The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

Seriously, though, post-being-a-dick, if anyone can explain to me better than the countless slavering articles over the years what the meat of the Sopranos was, beyond a run-of-the-mill family-and-work drama about people who happened to be really unpleasant, I would appreciate it in a seeking-to-understand-not-argue kind of way

it's about the drug trade in baltimore

season 5 is worse than the previous 4, but i maintain that the end of season 5 recovers and i cried like 5000 times in the last two episodes.

xpost to Que

it's gonna end all weird Don't Stop Believin/onion ring/dream sequence bullshit

so wrong

so wrong

how was that a good ending of a TV show?

...

what the meat of the Sopranos was

its about a man who corrupts and/or destroys everyone he comes into contact with. Like Le Strada.

oh yeah, let's have THIS conversation

what kind of question is that? you think all shows should end with a 20-minute montage sending off the characters?

Bobby 'Bacala' Baccalieri: I mean, our line of work, it's always out there. You probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?

hey i'm just saying, i'd love for someone to try and explain it to me

yeah everything Bubbles related in s5 is like niagara falls for me

i <3 s1ocki

The idea that the Sopranos would have been better if it ended with them going "TONY IS DEAD, LOOK HERE COMES THE RUSSIAN FROM SERIES 3 WITH A GUN AND HE CAPS HIM! AWESOME!" is fantastically wrong-headed.

The idea that the Sopranos would have been better if it ended with them going "TONY IS DEAD, LOOK HERE COMES THE RUSSIAN FROM SERIES 3 WITH A GUN AND HE CAPS HIM! AWESOME!" is fantastically wrong-headed.

That's not what I'm saying.

yes it is... admit it

its about a man who corrupts and/or destroys everyone he comes into contact with

Okay, I like this, and will keep it in mind if I ever rewatch any of the series, though I can't escape the feeling that everyone he comes into contact with is already corrupted before the start of episode 1

xpost - I don't think that's what Que is suggesting in the least

actually it is... admit it

Yeah you get to watch him corrupt them FURTHER though!

For 70 + hours! WOO HOO!

ending of sopranos = total "hey dudes this is a TV show, get over it" among many, many other things. it's great!

to me the sopranos is basically about family & depression & the way people relate and the way that fundamentally people do and don't (more often the latter) change. the commentary on capitalism, the american way, business etc is there but it's not REALLY what the show is about. its lens is really different than the wire's... so much that comparing them is kind of apples and oranges, you end up comparing subject matter and not the art itself, which to me is kind of a dead-end.

i think the ending David Chase served up after all that time we spent with Tony and Carmella was a weak cop out. i loved the 2nd to last episode with AJ and the pool and the fire and stuff. but the last episode, and the last sequence in particular just rubbed me the wrong way. and no, russian flashback mobsters and/or montages are not what i'm suggesting either

smart people defending the sopranos in this thread have made me kind of want to watch it now. i love edie falco.

the wire is my jesus, though.

everyone he comes into contact with is already corrupted before the start of episode 1

No. DR. MELFI duh. He corrupts his children, for another example (at the beginning AJ doesn't even know he's in the mafia). He ruins Artie Bucco, who up to then has been a hapless civilian resterateur. He corrupts/kills/otherwise ruins multiple characters who are introduced throughout the show. Tony draws everyone into his web and makes them all complicit in a whole host of horrible things by virtue of their casual greed, their gullibility, or their desire to be like him/live vicariously through him (ie, Melfi, or Christopher). Its about the banality of evil and how its enabled by all kinds of little innocuous compromises and self-centered behavior.

ending of sopranos = total "hey dudes this is a TV show, get over it" among many, many other things. it's great!

― ryan, Tuesday, 16 December 2008 17:43 (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"That's the question I get asked more than any other. It drives people crazy: 'Where's the Russian? What happened to the Russian?' We could say, 'Well, he got out and there's a big mob war with the Russians,' or 'He crawled off and died.' But we wanted to keep it ambiguous. You know, not everything gets answered in life. They shot a guy. Who knows where he went? Who cares about some Russian? This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? It's a murky world out there. It's a murky life these guys lead. And by the way, I do know where the Russian is. But I'll never say because so many people got so pissy about it."

i find the failure of change, and redemption of any sort, to be immensely crushing in the Sopranos. in it's way it's incredibly dark.

god i love that "i do know where the Russian is"...that's hilarious!

"i think the ending David Chase served up after all that time we spent with Tony and Carmella was a weak cop out."

I agree with the caveat that if Season 3 or 4 had ended that way, I would have loved it. Instead it reinforced how completely bereft of ideas the final 30 someodd episodes had been.

i think my reaction to both is, in the end, a moral thing -- the wire is about people figuring things out and the sopranos is about people never figuring things out

i find the failure of change, and redemption of any sort, to be immensely crushing in the Sopranos. in it's way it's incredibly dark.

― ryan, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 5:45 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's UNBELIEVABLY dark.

I'll also admit that the ending of the Sopranos struck me as a good example of what I mean by ladling Great Dramatic Significance onto something that is not great or dramatically significant, in the knowledge that viewers were ready to accept that significance as a given, as something already earned, and pore over it. Once again, I couldn't figure out what was there, and it felt a bit "and then someone shoots Tony."

(Hahaha but per the misreading of Mr. Que I'd probably have found it powerful if it ended with a POV shot of AJ across the table making a horrified "gun going off at dad's temple" face -- that'd have stuck with me, especially since in all discussion of what happened at the end, I don't think I saw many people discuss the emotional logistics of dad's head blowing up all over your onion rings, right in front of you.)

and it makes SO much sense that david chase suffers from depression... ive never seen a show, or a movie for that matter, that deals with mental illness so intimately and intelligently.

and it is ABSOLUTELY about all the other things s1ocki mentions - the depression/family angle is what it all gets filtered trhough. Which is necessary in that it allows the viewer to identify and empathize with the characters, even as they're doing absolutely horrible things to one another.

x-post

He corrupts/kills/otherwise ruins multiple characters who are introduced throughout the show. Tony draws everyone into his web ... by virtue of their casual greed, their gullibility, or their desire to be like him/live vicariously through him.

I think I'm kinda considering casual greed and desire to live vicariously through a mobster as pre-corruption, but like I said, this angle appeals to me, so if I ever re-watch I will do my best to look at it as a Faust story! (For some reason the family angle never connected with me in the least, but I'll admit to having that unfair withdrawal-of-empathy "I find these people unpleasant to spend TV time with" reaction, which is prudish and not really rational of me.)

for the record, i've only made it thru most of s3 of the sopranos, but i watched the final sequence on youtube and i thought it was pretty much perfect. hilarious, too, in a meta sense, transparently designed to dare fans to gnash their teeth and charge the message boards.

Side question having nothing to do with my not-liking Sopranos: why is that hilarious or cool?

its funny to think of a force of evil as being depressed - that's pretty genius characterization too.

But the reason I think the Sopranos is framed as the story of one man's relationship with his therapist (show begins and ends with Melfi, really) is because of the Faust-y angle. Its openly discussed over the course of the show - why she continues to treat him even though he never gets "better" = because she gets a vicarious thrill, she's morbidly curious/fascinated by it. Just like the audience.

x-post

but i watched the final sequence on youtube and i thought it was pretty much perfect. hilarious, too, in a meta sense, transparently designed to dare fans to gnash their teeth and charge the message boards.

ending of sopranos = total "hey dudes this is a TV show, get over it" among many, many other things. it's great!

man, i really hope this isn't the case. it seems kind of stupid to spend all this time/life/energy working on something and then you get to the end and think to yourself: you know what. fuck it. it's just a TV show. let's have some onion rings.

in some ways Melfi is the one character who is never entirely corrupted by him - she's the only one who resists/says "no" to him (at the end of the series when she says she'll no longer see him), and survives.

it's the 90s guy in me, but i like that the sopranos acknowledges the amount of fantasy regular folk like melfi's friends (ie bho viewers) invest in the criminal life. the wire could have done this but does not. i don't think there are any hbo viewers in the show. (this doesn't make the sopranos better, im just sayin.)

the ending of the sopranos is immense. jesus! the only bit i'd change is meadow parking the car.

in some ways Melfi is the one character who is never entirely corrupted by him - she's the only one who resists/says "no" to him (at the end of the series when she says she'll no longer see him), and survives.

Hahaha just like the non-audience, free of morbid curiosity! I am just goofing around here, but your last two posts could be read as an argument for why it makes someone morally superior to not watch the show. (That doesn't include me, I watched it, I just didn't enjoy it.)

xpost - I mean, I was thinking a lot yesterday about how much we always love to see people troll the public, as if by loving it we are "in" on the joke and not part of the public being trolled -- I'm not sure it's a good thing that we congratulate people for feeling important enough to thumb their noses at the very people who are the reason they are important in the first place....

did you watch and not enjoy the ENTIRE SERIES?

i dont think the end of the sopranos is trolling, or a fuck-you to the fans, at all.

yeah me neither

its very consistent with the rest of the show in terms of suspense, pacing, reference points, etc.

it's more like an affirmation that this show was never about neat closure, like it or not

Yeah, s1ocki, I'm just responding to the argument above -- I was sufficiently convinced they thought it was a solid dramatic ending, though I'm not sure I'd agree.

Also I would estimate that I saw ... more than half of total Sopranos episodes, from the beginning through the end, with most of the drop-off happening around two-thirds of the way through the series? I would blame my dislike on irregular viewing, except that there were times I'd see whole continuous seasons and like it even less.

i think the thing that kind of makes me feel the opposite is the longstanding i am serious film guy obsession w/ mafia movies -- ya guys i agree godfather is unimpeachable classic but its such an overdone thing at this pt. and yeah i know they added a lot of fresh twists because obv great writing and i do think its a good show but that doesnt change the fact that the mob boss gangster movie cliche is pretty unoriginal

― K DEF FROM REAL LIVE (deej), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 6:48 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's totes unfair, gangster shit is as old as movies and ppl are still finding new things to do with it and really you could use the same argument against the wire with its cops & robbers premise... both shows just take the genre as their starting point.

― s1ocki, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11:26 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yah its not fair to the degree that someone shouldnt dismiss a show bcuz of it, im just explaining the reason behind my preference for the wire -- not claiming anyone has to agree w/ me here. sorry if that sounds cop-out-y

i dont think the wire really has a cops and robbers premise. its an entire city, cast of thousands. it 'more than transcends' cops + robbers shows -- and also i should point out cops and robbers + drug trade has a much more proportionate impact on more ppl than this single strain of italian mobster films which are hugely represented in critically acclaimed cinema thruout the years