grate post

I don't agree with this. While The Sopranos is largely focused on Tony, there are substantial characters within his orbit that get screen time. Whereas BB is sort of like Homer's suggestion for Poochie: 'Any time he's offscreen, everyone should be saying, 'Where's Walt?'' The Sopranos manages to develop almost all of its major characters whereas, like has been said ITT, BB's characters are there to move the plot around.

Re: The Wire's one-dimensional characters - yeah, sure, The Wire had way more one-dimensional characters, except that Breaking Bad has about 15 characters and the Wire had more than 50. I also think The Wire is a bit of a plot machine, but as it's trying to portray something real (whereas BB is trying to portray something decidedly unreal), it gets a pass on characterization. As Rei Ayanami said, internality is something characteristic of literature, and it's something that The Wire's characters largely lack. But there just wasn't time to develop those aspects of the story well.

Honestly don't know if I could name 15 BB characters, name and all

Walt, Skyler, Jesse, Hank, Marie, Walter Jr., Saul, Tuco, Badger, Skinny Pete, Combo, Jane, Gomez, Gus Fring, Hector Salamanca, Gale, Victor, Mike, Todd, Angela? (Jesse's GF), Brock ..

But yeah, compare this list of characters to the Sopranos: Tony, Carmela, Anthony Jr., Meadow, Dr. Melfi, Livia, Christopher, Janice, Junior, Bobby, Silvio, Paulie, Richie, Ralph, Tony B, Johnny Sac, Phil, Vito, etc. - it's just not even close, the Sopranos' characters are so much more well-developed, because we see way more of them in their downtime. An episode like 'Soprano Home Movies' is unthinkable in BB. They're just two different shows trying to attain different ends, but the plot drives BB so much more, and the plot largely invovles Walter White.

I just looked through some of the Sopranos characters. Over 150 for sure.

They really had the best names too. Some favorites:

Salvatore "Mustang Sally" Intile
Phillip "Philly Spoons" Parisi
Reuben "The Cuban" Santiago
Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri

WRT the bolded. I need to find the quote, but Vince Gilligan has said something to the beat of "I'm surprised how much people are putting into the shots. We just shoot them, but people look at them like they are much deeper than they really are."

While I 100% agree some shots are amazingly well done (Jesse walking to kill the two dealers to name one of my favorites), I think people are overreacting on this part (people are saying the one scene with Hank filming Jesse, since one shot was him behind a chair it's a sign of what's to come with Hank ending up in jail)

The Wire is amazingly shot as well and has such replay value. Everyone knows the chess scene in s1, about how bodie is a pawn. In the scene that he got shot, he was moving forward/shooting diagonally (how a pawn attacks/captures a piece) while Chris and Snoop attack diagonally, like bishops. O-Dog takes one step out, and 3 steps forward to kill Bodie, like a knight.

While it may not be as you described "perfectly lit, angles right, etc" like BB, it's that attention to detail which makes it amazing.

Rainier got it. I have the book somewhere, but a quick google search gave me this.


Laguna Beach > OC


Anyway, I think as a whole people are jumping way too fast on BB as GOAT. Just pump the breaks a little. There were a ton of people who were jumping on LOST as the GOAT show for a long time that now hate it. Is BB going to have the replay value that a show like The Wire or Sopranos will have?

Breaking Bad takes a fair number of shots you might see in a movie whereas The Wire is well-shot but it's still shot very much like a TV show, if that makes any sense.

For the record I was an extra in a German movie once so I know pretty much all there is to know.

Edit: Neither BB nor TW is the GO(A)T show anyways.

"Extra in a German movie" sounds like an euphemism for something filthy.

think it's about equally as valid to say this about Tony or Don, and it really comes down to how you feel about these shows.

Peggy tho

A big part of this is that The Wire was shot in old-school 4:3, whereas BB is in 16:9 (widescreen) and HD, so BB is always going to feel more 'cinematic' even outside of things like cinematography and quality of film stock or whatever.

FWIW I loved the choice of 4:3 for The Wire and am glad they never changed it even after everything had become widescreen.

I don't really think it is, though it's more true of the Sopranos than of Mad Men. Most viewers' complaints about Mad Men and the Sopranos revolve around when the main characters are off-screen. People don't have these complaints about Breaking Bad because that is seldom true - either Walt is on-screen or he has a direct hand in what's going on. People complain about the Marie klepto subplot and that was nothing.

most of the complaints i've seen about the sopranos are about any scene/episode involving tony's family whether tony is there or not. the standard drooler complaint is "what is this family **** i wanna see somebody get whacked."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIom3LSbB0I

2 is very polarized. I seldom see 2 in the middle of peoples lists. It's either at the top or at the bottom. For me, 2 is pretty meh.

My ranking of wire would be something like...

4 = 3 > 1 > 5 > 2

yup I think 5 is better than 2.

the absolute correct ranking. you could flip 5 and 2 and I wouldn't be mad

we get it. only hbo or showtime have the budget to produce the goat tv show.

i'm not actually spoiling anything except for talking about greenwald's grantland article on the new season of boardwalk (he got first 5 eps i guess) but just in case for the nits

here is the article. has some minor spoilers i guess

link

Definitely not as valid for Don and if that's how somebody views the show I would say they are missing the point.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using 2+2 Forums

I think the Wire nuts are more concerned with being attached to the "perceived greatest show ever", ie, they just want the ****ing street cred.

The Wire won't go down as the greatest TV show ever. I know it. It might get jumped by GOT or BB in the next few years alone but in the future even those two shows will get surpassed. TV is too good now. People now how to make it better. The Sopranos just wasn't that long ago. People didn't need to adjust since network TV still made **** tons of money for much cheaper so there just wasn't that many people trying to pull off that kind of show. Now you have something like GOT which has a 60 mil a year budget just doing everything it can to be the leading edge. The Wire just won't survive. Like Citizen Kane, it'll get surpassed pretty damn quickly if you don't already count GOT and BB as being better shows which I do.

I did think that network TV was actually capable of being as good as the competition but Hannibal has proved me somewhat wrong on that (since it will probably get cancelled within two years but it's still awesome).

the wire is timeless, but nice try.

I don't agree.

High quality TV is in its infancy.

There's nowhere to go but up.

On the comedy front (where production value doesn't matter as much as for drama imo):
Eventhough the production quality is pretty shocking if you watch it these days I have a hard time believing that there will be many (any?) shows better than Seinfeld.