The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

defensive crackers itt ought to be mindful that this thread only went down that storied route after hm and myself cast aspersions on retard king k3vvy k's bad faith racial politicking

i guess most of u just like the wire cuz it's a great show!

shakey my only point was that its ridic to build wire strawmen bcuz you could do the same thing w/ a show about mafia dons. i wasnt building strawmen, just pointing out that doing so in defense of one of hollywood's timeless archetypes of violent baddassness is kind of a glass houses / throwing stones situation

wiremen, surely.

pretty sure k3vin was making a joke about the margin of the wire's win + number of black people in each show + absurd post-obama tea party convictions re: the balance of power in america; but i am not him so i guess i cannot confirm that he does not think that white people are always getting the short end of the stick

oh never mind i see what is going on, oh well

deej - don't worry - you were otm

fair enough deej, no worries

xp

pretty sure k3vin was making a joke about the margin of the wire's win + number of black people in each show + absurd post-obama tea party convictions re: the balance of power in america; but i am not him so i guess i cannot confirm that he does not think that white people are always getting the short end of the stick

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 10 March 2011 22:41 (3 minutes ago)

nah he really is that stupid, but he'll appresh the alibi i'm sure

deej - don't worry - you were otm

― sarahel, Thursday, 10 March 2011 22:43 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

this goes w/out saying -- that post was abt tamtam butthurting me while i was banned

tams is the marlo stansfield of ilx

haha that's p good for the relentlessly secondrate horseshoe xox

― maxwell's silva hamartia (nakhchivan), Thursday, March 10, 2011 4:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

do i know you?

it's stanfield, fucknuts! j/k

nah i dont think so horsey, im tryna think where i saw you before

seem to remember u may have said some stuff was problematic once

no doubt

if u r in with sarahel then perhaps she can do the prop joe mediation stuff cuz im mostly chill with her ppl

was wondering when this was gonna get all pseudometa you think it's one way but it's really paulie walnuts

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/266/7/5/20100602___chris_partlow_by_huxtable-d2zcawb.jpg

so did anybody see how Snoop got arrested...again? and I mean the character, not the rapper

the character

difficult listening hour has made some good posts in this thread!

i started season 1 of the sopranos at some point recently because of this damn thread. it was pretty good. i should finish it.

― horseshoe, Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:39 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

Yeah, I've been meaning to give Sopranos another go - I didn't even watch the last two seasons anyway.

omar little is the omar little of ilx

so did anybody see how Snoop got arrested...again? and I mean the character, not the rapper

― orville reddenflocka (San Te), Thursday, March 10, 2011 6:13 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the character

― maxwell's silva hamartia (nakhchivan), Thursday, March 10, 2011 6:15 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark

worst poll in the history of polls

hey, at least Mad Men wasn't an option

Any TV programme is going to suffer when compared to the Wire, frankly.

― Chopper Aristotle (Matt DC), Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:07 PM (3 years ago)

http://www.inhabitat.com/wp-content/uploads/bestof2008mostpopular.jpg

also you're leaving out the giant ironic tragic joke that takes several seasons to set up wherein stringer is portrayed to us as the smart ambitious forward-thinker who wants to go legit and is held back by his childhood friend avon's "posturing", and during his period of total control of the organization in avon's absence takes it in a direction that seems to us WHITE COLLEGE KIDS to be productive and sane and disconnected from avon's apparently irrational honor killings, and to be making an argument for the hoary old analogy between the drug trade and good ol' standard "legitimate" american entrepreneurism; and stringer "comes into conflict" with avon not because avon is a gangsta cartoon but because avon believes there are certain things about the socioeconomic situation into which they were born and to the top of which they've risen that make it fundamentally separate from and unable to successfully interface with the different one stringer wants to enter, i.e., avon thinks the analogy is incomplete; and only after he has sent his closest friend to prison for life in order to ensure his total severance from his origins is it brought home to stringer that he has made a mistake and that he has not escaped but is in fact being cynically used by all the people he looks up to as "legitimate", people whose fundamental sharkiness and sociopathy avon always understood better than stringer. then stringer is murdered, right after understanding this.

i mean that is what is going on with that arc, not "sometimes there is recidivism".

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:40 PM (1 year ago)

man this is an incredible post

yes

"but this is that other thing"

Sopranos tho

http://i.imgur.com/wJjensk.jpg?1

just kicking off season 4 of the wire and rly nothing actually touches this show, nothing

hankies at the ready, it’s heavy fuckin’ stuff

on the whole I feel more attached to Sopranos and Deadwood but yeah no one who's tried to do anything even remotely like it has come anywhere close since

s4 is the apex for sure

Liked The Wire a lot, but would definitely choose The Sopranos if I were re-starting one tonight.

it still blows my mind that David Simon is such an obnoxious, blowhard #resistance liberal, complete with verbose compound insults and whither-the-glorious-republic sentiment. has he watched this show called The Wire??

Saw this trailer last week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_8U7gjb2k4

Took me a minute to recognize Dominic West...disconnect.

Wire season 4 is still safely perched atop my pedestal of things that are all-time.

Liked The Wire a lot, but would definitely choose The Sopranos if I were re-starting one tonight.

― clemenza, Wednesday, November 14, 2018 1:47 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same, I think

the sopranos (iirc) felt more *consistent* throughout its run, and much more focused on the characters themselves than the wire. obviously the characters were great in the wire, but the show was p obviously about "the issues". I think the episodic nature of the seasons themselves (each built around an investigation) was both a help and a hindrance; each season obv had a theme, but they also felt more sealed-off/standalone as a result.

tbh i think that breaking bad, once it hit its stride, was better than both

Deadwood is special but gepetto died while carving it and it swoops between clunking and sensational

sopranos is great but the spinning wheels comment above is otm

breaking bad really doesnt belong anywhere near the conversation tbh im not sure ill even go back to it after getting sick of how nonsensical it got

mad men was shite always

what else

lol xp

Six Feet Under? Maybe still up there but I haven't revisited since it ended.

surely not at this tier

6FU has *not* aged well

BBad won't either, I don't think, not helped by the fact that watching week-to-week with a ton of suspense and anticipation was by far the best way to experience it.

In retrospect that setting and set of characters seems to cry out for an episode/season order half as long, also, imo

I like to imagine a world where Enlightened got like six seasons and a level of deserved acclaim enjoyed by these other shows, maybe if they'd made Laura Dern's character a dude.

enlightened is a half-hour comedy show, so not really comparable to these prestige dramas.

sopranos is the best show ever imo and sort of towers above the wire in characterization, and, you know, saying something about people and american society without beating you over the head with didactic left-liberal polemics

I'm probably biased in that I saw BB way more recently than Sopranos or the Wire, and also think that Better Call Saul should def be in the conversation

how i break it down to an extent:
- the sopranos was essentially an extended family drama with guns
- the wire skillfully dramatized lessons about urban sociology in america
- breaking bad very obviously aimed for epic tragedy

i think the reason i liked BB more was that once it figured out what it was (a chronicle of walt's moral decline), it was easier for the producers to find the endpoint and then work on how to get there. the wire seemed to be making it up as it went along, because there wasn't ever a real overarching narrative arc to guide things. that sprawl was part of its appeal to me, but ultimately i think the narrower remit (?) of BB's plot made the final seasons and the ending much more satisfying

(nb i haven't seen the last season of the sopranos)

I've seen The Wire three times through, though it's been a few years, but when I think of it I *always* go back to season two

despite the fact that it dragged on about 1.5 seasons too long, I would argue The Shield stuck the epic-tragedy landing way better than BBad did. especially since BBad's last two eps are largely disposable