Yeah, plz, come on man. Are you a professional TV watcher or something? sorry that I don't like the show as much as you do. Listen, I admit that I could be completely missing the mark, but overall my main feelings up through season 2 is that there isn't nearly as much beneath the surface of the immediately obvious for me to analyze and contemplate like there is in the sopranos. I respect that the wire is a show with nearly universal appeal, and a message for everyone, but I think that the subtlety they had to sacrifice to achieve this goal is a shame...


Here's where I'm coming from: I finished the sopranos, and everyone said that The Wire is its main competition (and many even like the Wire more). Of course I am going to be watching this show under a microscope! and, in my opinion, it has glaring imperfections so far

SB, my bad, I completely misread your post.

magatu, don't sweat it. Chances are >99% that Dids has read extensively about The Wire, including interviews with David Simon where he extrapolates at length and in great detail about what the show is trying to do and say. He's also coming from a point where he's seen every season (probably multiple times), which is to say he is familiar with the overall scope of the show (which is enormous) and how the main themes play out over the course of the entire 5 season run.

If someone had held me to account on what I thought the first season was about having just watched it through, my response would have been wildly different from what it was after seeing all the eps, and reading about/discussing the show at length.

I got pretty ****y with OP (sorry youtalk!) way earlier in this thread about points he felt were subtle but I thought were clearly obvious, and someone said yea Sopranos isn't subtle, but I think out of the big hour long dramas Sopranos is probably the most subtle (Deadwoods still on the backlog for me so not counting that, apologies)

There's just so much in the Sopranos where characters say one thing but by what you've seen/their expressions you know something else is true. I feel like Sopranos has succeeded the best in conveying characters superficial and true feelings without being overt about it.

My big beef with SFU/Alan Ball in general is he's so one layered/histrionic, it's like teenage poetry but a level up, he's addressing some issues a lot of people know but he just never does it with any grace, it's always so obvious and forced. To SFUs credit I think their actors pulled off often bad lines incredibly well.

I don't think The Wire has ever really done "subtle" either. It's always pretty forced, sometimes just grossly so but most times palpable. Doesn't mean it can't have a great effect, the overall web spinning of the series to me is just amazing.

Seems many people have a hard time looking past The Sopranos gangster veneer but I feel like thats the series that is layered the most dense, the characters are given the most amazing treatment.

I still cant decide GOAT between wire and sopranos, they do great things differently, every time I watch one I'm all this is the best, but then I go and watch the other.

Guess we can just be thankful we live in an age of amazing TV.

Meh at directing the bolded towards Dids after this post

I mean that's some brutal analysis of a show that is very good. It's hard to read that and think you're not just a huge Sopranos fan who wants to make sure everyone knows that his favorite show is better than The Wire.

That being said, The Sopranos is awesome, and I'm going to stop helping tard up this thread now.

ok ok, point taken

I'm pretty impressed with the quality of discussion atm.

I am extremely sensitive to lack of subtlety, and manipulation via things such as excessive zooms/camera tricks, music, or general schmaltz. In a Sopranos audio commentary where there is a push-in on Carmela's face as she gets emotional, Chase comments that they usually "frown on that kind of directing". He also is critical of scoring. That's part of what I love so much about Sopranos...the scenes generally live and die on their own, there's no tarting them up. "Whoever Did This" has a long stretch with very slow and ostensibly mundane action, no music, and little dialogue, and it's captivating.

All that said, in my one viewing of The Wire I was not bothered by the things you mention, which I find odd. We'll see what happens the second time.

I don't think that his message is all that obvious actually. There are libertarians who believe the message is tailored specifically towards them. Of course, he explicitly talks about his intended message any chance he gets, so there's that. But in the text itself I feel like he's just showing us things happen in a semi "realistic" way and we can take away what we will. It doesn't matter what he thinks we're supposed to take from it. I could easily argue that a purer form of capitalism would solve a lot of the problems he raises, while he would argue the opposite.

Yea I have a huge problem with that as well. I got towards the end of S2 of SFU and stopped forever. I hope I don't ever have to watch the whole thing because I feel like it would be a waste...it would be a better use of my time to watch Sopranos or The Wire or Mad Men again. "Cellar door" and plastic bags imo

Is True Blood worthwhile? (Like really worthwhile and not on a teenage poetry level)

Great thread.

The subtlety of the Sopranos is what has me hooked. I'm re-watching for like the 10th time and I still laugh at funny little bits that I didn't catch before.

Tony B and the Korean guy in season 5. West CALD-well !

Or when all the mob guys **** up their words? "With extreme ****ing prejudice" (instead of "pleasure") or You'd think I was Hannibal 'Lecture'... where else do you ever see this stuff??

when do they say with extreme prejudice? whats the context?

I laughed pretty hard when Meadows bf "Noah" told Carmela that Tony was "lucky he didn't punch his lights out" when Tony made the racist remark.

Am I the only one that would have loved to see what would have happened afterwards?

Nope. We're the only ones who wanted to see the rapist die too.

When Mustang Sally messes up vitos cousin or whatever, Gigi says it. What pleasure quote though? Isn't it a direct Apocalypse Now reference?

Wasn't the rapist thing actually an incorrect ethical decision by Melfi? A rapist is free and will probably do it again. Melfi could prevent those rapes from happening.

she comes to the conclusion that that's not her decision to make. while i hate 'employee of the month', if you really think about it, it will really get you to examine how ethics and justice function in a free society.

the discussion between artie buco and his wife whose name i am blanking on in the episode 'boca' goes a long way towards this too.

Oh my bad, I'm not sure. I thought he was meaning to say pleasure

For a Doctor she certainly was an ethically confused individual

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termina...reme_prejudice

srsly it's so tiltingly lame how the wire quotes one of the characters before every episode. i'm almost done with season 3 and it has its good points, but i'm far from in love with the show. I liked dexter significantly more (not counting the last season of dexter which sucked hard)

I'm not really surprised, though. Usually whenever something has universally rave reviews I'm stuck questioning why i'm the only person in the world who doesn't love it. The Sopranos is one of the only big pop culture things that has lived up to the hype imo. gosh, I sound like the biggest sopranos-fanboy/wire-hater...just being honest though

Take it to a wire thread man, you keep getting my hopes up that someone has something interesting to say about the sopranos.

I got a question for my fellow nerds... when is Bobby made, and what is his rank throughout the series?

In season 3, he's present when Chris and Gene are made. This means he's gotta be made already, right? So if he's made, how come he's such a wimp in the earlier seasons, taking **** from everybody, and acting as Junior's caretaker? Guys like Chris and little Paulie did a lot more badass stuff before they were even made.

Then in season 4 I believe, Junior tells Tony he's bringing Bobby up. Tony and Bobby go to the diner, Bobby orders the steak... what do they promote him to? And then in season 5 or 6, Bobby complains to Tony that he's doing nothing except getting stool softener for Junior.

I think Bobby was made before the beginning of the series.

You lose all credibilty right there and I've been a Dexter fan from the beginning.

So why does he freak out at the thought of helping bust up the black workers protest? Why does everyone treat him like he's beneath them?

Yea he was made, his father was highly respected, it was probably his demeanor and lack of ambition that kept him in the background. When he got promoted it was to basically active or acting capo, before that it was that old bumbling Murph guy, so it's not like Juniors crew was running a tight ship.

Phil Leotardo said "they make anybody and everybody over there" or something to that effect.

Yea exactly, WTF? If I want to read about The Wire, I'll go to that thread.



Was there ever any mention about what happened to Furio when he went back to Italy?

Hopefully he started shagging his boss. She was hot as balls.

No last thing said about it is Carmella referencing that Tony was calling all over Italy hunting him down to no avail.


She's so damn amazing. Always a treat when she was on Curb.