Since May of last year, I'd been watching The Sopranos on-and-off, and finally finished it yesterday.
The show is generally great, but I think my biggest, though still small, hindrance is having watched and loved Mad Men first. Despite being a supposedly more "boring" milieu, my feeling is that Matthew Weiner took what he learned from this, and then honed and sharpened the short-story-collection approach to near-perfection with his own show, without The Sopranos' occasional, but still more frequent, minor missteps (for example, I find the resolution of Tony/Melfi arc good, but the way Peter Bogdanovich's character is used as the catalyst a tad contrived and over the top for the show). Similarities abound, including dream sequences and parallel of characters (searching around doesn't find much so this may be a minority opinion, but to me AJ Soprano at times feel like a springboard for Glenn Bishop), so my feeling of comparison throughout the show is bit unavoidable.
As said though, still love it. The comparison just means that I find this an A- show, to Mad Men's A one. And this feels truly like a great, innovative series for the medium moving forwards. I also love the series finale better; James Gandolfini and Tony Soprano are one of the best marriage of character and actor ever, and remain unmatched; and the show may have a deeper bench of memorable, distinctive characters/actors more than any show ever. Like, one reason that Carmela seems to never get the misogynistic feedback many of her successors like Betty and Skyler receive is the way the show situated the character within this environment, and for Falco's fiercely empathic performance (she is the best at conveying her character feeling upset so much that we feel it along with her).
Seasons ranking:
5 6B 3 4 1 6A 2
(3 and 4 are borderline equal though; along with 6B, 3 may be the most consistent season, while 4 has the incredible second half to compensate for its first weaker one)
Top 10 favorite episodes (top 2 are definite fixes, while it's a bit of crapshoot ranking the rest; could have swapped one out for "Army of One" (3.13)) :
Review by PongpengVIP 2BlockedParent2021-09-12T04:55:07Z
Since May of last year, I'd been watching The Sopranos on-and-off, and finally finished it yesterday.
The show is generally great, but I think my biggest, though still small, hindrance is having watched and loved Mad Men first. Despite being a supposedly more "boring" milieu, my feeling is that Matthew Weiner took what he learned from this, and then honed and sharpened the short-story-collection approach to near-perfection with his own show, without The Sopranos' occasional, but still more frequent, minor missteps (for example, I find the resolution of Tony/Melfi arc good, but the way Peter Bogdanovich's character is used as the catalyst a tad contrived and over the top for the show). Similarities abound, including dream sequences and parallel of characters (searching around doesn't find much so this may be a minority opinion, but to me AJ Soprano at times feel like a springboard for Glenn Bishop), so my feeling of comparison throughout the show is bit unavoidable.
As said though, still love it. The comparison just means that I find this an A- show, to Mad Men's A one. And this feels truly like a great, innovative series for the medium moving forwards. I also love the series finale better; James Gandolfini and Tony Soprano are one of the best marriage of character and actor ever, and remain unmatched; and the show may have a deeper bench of memorable, distinctive characters/actors more than any show ever. Like, one reason that Carmela seems to never get the misogynistic feedback many of her successors like Betty and Skyler receive is the way the show situated the character within this environment, and for Falco's fiercely empathic performance (she is the best at conveying her character feeling upset so much that we feel it along with her).
Seasons ranking:
5
6B
3
4
1
6A
2
(3 and 4 are borderline equal though; along with 6B, 3 may be the most consistent season, while 4 has the incredible second half to compensate for its first weaker one)
Top 10 favorite episodes (top 2 are definite fixes, while it's a bit of crapshoot ranking the rest; could have swapped one out for "Army of One" (3.13)) :