Just got done with a rewatch, my 2nd full time through. Think it's now clearly my all time favorite show, passing The Wire. So many thoughts but one thing I couldn't stop thinking about was -- is Breaking Bad just a Sopranos tribute show?

Some obvious homages:

1. Walter White gets an MRI (including the overhead shot of him going in) in the first episode, just like Tony

2. When Walter needs to skip town to avoid his enemies, where does he go? New Hampshire of course! Hope he got some johnny cakes while he was there.

Beyond that, I think I've mentioned ITT before, but I'm struck by how one of the signature parts of Vince Gilligan's style is the "here's a long, slow scene, something ominous is probably going to happen... except usually it doesn't" and how it is precisely like the last Sopranos scene.

Also the obvious thematic connections, both screeds on the search for what it means to be masculine in 21st century America.

Whew, that was fun and now I dunno WTF I'm gonna watch between now and NFL season. I will probably try to schedule a rewatch of this show once every ~3 years!

Oh one other big thing I'd be interested in your takes on.

A couple years ago a friend told me that a big theme of Sopranos is "free will doesn't exist". I mostly disagree with that interpretation. Of course your family situation shapes your life path but in the Sopranos, you usually get some off ramps, and often the bad stuff that happens to you is a consequence of your own poor decisions (obv example, Adriana had about 50 chances to leave Chris).

The show's best example of this is Meadow. By the end of the show she has a Columbia degree and can do a bunch of things with her life, including apparently go to med school. Why doesn't she want to do that? Because it's hard, and being a mob lawyer is easy $$$! You can't even chalk it up to family loyalty; Tony and Carmela openly and genuinely prefer she become a doctor. Meadow had a weird upbringing but she's overcome it to put herself in a great place in life; she's not a victim of circumstance, she's a POS!

There’s more cancer in The Sopranos than all of Breaking Bad.

Another toothpick.

What the hell kind of way is that to talk about a sick person?

Harpo changed his name. He’s Hal now

there's a weird shot in the series finale that i'm hoping ppl have some insight on. after tony offers paulie the gig running construction for the crew he leaves the bing, there's a quick shot of paulie exiting, walking right at the camera, and i think he looks toward it and zips up his jacket maybe. don't really understand what it's supposed to mean in isolation, so i assume it's a reference to a movie or something that i haven't seen. anyone know?

I don't remember that scene, but I'm pretty sure the last scene between the two where Tony makes the offer (which Paulie accepts) isn't at the Bing, it's outside Satriales's

There's a theory that Paulie conspired with NY to have Tony killed, or at the very least Paulie got assurances from NY that he'd be taken care of if Tony got taken out. The scene you're referencing could be Paulie feeling conflicted or going through the motions of going along with NY's plan.

yeah there's 2 scenes where they talk about it. the first one is in the back room of the bing iirc, tony offers him the job, but paulie says he wants to think about it. the thing i'm talking about is after that meeting. the 2nd meeting is as you say outside of the pork store. paulie rejects the offer, and then tony manipulates into accepting by saying he'll give it to patsy


yeah that's what was on my mind, think understanding that other thing could be key to explaining exactly what's going on with paulie, one way or the other. or maybe it's nothing lol. but it really does look and feel like a reference to something else

I'll add what I've said before. The last thing Paulie says to Tony after he agrees to accept the offer, "I live but to serve you, my liege" is word for word the last thing Brutus says to Caesar before Caesar gets assassinated in s1 of Rome.

I've read somewhere that jacket probably belonged to Tony Sirico personally. That would explain why he keeps wearing it through the show but never in any scenes where it might have gotten damaged.

No idea if that's true. But I think it's confirmed that some of the older guys actually wore their own wardrobe on set sometimes?

That was supposed to be Sirico's real hairdo for sure.

yeah i've heard that too, but remain skeptical that the culmination of chase's masterpiece lifework is a reference to season 1 of some other show. i also don't think that show invented that phrase

Not the exact quote but Shakespeare's Henry V has something along those lines.

A subtle one I thought was that a lot of the time Tony hugged someone was that he was patting them down to make sure they weren't wearing a wire.

Rewatching the final season when Tony is in the coma... the Tony/Kevin Finnerty dream sequence where he meets Steve Buscemi outside the big house, and Buscemi is all smiling and pleasant and saying "everyone's waiting inside for you". He then keeps trying to get Tony to give him the briefcase, and Tony says "my whole life is in that case" and is afraid to give it to him....

So the big beautiful house represents hell in this case I'm assuming. And if Tony lets go of the briefcase he gives up fighting for life and enters. At one point Tony briefly sees a woman in the doorway, but we can't quite see who she is, we only see her from the back. She doesn't look as old as Livia but I'm assuming it's his mother, perhaps at a younger age?

Anyway, I think I'm in the minority in that I loved these episodes where Tony is in an alternate dream world. The end of "Join the Club", where Tony is just sitting sadly in the hotel room, with the flashing beacon of light on the horizon out the window, is just perfect imo. He looks completely diminished, no longer the big strong mob boss. He looks like a lost little boy sitting on the edge of the bed.

Yep, totally agree revots33. I think the dream sequences are some of the best scenes in the series. The Test Dream is one of my favorite episodes and that particular scene you mentioned is maybe my single favorite scene. Something about how he hears Meadow's voice in his coma but she's actually yelling out loud to him IRL - how it mixes in reality with dreams is hard to describe but it's great stuff.

I didn't watch the show when it aired but I can see why people didn't like the dream sequences as much back then. You wait in anticipation for Sunday night thinking you're gonna get more plot advancement and mob violence only to get a 40 minute dream. Different experience when you can watch it on-demand.

It is possible actually.

Rome is not just some other show, it's mother****ing Rome, one of the best.

Maybe Chase was a fan?

I mean, Pullo is in the top 5 goat TV characters of all time.

+ 1000 to the bolded.

Anyone else have Deadwood>The Sopranos.

I think Deadwood hit higher peaks and remained consistently better until its conclusion.

Timeless dialogue.

As some consolation for not getting a 4th season at least HBO series back then weren't 10 episodes or less seasons so we still got 36 episodes of it.

However I have to admit while the dialogue is very good something of me tells me that Milch got too caught up in the dialogue rather than the storyline. I say that because Milch only is credited with writing only like I think it is 4 to 5 of those 36 episodes. Not saying he didn't edit the scripts of the other episodes but still if he contributed to the writing to a significant degree he would have credited himself with a co-writing credit.

So it tells me that perhaps he wasn't as engrossed in the writing as much as he could have been as a creator and perhaps his editing was exclusive to dialogue only which wouldn't surprise me.

I think for these reasons Sopranos will always be better than Deadwood.