The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

Really, haven't all the polls just been leading up to this moment?

Really curious about the results of this one. I went for The Sopranos.

The proper food picture for the wire would be lake trout

Check your head Whiney we already did this poll: Who is HBO's KING DAVID?

Xpost. OTM!

Never got the appeal of the Sopranos. Never saw much behind it, really. The Wire is the best show I've ever and probably ever will see in my life, though.

I'm voting for the Sopranos because i think that the character development is more intense than any show in the history of television, and maybe only beats the The Wire in that because it doesn't have 7 billion characters to slog through in every ep

I don't get people who don't get The Sopranos.

anyone who votes sopranos doesnt know shit about shit

I watched the Sopranos in real time as it aired, with long gaps, while I watched five seasons of the Wire recently over a couple of months so they both feel totally different to me. Right now I have to say the Wire.

most otm thing nabisco ever said was when he observed that half the time the sopranos was just spinning its wheels - lotta great moments, sure, but way too much filler

Half the time? Get real. I disagree, regardless.

sopranos is just better, sorry.

both awesome but the wire at it's worst >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> sopranos at it's worst

superfluous apostrophes amirite

Score one for Pretty Tony

i've only seen season 3 and 4 of sopranos vs. all of the wire, so i'm saying the following with a v. limited perspective.

way too many characters on the sopranos just annoy me--tony (half of the time), janice, a.j., uncle junior, especially paulie (wtf?), others. i think i have a thing against italians and their speech patterns though, so whatever. i like what i've seen of the sopranos more than all the italian mob movies i've ever seen though, whatever that means. like, i kind of hate godfathers i and ii and goodfellas. boooooriiing.

the wire otoh has a v. special place in my heart. i think it's more overtly dramatic than the sopranos, with character development that leaps over the nuances of the sopranos, but it just feels more.. relevant? contracting jobs (who the fuck cares) vs. drug wars, etc. i don't know.

oh boy, ix-nae on the 'speech patterns' comment above which sounds a little weird. i think what i'm getting at is in the italian-americans vs. native-americans on columbus day episode. i.e. i don't care about your bowling-shirt-wearing noveau-riche bada-bing jfk-loving blabla when there are sweeter things to talk about.

also i'd rather see d. west or l. reddick or lester or kima or omar or marlo or d'angelo get half-naked and laid over another half-bald fatass or nj guido scoring and then acting retarded. the combined IQs of characters on the wire >>>>>>>>>> combined IQs of characters on the sopranos.

i'm still going to watch all of the sopranos, because i like it a lot, so in re to my comments feel free to murder me and drop me into a quarry csi-style i mean pry open abandoned project apartments, leave me on the second floor, and re-staple the plywood with a nail gun you bought at home depot.

^
http://i35.tinypic.com/o7ooj9.gif

lol

i almost said goombah

http://news.filefront.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/_42222218_gall_mario.jpg

btw the pine barrens episode of sopranos may be equal to or better than anything on the wire, just for the photography.

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

and the sound design, which was written into the script!

i agree with matt's comment about the collective IQ on the wire - just about everyone on the sopranos has got almost curb your enthusiasm levels of tunnel-vision self-regard

woops xpost

wire pwns will pwn poll no competition

sopranos birthed the genre - dont say oz plz plz - but the wire perfected it w/season and series long narrative arcs

and if you vote sopraons yr a racist

i only saw one episode of sopranos and had no interest in ever seeing it again

i'm racist toward italians and new jersey though

The Sopranos had some truly great episodes. The first few seasons, in particular, were classic. But it also had so many dull and repetitive episodes and the quality went so far downhill, that it absolutely does not deserve to win. The sheer abundance of "Tony has a wacky dream" episodes, should automatically disqualify it.

The Wire, on the other hand, maybe had its ups and downs, but overall was consistently great from beginning to end.

I hope The Wire trounces The Sopranos.

Maybe I should get a new login, cause I wanna vote for both shows. I love'em both equally. I'm a lover not a hater when it comes to these shows.

btw the pine barrens episode of sopranos may be equal to or better than anything on the wire, just for the photography.

― Matt P, Saturday, November 15, 2008 7:49 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM

also for the snakes

the last season of the wire was pretty awful

just putting that out there

btw the pine barrens episode of sopranos may be equal to or better than anything on the wire, just for the photography.

― Matt P, Saturday, November 15, 2008 12:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

YES

i mean, not objectively awful, but a pretty big drop-off.

yeah i hated the last season for the most part but the rest of the seasons made up for it. now i can't actually remember if i've seen the sopranos because i don't know how i would have seen it. i just remember something about bears and i'm not sure when or where i watched it but i got bored.

i didnt see the last season of the wire tbh, but i didnt see the last season of the sopranos either

sopranos is funnier, possibly more great moments (in a visceral sense) than in wire, but wire suits me more i guess. mainly the thing i never 'got' wrt the sopranos was how relatable the characters were supposed to be - like, that's supposed to be the strength of the show, right? how human and understandable and universal these subhuman monsters were? idk, i never felt any connection with any of them, and the only characters i had affection for were the funny ones (paulie, ralphie before he killed the stripper, furio before he turned into a puss). the incredible savagery of these ppl stuck with me a lot more than their humanity. that was probably the point to some degree, but it wasn't fun to watch imo~

agreed on s5 wire - tho i thought the last few eps were good

they werent supposed to be likeable! i mean, they were supposed to be charming on the surface, i guess, but they all plumbed the death.

i guess there's something i like more about the sopranos' storytelling, it was more ambitious, more theatrical in a way, than the wire, which was very good at being straight-up layered journalistic narrative but was maybe too unwavering in its tone, or something. and ya, i thought the plain-jane look it had, the unobtrusive cinematography, had something going for it, but i want more sometimes.

also nobody on the wire can touch gandolfini, or falco for that matter. not even close.

(again, that's a format thing, as none of the performers on the wire had nearly as much screen time due to its total ensemble-ness)

thats true ^ but the sopranos just got soooo redundant is the main problem i have

and the wire was so much greater in scope - portrait of an american city ffs!

i guess there's something i like more about the sopranos' storytelling, it was more ambitious

― s1ocki, Saturday, November 15, 2008 11:07 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is just completely insane

xxxpost, yeah, but no one ever can anyone touch Omar.

thats true ^ but the sopranos just got soooo redundant is the main problem i have

ugh yes, this really drove me nuts by season 2 - so many episodes felt like artificial ways of extending the show's lifespan, it made me feel like i was being fucked with - w/the wire every episode felt like it had a porpoise~

http://www.chinahearsay.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/Porpoise1.JPG

the fact that the wire always seemed more ambitious to me was a big point in its favor, but i think i see where slocki's cummin from\

The Wire (the first season of the Sopranos is really the only one that to me competes at this level.) I am feeling lately that Mad Men is getting to this level of TV as well.

flops, all those shows are currently running! if you're arguing that there's not a rush to make more of them, I'll concede that again but I thought i noted as much with "the market has changed." I may have misunderstood your point.

I may transfer to an IPTV package in the next year or so; this is all new stuff for me!

As we approach the 10th anniversary of Mad Men’s “The Suitcase” on Saturday

xp- yeah my arg is they’re not making new ones to replace em. once a show is proven successful it can run its course but they aren’t taking risks on new projects of that kind

fair enough.

A counterpoint though: the sudden entry of disney/apple/peacock; the renewed push by CBS as Paramount; the flop of Quibi and (fuck, please) the passing of COVID in the coming year means that the common wisdom of "bigger isn't necessarily better" and "passive watching rules" may rapidly flip flop back to the Mad Men stratagem as stations try to carve out space in Netflix's living room.

also hbo is DEFINITELY pumping out hour long dramas but they're all in collaboration with European partners and generally run six episodes.

I think Beforeigners has the potential to be the new Wire ...

The second story of The Killing (seasons 3 & 4) were up there with The Wire for me as well

was that the Sarsgaard era?

I remember really liking that one season anyway

Succession seems to me like the most obv omission from flopson's list

Self-consciously prestige, also much much more shakespearean than Wire or Sopranos

it's the one with the homeless kids ... and Joel Kinnaman made me want to marry him

Beforeigners is the Norwegian time travelling cop thing, right?

lol Succession is prob great for folks that like the Sopranos and can stomach watching such horrible people which ... I couldn't. Maybe if we hadn't spent 4 years with Trump as President I would be able to, but no.

oh yeah that was good. kinnaman adorable throughout xps

Yes, the Norwegian one with the Viking cop and the transtime community and the bougie porridge cafe

lol I have never heard of this show and it sounds unpossible

"Television Programs without Horrible People" sounds like a good thread to start and pretty challenging to name.

Sesame Street = Oscar the Grouch
Mr Rogers = I heard Daniel Striped Tiger killed some guy down by the bus depot

i will give beforeigners a look. there's too much stuff!

Succession rules

is Succession... a comedy? I kinda feel like it is?

it’s more like Arrested Development than Sopranos tho. milo was correct when he said all the good shows are comedies now

yeah I think it's best appreciated as a bone-dry black comedy

It isn't that I want to watch shows without any horrible people, it's that Succession is like, almost entirely horrible people. It's like, I don't give a fuck about any of you.

yeah, I couldn't deal with Arrested Development either ...

I mean I called it shakespearean but it's more like his immediate uh successors who were a lot less humanist

sarahell, I think that response is 100% understandable

well succession is genuinely straight up Lear!

I don't mean to wag my finger at those who can reconcile their hardcore Bernie Bro ethics and gaining great pleasure from immersing themselves in the fictional lives of "the enemy" ... I just can't do it, without some character(s) representing positive traits or sympathetic circumstances

xp but also relevant to sarahell's point
yeah the set-up is obviously taken from Lear, but none of the kids are exactly Cordelia

tbrr a large part of the enjoyment of watching Succession is watching these assholes eat themselves, so to speak

the kids take turns playing at being cordelia imo

yeah I get it. I just feel like people like that get too much attention IRL.

i can't argue with you there.

hey for anyone missing Succession, consider trying CALL MY AGENT which is on Netflix, a really enjoyable shitty people doing work comedy in French. Focused on the movie industry.

i wouldn't say the attention that succession pays to its characters is good attention. the show does a pretty good job of stripping back the flash and glamor of rich person life, showing that even though the roys can do whatever they want, they're miserable fucks.

Xp and then catch A Very Secret Service which is a stylish 60s-set spy farce

Fuck, like i needed more! You recommend that dmac?

Times did a breakdown of the current haul of "foreign" cable:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/arts/television/international-losing-alice-gomorrah-flack.html

Yep, its got a v nice vibe going on, def if you liked call my agent (which of course is the only paris-set office comedrama anyone should be boosting this last few years instead of That Other One)

alright i grabbed an episode (and pembrokewhatever) on your recommendation

Be good to hear back

Will do here

Lol, maybe do it on the best of 2020 thread, this thread is for the sopranos being shakespearean

Methinks the lady doth etc

Is this SAG war i see before me

Shakespearean

I dont understand what americans mean when they type this word

I am not convinced that they do either

/Pinefox

― Qanondorf (darraghmac), Friday, January 22, 2021 1:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I was the one that brought up Shakespeare and I'll take the heat if I'm wrong, but feel free to sub in "tragedy with flawed male protagonist who destroys everything around them and everyone dies at the end" if you so choose.

I'm no Shakespeare expert (obvs).

that predates Shakespeare tho -- the Greeks repped that shit like a motherfucker

Let’s just all agree on my definition. 🤣

When Paulie reluctantly accepts a promotion in the show's waning days, he tells Tony "I live but to serve, my liege." Maybe that puts the whole Shakespearean thing to bed?

Also Johnny Sack misquotes Macbeth at 1:21 here

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

case closed

Who can be wise, amazed, temp’rate, and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment?

Sil