Should I keep watching The Sopranos?

Until recently I hardly knew anything about The Sopranos. I knew it was an HBO drama series about a mob boss named Tony Soprano who had to balance his work life with his family life, and the final episode ends by cutting to black mid-sentence. That's about it.

However, I had heard a great deal about its reputation. How it was this big, innovative series that really put HBO on the map, inspired the "Golden Age of Television", and swept the Emmies year after year. But what really got me to give it a shot was hearing that it's something of a Spiritual Predecessor to Breaking Bad, which turned out to be a great show. So I started downloading episodes off of iTunes, and I gotta say: I'm underwhelmed.

I've watched the first seven episodes so far, and while not bad, most of them are just kind of moderately enjoyable; nothing to write home over. Part of why they're not hooking me is just how muted the show is most of the time. Emotions very rarely get big, and conflicts are usually resolved without too much effort or sacrifice from anyone.

The one exception is episode 5, "College", which I thought was a pretty darn good hour of television, with expertly done characterization, humor, and tension. That's what's made me want to continue with the show, despite my otherwise lukewarm reaction. Afterall, most shows start off pretty rocky in their first season and need time to mature into what they really want to be. "College" showed that there was some really good potential in The Sopranos, and gave me hope there'd be more episodes like that one in the future.

Except, instead of buying more episodes right away, I started checking out some reviews of the series online, and I couldn't find any that mentioned it having a rough patch at the beginning. Plenty talked about how the show declined in later seasons, but most of them made it seem like these early episodes are the ones I'm supposed to be enthralled by. What's more, even after six years on the air, it seems like "College" is still held as something of a high-water mark for the series, something few later episodes were able to match, and none were able to exceed.

So what I'm asking is this: if I feel this way about The Sopranos now, is there any point in buying more episodes? Is there some shift in the show's tone, style, or structure coming up that might change how I think about it, or is this as good as it gets?

Like I said, I don't think it's a bad show; if it were streaming on Netflix, I think I'd definitely keep watching. But when it costs $1.99 an episode on iTunes, I'm more inclined to drop it if it doesn't start making a bigger impression on me very soon.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

That's pretty much the show.

The Sopranos enjoys the frequent use of anti-climax and distance, and is often nihilistic. If that's not your thing then the show is probably not for you.

Unless you've got an academic reason for watching, of course. It's a classic for a reason, and a cultural touchstone besides. I don't enjoy the show very much either, but I've seen an awful lot of it because it's probably necessary for me to engage with the critical television landscape. Same with the Darin Morgan episodes of The X-Files, not that I enjoyed many of them either.

If you don't mind spoilers, try downloading Pine Barrens or The Blue Comet to see whether you can deal with the most famous episodes of the show.

This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.

For myself, I was hooked pretty much from the beginning. I think that one of the chief themes of the show is how, despite the majority of the characters being mobsters or satellites to that lifestyle, it is - on the whole - not glamorous. If you're expecting moments in The Sopranos where Tony makes a splash like Walter White does in the criminal underworld, you're not exactly going to get that, at least not with any frequency. His victories, much like his life, are ultimately small-scale.

Tony's life is pretty average, Mafia stuff aside. And that's the point. The mob is a shell of what it once was in the "good old bad old days" and he and his cohorts are increasingly obsolete and ineffectual. Two good examples of this are an opening where two of his minions try to shake down a Starbucks to no avail because everything's on record thanks to computers and a later revelation by Tony's son that, even though his dad's a kingpin, he's still much less wealthy than his girlfriend's businessman father.

While the choices the characters make are not world-shaking, the show does very much focus on its characters and their personal arcs throughout the series, which is something I think it has in common with Breaking Bad. Much like Walter White, you watch Tony Soprano live all his life, the good, the bad, the ugly, the embarrassing, the mundane, everything. You see him try to reach out to his kids, struggle with depression and his relationship with his wife and ruthlessly take out the trash when the greater good demands it (or when he's just feeling petty). Even as he becomes increasingly despicable, you're still drawn in and want to follow him on his journey. It isn't the most exciting one, but it's very human.

I dunno, that's something that always fascinated me, anyway. That said, my opinion is only that and if you're having to fork over cold hard cash, you deserve to enjoy what you get for it, not just tolerate it. I was lucky enough to be able to watch a re-airing of the series on HBO where they showed one (or maybe two, I can't remember) eps a night on weeknights. Not a bad way to go about it.

edited 9th Oct '13 6:47:12 AM by dreamshell

I started watching Boardwalk Empire, as far as I can tell a fairly similar show, and so far I'm having a fairly similar experience. I really want to like the show, but there's not much of a dramatic buildup that I can conceive of. Not to mention that there are so many damn characters that all have very similar appearances that it's difficult to keep track of who's who. Granted, I only got four episodes in, but if this is gonna be the whole show, I don't know that I want to continue. Fortunately, it seems as if there's no decline in quality, but I'm having trouble liking it to begin with.

Ultimately, though, I think I will keep watching at some point. It's probably not something I'll enjoy too much, but it's intelligent television. Even if I don't like it, I'm still fairly certain I'll appreciate what it's trying to do and it'll be useful as a frame of reference or something. That's the suggestion I can offer you.

edited 9th Oct '13 5:22:22 PM by DeviousRecital

The Sopranos is one of those great cultural moments of our time, ya know, like Chuck, Friends, Frasier, Heroes, The Wire and Homeland that I never saw the point of. I tried watching some episodes of Tony's adventures and then gave up on it - it just wasn't for me. I enjoyed it when it was a movie, had Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in it, and was actually funny.

If you don't like the show, don't buy any more episodes. That's as best I can put it, OP.

I like the show for its handling of Tony's character, and the subtlety, realism and tragedy that goes into his character study. Some of it is insanely intense (spoilers!)

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Nb: most of those aren't.

This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.

Nb, most viewers of those shows who liked them a lot would probably disagree with you.

Yeah, but they're not great cultural moments. The Soprano's? Yes, definitely. Friends, which I don't like at all? Also yes. I'd be willing to accept Fraiser, which I've not seen, or The X-Files which I argue is incredibly flawed.

Heroes? Chuck? Not at all. It didn't change the landscape, didn't shift paradigms. What are their greater cultural relevance beyond the fact that a bunch of people — really not that many, honestly — liked them?

edited 11th Oct '13 3:48:58 AM by Nicknacks

This post has been powered by avenging fury and a balanced diet.

I guess it depends on which perspective you look at it. Heroes was quite definitively the most popular American drama on British TV for a brief period. It was also an early*

example of a certain style of drama which is now very common, although Lost was probably the series that really started off that trend.

Funnily enough I have a similar opinion to the OP. I found the Sopranos underwhelming, it may have been a revelation for American television but it felt fairly flat to me. College was the last episode I saw, it was the one I enjoyed the most. It seems to draw too much from Analyse That.

In my view the therapy scenes were the strongest of the show. Tony himself is an interesting character, the rest of his family seemed well drawn enough. The mob characters struck me as 1 and 2 dimensional, I can't imagine caring if any of them are "whacked".

Am I a good man or a bad man?

Oh, in its first season, Heroes was a really big thing it seemed like everyone was talking about, how it was like Lost but without the slow pace and lack of "answers" people grumbled about with that show.

However, then Season 2 came along, and the hype (quite rightfully) faded away.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I like that you aren't arguing about The Wire.

I'm watching the first episode of the Sopranos. We'll see which of the two series is best.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Just finished episode 2.

Underwhelming, boring, depressing. "The life of a modern mafioso is mediocre and plagued with pettiness and small miseries" is an interesting concept, especially with how they keep referring to the epicness of The Godfather over and over, but that's about it. I don't see much potential to this series. I certainly don't see it having the kind of wrap-up, all-threads-come-together ending The Wire or Breaking Bad had, and I don't feel like I stand to learn a lesson from it. It feels like Arrested Development with Mafia instead of construction, and Catholics instead of Jews.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

That is a hilarious description!

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko