xp prob around 40-50 out of the 180 or so, one could easily do the same with italian-american life and/or mobster cliches in the sopranos
― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:45 (nine years ago) link
and i grew up in northern jersey, a fair amount are accurate but some are absurdly "come onnnnn" just the same way the wire has a few.
the worst wire episodes are still better than most of seasons 4 and 6 of the sopranos (5 is pretty solid throughout)
― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:47 (nine years ago) link
I will grant that 4 is the low point of the Sopranos but 6 is incredible
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:53 (nine years ago) link
the first serialized TV drama to actually have a definitive, iconic, well-thought out ending
BB is the only other one that even comes close so far
tbf when i say 6 i mean "the first 12 or 13 episodes," i have no prob with the finale and the few hours leading up to it
― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:55 (nine years ago) link
even 4 has eps like "whitecaps" and "whoever did this"...it also has literally every other episode that season
― slothroprhymes, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:57 (nine years ago) link
Also has the show's best episode, "The Weight"...
― bit of a singles monster (Eazy), Tuesday, 24 February 2015 20:07 (nine years ago) link
Uhm, how about The Shield for iconic ending?
The ending to Sopranos is crap. Well thought out two minutes, grasped onto an anti-climactic story, the combination of which makes no sense either way you interpret it. And Breaking Bad was the best final season ever for 3/4 of the way.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 20:08 (nine years ago) link
Also, season four was my second favorite season of Sopranos after five. Though I can't remember why. Whitecaps, though.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 20:09 (nine years ago) link
i thought breaking bad was pretty consistent throughout the entirety of the show, never felt like they fell off at any point. i did feel some small sense of burnout at s5a but it was brief, s5b was magnificent i thought
― marcos, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 20:27 (nine years ago) link
sopranos > wire >>> breaking bad
― deej loaf (D-40), Tuesday, 24 February 2015 21:16 (nine years ago) link
The ending to Sopranos is crap.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 2:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
ban
the shield is a great show in a v different mode than the wire. Hard to rank them comparatively, though my earnest self prefers the wire.
I could only get through a season and a half of Breaking Bad but I mean what is that show even about? My earnest self can't watch that shit.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:20 (nine years ago) link
it's about a chemistry teacher who has cancer and is broke and too proud and cooks meth and gets obsessed with the power he thinks he has, get with it dude not too complicated
― marcos, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:23 (nine years ago) link
horseshoe are you me because that's the exact same response I had to BB.
― Godsleee You Black Emperor (Leee), Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:24 (nine years ago) link
BB bad is not "about" anything in the way that the Wire and the Sopranos and a handful of other shows that have central, overriding themes. It's more or less just about what it means to be addicted to dangerous behavior; it's an extended character study.
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:25 (nine years ago) link
I'm no fun. It's the same reason I don't like mad men.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:26 (nine years ago) link
I also have zero desire to rewatch BB as its central virtue is the plot's tension and forward momentum, "cliffhangers" etc. once you know where everything is going and how it all ends and fits together I can't see it being very rewarding. A good show though.
xp
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:27 (nine years ago) link
Honestly I stopped watching breaking bad because it started to seem like an experiment in out-suspending itself for...some purpose I couldn't determine. Also too hard to watch Walter white slowly destroy a kid he used to teach I can't even take it.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:28 (nine years ago) link
out-suspensing itself, I meant. Like blowing ever more impressive shit up as a formal exercise basically.
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:29 (nine years ago) link
For the first few seasons BB was about a control freak fighting against chaos, and it was pretty great. Then it became a moralistic fight between good and evil, and that was pretty shallow, though often exciting.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:30 (nine years ago) link
haha what?!? there is no "good" in Breaking Bad - except for the entirely passive/inactive children (Jr. and the baby)
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:34 (nine years ago) link
zero police procedural crap
Breaking Bad was good but I thought it was mostly interesting because of the plotting (the show's writers and Walter's) but the most (almost wrote 'only') fascinating characters were Mike and Gus and it didn't really reach beyond that plotting. Mad Men is super boring tbh, even more boring than Downton Abbey which at least has the excuse of being British and twee.Watching The Sopranos post-Wire/Deadwood/BB/etc. it didn't seem that remarkable. I don't think it effectively got inside Tony's head as a character study (or there was just nothing there but greed) and it had the single worst character of any of these shows in AJ.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:35 (nine years ago) link
Mad Men is so great fuck all y'all
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:36 (nine years ago) link
AJ is essentially a tragic figure, his entire existence was an exercise in humiliation. Sopranos and Mad Men have/had better female characters than every show mentioned on this thread so far, which counts for a lot in my book
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:37 (nine years ago) link
you are the one who caused all of this by not sufficiently loving the wire, the holy grail of tv
― horseshoe, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 23:38 (nine years ago) link
milo otm
― Nhex, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 03:04 (nine years ago) link
horseshoe otm as in all matters peripherally related to the wire; what i saw of bb was strict contraption
i like mad men tho, which is totally About stuff, sometimes no doubt to its detriment
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 05:28 (nine years ago) link
mise-en-scène
― j., Wednesday, 25 February 2015 05:48 (nine years ago) link
AJ was basically the Ziggy of the Sopranos -- served a similar function, basically what Shakey said. I liked the Sopranos quite a bit, esp. Carmela, but it definitely hit as many mob family stereotypes as The Wire did cop show ones.
― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 08:12 (nine years ago) link
And Mad Men is the most boring show I have watched every episode of -- I mean, people can complain about Season 2 of Walking Dead on the farm being boring, but Mad Men takes boredom to an entirely new level of tedium
― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Wednesday, 25 February 2015 08:16 (nine years ago) link
Why do you watch it?
― just sayin, Wednesday, 25 February 2015 09:10 (nine years ago) link
MADMEN LONG WATCH 2 (started by sarahell on board I Love AMC on 07-Jan-2014)
― one negged single mother (wins), Saturday, 28 February 2015 17:58 (nine years ago) link
Catching up with Parks and Rec and laughed at this tidbit from the William Henry Harrison museum's "if he had worn a coat" alternate history exhibit.
http://assets.adamriff.com/images/the_wire-emmys.jpg
― Insane Prince of False Binaries (Gukbe), Saturday, 28 February 2015 18:19 (nine years ago) link
xxxp speaking of which, is it worth jumping straight to S3 of Walking Dead?
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, 5 March 2015 10:32 (nine years ago) link
i don't think it'll be as bad watching it in a straight shot. it's that first half of the season while the show crawwwwwwls along week to week that was killing all of us
― Nhex, Thursday, 5 March 2015 13:44 (nine years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWY79JCfhjw
― polyphonic, Thursday, 26 March 2015 22:14 (nine years ago) link
but why
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 27 March 2015 01:59 (nine years ago) link
got to. this america, man
― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 27 March 2015 10:20 (nine years ago) link
next stop: HarmonTown
― Brio2, Friday, 27 March 2015 14:43 (nine years ago) link
Hey O, given your personal experiences and opinions, maybe nationally decriminalize weed rather than just sitting around talking about the fictional ramifications?
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Friday, 27 March 2015 15:12 (nine years ago) link
wrong thread forks?
― marcos, Friday, 27 March 2015 16:25 (nine years ago) link
eh, appropriate everywhere sadly
― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Friday, 27 March 2015 17:06 (nine years ago) link
Simon looks like Herc and McCain's lovechild there.
― A-Hanisi Coates (Leee), Saturday, 28 March 2015 21:45 (nine years ago) link
earned my The Wire wings last night. Season five is fine but the face:punchability factor is much higher than the other seasons.
― How Butch, I mean (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, 21 April 2015 02:00 (nine years ago) link
Otm.
― pplains, Tuesday, 21 April 2015 03:23 (nine years ago) link
so true
― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 22 April 2015 20:15 (nine years ago) link
This show's sense of humor doesn't get acknowledged enough
― the fart in our stalls (latebloomer), Thursday, 23 April 2015 03:25 (nine years ago) link
cuzza fuckin idiots is why
i was just recalling ol gus triandos to someone the other day
― j., Thursday, 23 April 2015 03:44 (nine years ago) link