my full attention, even now this far into it. I will finish it in early 2020. I started off watching 2 episodes in a row every day but now I'm watching 1 episode every 2-3 days.

Quote from: Rizla on December 10, 2019, 09:43:09 PMAnd you are a cunt.
I know.

cliggg

Quote from: colacentral on December 10, 2019, 09:46:47 PM
I think you need to let go of watching it expecting an experience similar to The Wire or other modern serialised dramas where they tend to want you to watch them a season at a time and experience a big payoff at the end which has been methodically built towards. The Sopranos is much more episodic in nature, with quite loose serialisation, particularly in the first three seasons. There aren't any cliffhangers or major revelations at the end of an episode.

Take an episode like "University" as an example of how the Sopranos is quite unique in that balance of episodic versus serialised - it obviously moves particular character arcs forward and vaguely has some payoff down the line (not wanting to spoil anything for future episodes), but ultimately it's a self-contained story, largely about a character we've never met up until that point.

"Another Toothpick" and "Employee of the Month" - also season 3 episodes - are like this too.

Keep watching and I'm sure it will click eventually, and you'll enjoy the earlier seasons more on a rewatch.

The later seasons are much closer to the tone and style of The Wire, particularly the final 9 episodes, which to me are the greatest 9 episodes of TV ever made.

The Seinfeld comparison is apt and one that I make often too.  Both shows have a similar kind of humour and sensibility. "Full Leather Jacket" from season 2 could easily have been an episode of Seinfeld.

In every Sopranos thread I recommend https://sopranosautopsy.com/ - a really great episode by episode analysis, up to the last few episodes now. Though they contain spoilers for future episodes, so beware if it's your first time through.

For entertaining and insightful episode reviews without spoilers I'd recommend the AV Club's:
https://www.avclub.com/c/tv-review/the-sopranos/season-1

Both will enhance your appreciation of the series.
It's fair to say I expected a masterpiece after years of seeing it referred to as one and you are spot on about the tone of the show, I was expecting more HOLY SHIT!! type moments. The 3 episodes you mentioned are the next 3 for me to watch. Thanks for the recommendations for the autopsy and avclub but I'll wait until I finish the show before possibly delving into things like that.

colacentral

I'd also say that if you're only three episodes into season three, you haven't yet experienced the best the show has to offer. The only episode up to that point which I'd put in a top ten episodes list is "The Knight in White Satin Armor" from season two. You haven't yet got to classics like "Pine Barrens", "The Weight," "Whitecaps", "Whoever Did This," "Irregular Around the Margins," or "Kennedy & Heidi," to name a few which blow all the first two seasons and everything from The Wire out of the water.

Urinal Cake

Everything ramps up at the end in The Sopranos.

The Wire and The Sopranos have different aims. The Sopranos is essentially a family drama (in which violence is the final arbiter) where characters are the focus. The Wire is more ambitious- it's about society and the institutions and community are the focus.
Hence in The Sopranos oddly it's more hopeful because people seem to determine their own fate while in The Wire people are resigned to it. Maybe Herc escapes his fate but that's due to his dumb luck. There is shit that happens in The Sopranos for petty, personal reasons while in The Wire there is always an instrumental end (even Marlo going after Omar).

Dr Rock


Cuellar

Love The Sopranos, best show to have been on television.

Watched quite a lot of The Wire and well...meh.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: colacentral on December 10, 2019, 09:59:09 PM
I'd also say that if you're only three episodes into season three, you haven't yet experienced the best the show has to offer.
No offence to your good self, colacentral, but this sort of thing doesn't half piss me off. I've lost count of the number of times, on seeing someone say they don't like X, being told "you just haven't seen enough of it yet". It makes what's supposed to be a fun activity into a slog - and indicates that 30 hours or so isn't enough time to make up your mind on something. Yes, I've seen more episodes of "Earth: Final Conflict" than I have "The Sopranos", which doesn't exactly help my case (and wasn't exactly a fun watch either); but I wonder if anyone in the history of online arguments has ever gone away after one of these exchanges, watched more of a show that they've not enjoyed to that point, and changed their mind?

chveik

yeah if you don't enjoy it after 29 episodes you probably never will.

Urinal Cake

The question is do you like/are interested in any of the main characters? Tony, Melfi, AJ, Chris, Phil then you should stick around.

jobotic

I'm on page 1,147 of War and Peace. Not impressed, does it get any better?

.

colacentral

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on December 10, 2019, 10:42:57 PM
No offence to your good self, colacentral, but this sort of thing doesn't half piss me off. I've lost count of the number of times, on seeing someone say they don't like X, being told "you just haven't seen enough of it yet". It makes what's supposed to be a fun activity into a slog - and indicates that 30 hours or so isn't enough time to make up your mind on something. Yes, I've seen more episodes of "Earth: Final Conflict" than I have "The Sopranos", which doesn't exactly help my case (and wasn't exactly a fun watch either); but I wonder if anyone in the history of online arguments has ever gone away after one of these exchanges, watched more of a show that they've not enjoyed to that point, and changed their mind?

I know what you mean but this isn't to someone who hates it, is it? The OP likes it but hasn't been sold on it being a masterpiece, and has already said they'll be watching it through to the end.

It reflects my experience with the show anyway, from first watching it all 10 years ago. I liked it just fine until the latter half of season 4, when it suddenly all made sense to me. Some people prefer the first half of the Sopranos, some prefer the second. I'd argue that viewers coming from shows like The Wire and other modern dramas are more likely to prefer the second half as it goes darker and more serialised, more closely resembling something that would be made today.

I wouldn't say it about any other drama I can think of. Maybe The Leftovers, where the first season is mostly standard Lost-tier mystery bilge, whilst the third season is a perfect TV masterpiece which should be mandatory viewing.

It's just the nature of dramas that you sometimes have to get through not as good stuff first, due to the serialisation. With comedy you can say "start with season 3" because you don't need to see the first two to get what's going on. It would be a shame for someone to give up on say Seinfeld after two seasons when by season 6 it's a completely different show.

colacentral

Star Trek: TNG is a good example. The first two seasons are fucking woeful. Luckily, it's episodic, so you can just tell someone to start from season 3, when the difference in quality is night and day. If it was made today it would be too heavily serialised to be able to do that.