The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

dont you mean The_Wire_s01e01.torrent

hahahaha

I'm pretty sure if I had only seen one episode of each my opinion would be exactly the same. It's simple enough to say I have far more of a connection with the themes and characters in The Wire than I'll ever have with anybody in The Sopranos. If my life was a little different maybe I'd get the Sopranos as much as I do The Wire, but I doubt it. I don't care how cool Dad's job is, it's still a show about Dad. Dad shows are boring.

I voted for The Wire, but felt conflicted doing so. Not that I'm a streetwise fellow, but The Wire seemed to have an uncanny verisimilitude which transcended not only the medium of television, but most contemporary fiction period. Ah, but for delicious storytelling and characterization, The Sopranos set the bar so high for pretenders to the throne that this past decade has been a joy to behold in terms of TV drama. And I would've voted Tony, if not for seasons 4 & 5 derailing the series somewhat before the brilliant final run. FWIW, I know I've extolled its merits on other threads, but even as a (slightly) inferior stepchild of these shows overall, The Shield selectively combined the most effective elements of each series to bow out in the best final run I've ever seen.

pillbox i was gonna stomp on this jagger-ish "transcended not only the medium of television, but most contemporary fiction period" bs but then saw you're a shield man so we cool.

Final season of The Shield > Final season of The Wire

I feel bad for people who have become less down with The Wire because they know all these "Wire Stans"

ugh people like it now

like, they like it a lot

because I totally understand starting to lose respect for something for no good reason at all besides encountering a sudden outcrop of people who say they love it but the way they love it has absolutely nothing to do with why you think it deserves to be loved (and/or totally insincere checking douche patrol, stabbing is the answer)

I would say my opinion of the sopranos was painted in this way before I even watched an episode, e.g. 2002: wow I have been given the opportunity to sit in on this big conference room meeting with serious thinky govt dudes in suits and shiny officers who are going to talk about the future of united states intelligence analysis technology, look at that guy down there, he is in charge of some amazing shit, what? oh he's starting the entire meeting by talking about the last sopranos episode. between this experience and the theme song which people keep making me listen to I think I'm gonna go ahead and hate this show.

final season of king of queens > final season of the wire

final season of ed, final season of october road, final season of weeds

xpost: Yeah, for having such great closing songs throughout the series, they sure mucked up an otherwise fine opening sequence with that terrible, terrible music.

i like the sopranos' opening music, but it isn't as good as the shield's opening music.

re wire stans: fair enough, some of my best friends are wire stans.

what i have in mind is this entry in the guardian's '12 biggest douchebags of the year' list:

"The 'hopper' in The Wire who shot Omar

How could you do it? HOW COULD YOU? You ruined everything!"

fuck that noise.

seriously I was all ready to love gandolfini but my first sopranos episode watching experience had a lot of ground to cover just to get to 0 after being exposed to some of the fanclub - I have yet to meet a huge Wire fan who disgusted me. I think living in the balt/wash area adjusts in both directions for fanbase - the ppl I encounter who love Tony are poseurs by default and the ppl I encounter who love Omar generally are able to point to an aspect of their own life and say "they did this part exactly how it is"

ima level with you: here in cambridge, cambridgeshire, i don't meet many people who have come up like omar, or like big t. there's dom, i guess.

thank you, for leveling with me.

"The 'hopper' in The Wire who shot Omar

How could you do it? HOW COULD YOU? You ruined everything!"

fuck that noise.

!!!!!!!!!!!

We only have three more eps before we finish. :(

a totally unrelated question: which will "age" better? will anyone be watching these shows ten years from now?

not suggesting that effect their quality now, but curious if whether the supposed realism of a show like The Wire will "date" it, or at least reveal the seams in its' worldview.

probably one for a b'more to answer, but a lot of the wire seems to apply as much to the 80s and 90s as right now. eg the towers that the barksdales run in s01-02 had actually been demolished sometime in the 90s?

dunno,

Sopranos is about the human mind and depression and family, all of which never change. The Wire is very built into the contemporary drug trade, media, unions, slang, all of which can be wildly different in 10 years time.

(also, the sopranos is coming up for its tenth anniversary, 'the wire' for its seventh -- they seem to be holding up ok.)

lolz Tombot doesn't have kids = can't appreciate Sopranos. okay

other boring shit about dads: the Bible, Hamlet, etc.

the ppl I encounter who love Tony are poseurs by default and the ppl I encounter who love Omar generally are able to point to an aspect of their own life and say "they did this part exactly how it is"

― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 16 December 2008 10:04 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You don't know any Catholics, huh?

well, im not suggesting certain things "never change"--but is the sopranos more a self-contained universe? and is the Wire dependent at all upon an effect of "oh wow THAT'S how it really is" for it's emotional or thematic weight?

the is Wire dependent at all upon an effect of "oh wow THAT'S how it really is" for stuffwhitepeoplelike.com

is the Wire dependent at all upon an effect of "oh wow THAT'S how it really is" for it's emotional or thematic weight?

no

ok. just asking! (i've only seen 1.5 seasons)

sopranos is about a lot of irl shit too, though! it's not totally self-contained.

i reckon people, maybe especially non-americans, do watch 'the wire' partly to learn about the world in some sense. no shame in that.

yeah i don't mean to suggest that the Wire isn't about the way things are; i just think sometimes people are overly simplistic in their characterization of the show's realism.

also the impact of its realism is not timebound--for one thing, institutions do shape people's lives and the way the Wire represents that remains powerful even if the institutions have changed. also, i just watched season 2 and the real thing that it represents seems like a fundamental shift in American history.

institutions do shape people's lives and the way the Wire represents that remains powerful even if the institutions have changed

this, for me, is why i voted for The Wire.

not suggesting that effect their quality now, but curious if whether the supposed realism of a show like The Wire will "date" it, or at least reveal the seams in its' worldview.

― ryan, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11:44 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sopranos is about the human mind and depression and family, all of which never change. The Wire is very built into the contemporary drug trade, media, unions, slang, all of which can be wildly different in 10 years time.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11:48 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The Wire will have more historical weight when the era it directly depicts has passed, and will help future generations better understand what happened. The Sopranos will be a latter day artifact of the 20th century pop culture fascination w/ the mob, but it'll be secondary to a lot of superior films. In my opinion.

not to be all TIME WILL VINDICATE MY PERSONAL TASTE but since it was brought up, i mean

to clarify, i think the Wire is realist in its commitment to represent something about the world but the representation itself is dramatic; it's not necessarily formally realistic. i'm thinking of things like D'Angelo, Wallace, and Bodie's discussion of the chess game in season 1; those moments are less about what a person might actually say if they were in this situation and more about how can a dramatic monologue economically encapsulate some larger insight. moments like that are where people might locate the Wire's "thematic weight"
if they're interested in that.

also i don't care what year it is people are watching season 4, they are going to cry and have violent nightmares.

also some dude otm

institutions do shape people's lives and the way the Wire represents that remains powerful even if the institutions have changed

sopranos also represents this idea. (the family being an institution.) and both shows use changes in criminal behavious as an analogue for changes in capitalism -- an old idea but an effective one. series 2 of 'the wire' is pretty exceptional in being directly about changes in capitalism (a lot of the time).

and both have a big waterfront development thing going on.

but the sopranos does all that and has some female characters too.

some dude pretty much OTM (except for maybe secondary to a lot of superior films part.)

"but the sopranos does all that and has some female characters too."

Uh yeah so does the Wire.

okay, yeah, i know very little about the Sopranos. i maintain that the Wire is more generous emotionally because it loves its characters and it's okay with the viewer loving its characters, but that is based on a comparison with, like, three episodes of the Sopranos, so i don't really know what i'm talking about.

I haven't seen the Wire (yet) - is it really male dominated...? One of the best things about the Sopranos is the totally amazing female characters/acting (Carmela, Janice, Livia, etc.)

i don't know, the female characters thing is my only criticism of the Wire. it has female characters of course, but it's way less successful at representing women's lives than men's. i always figure simon genuinely has trouble doing that and knows it and kind of stayed away from it.

the family being an institution

i think the Sopranos uses the family more as an idea. and by the end of the end on the Sopranos, i didn't give one shit about any of the characters except for Christopha. the Wire seems to have richer characters

Shakey, there are female characters on the Wire and some of them are great, and the actors are all fantastic, but the show doesn't seem to me to be about women's lives in the way it's about men's.

there are no female characters in the wire as strong as carmela or livia. one other aspect of s05's relative badness is they basically wasted amy ryan.

I'm not getting that impression (about characters) through seasons 1 and season 2 (so far)---The Wire could be seen as radical (again, so far) in that it DOESN'T allow any great characters...people seem pretty much caught in the ant-farm.

Kima would be the exception, and maybe this is bullshit of me, but it seemed to me that it was easier for the creators to write her because she's a lesbian.

there are great characters on the Wire that is crazy talk!