The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

Did you mean: greasy onion ring moments in television

onion rings symbolize Tony's deep-fried self-loathing

http://www.imdb.com/keyword/onion-ring/

Just #1

http://www.sacmag.com/media/images/sacmag_2/best%20of%20sac/guy.jpg

Guy draws everyone into his web and makes them all complicit in a whole host of horrible things by virtue of their casual hunger, their gullibility, or their desire to be like him/live vicariously through him. Its about the banality of evil and how its enabled by all kinds of little innocuous compromises and self-centered behavior.

haha

http://media.herald-dispatch.com/blog/tuned/uploaded_images/Tony-Soprano-770177.JPG

Guy searches for the restaurants serving the best french fries, onion rings and hamburgers

lolololol

i'm not a sopranos dude but slocki owns in this thread and almost makes me wish i was~

― cankles, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:38 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

there are no female characters in the wire as strong as carmela or livia. - Let's not forget about Snoop here, possibly my favorite television character ever (tied with Bill Haverchuck, actually). It would be hard to compare her on any level to the ladies of The Sopraons, as her gender was almost incidental to the awesome paradox of chill stoner/totally fucking ruthless nihilistic sociopath. That fact that she was female only underscored the absolute originality of the character.

what are some great onion ring moments in television

― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 1:31 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Homer proposed to Marge with an onion ring!

this is dodgy, but what horseshoe says about kima does also kinda apply to snoop -- more so really. not saying she's a weak character, just that the show does sort of miss a lot of the female experience/male-female relationships.

snoop's also a really minor character in terms of screentime and general plot importance

yeah i love snoop, ronnie, beadie!, kima less so, but none of them really compare to carmela, it's a matter of screen time and emphasis

xp

yeah, kima and snoop are strong as hell but let's face it, they are basically dudes.

The Wire isn't really about characters, so it's a minor miracle that so many of them are so engaging.

(and of course i don't mean they are dudes b/c they are strong, but you could have changed the characters to be male without re-writing almost anything)

It would be weird if a dude Snoop asked Michael how his hair looks.

fwiw a lot of the more minor female Sopranos characters are as genius in their own way as the more central ones - Svetlana (the one-legged Russian), Gloria Trillo, Meadow's roommate (major lolz with that one)

the Wire definitely could have had some more fleshed out female characters, but the gender thing is ultimately kind of circumstantial...Sopranos is about a family/community full of men and women in (roughly) equal numbers...The Wire is largely about several different professions and walks of life that are traditionally pretty male-dominated.

It would be weird if a dude Snoop asked Michael how his hair looks.

― Your heartbeat soun like sasquatch feet (polyphonic), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 2:49 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not really

fwiw a lot of the more minor female Sopranos characters are as genius in their own way as the more central ones - Svetlana (the one-legged Russian), Gloria Trillo, Meadow's roommate (major lolz with that one)

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 8:50 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ro!!!

the Wire definitely could have had some more fleshed out female characters, but the gender thing is ultimately kind of circumstantial...Sopranos is about a family/community full of men and women in (roughly) equal numbers...The Wire is largely about several different professions and walks of life that are traditionally pretty male-dominated.

― Tom Botantino (some dude), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 8:51 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cuz the italian mafia isnt traditionally male-dominated?

oh shit yeah, Rosalie is great. Angie Bonpensierro too

the Sopranos is way more centrally about a mafia guy's family/home life/love interests than The Wire is abuot a cop/drug dealer's same.

actually all the wives are pretty great (Ginny Sack) with the perhaps glaring exception of Mrs. Lil Stevie Van Zandt.

the Sopranos is way more centrally about a mafia guy's family/home life/love interests than The Wire is abuot a cop/drug dealer's same.

― Tom Botantino (some dude), Tuesday, December 16, 2008 9:02 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya but not because it's not about a male-dominated culture.

you're kinda saying the sopranos has more good female characters because it has more good female characters.

i was clear about what i said, don't be dense.

im just saying how does that jibe with the argument that the wire isnt a cops and robbers show but about this sprawling great city with thousands of characters if none of them are women?? (not that you're making that argument, i dont think.)

the scope of the sopranos goes beyond the trade to the family to include the women in that world--but that's an artistic choice, not a consequence of the subject matter, so i think it's valid to call wire out on that. is all im saying

The Wire is a slice of city life that consists largely of roles traditionally filled by men, with a relatively minor amount of wife/girlfriend/daughter/mother home life included in it. The Sopranos has a main character who is male but has tons of different relationships with female characters. The 2 shows are framed very differently and allow for different kinds of stories, and it's pointless to 'call out' The Wire on that unless you think Simon & Burns said "ooh we don't like writing dialogue for women, let's focus on the boys here." They could've gone deeper into McNulty's marriage and various philanderings, but then it would've been a totally different show.

yeah the sopranos is a show where the lead character is almost defined entirely in some respects by his relationships with women

I can only imagine what Ma McNulty might have like.

*been like

unless you think Simon & Burns said "ooh we don't like writing dialogue for women, let's focus on the boys here."

is it me or didn't some Wire voter suggest this very thing upthread somewhere

i have many things to say about that, but i don't think it's like that!

it's pointless to 'call out' The Wire on that unless you think Simon & Burns said "ooh we don't like writing dialogue for women, let's focus on the boys here"

right, that's why there are historically so few good roles for women in hollywood, because people actually say that out loud

and ya, no duh it would be a different show if they included more female characters and they were written better!

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.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 5:20 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

listen i will write a long post about it soon! (i know, y'all can't wait)

It's not a shocker that writers work around their weaknesses.

but i'm saying if they did write around using more female characters, they didn't do so to the detriment of a plausible gender ratio. if there were NO female cops, lawyers, campaign staffers, dealers or hitpersons in the show, it'd be worth considering, but that's not the case. i totally admit that female characters should be something you can put in the Sopranos' plus column, but to use it as a knock on The Wire kinda gets into, like, telling a casting director for a European period piece that they need more minorities.

that seems like an insane comparison to me.

it's a knowingly extreme comparison.

rhonda pearlman was not a bad character

WIRE BABEZ POLL

rhea perlman was an amazing character

lol

d'angelo's mother was strong as hell, tbf.

Namond's mom in season 4 was awesome