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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Both these shows are about crime and degradation, and most of all, violence. How do they even show up on the top of anyone's list? OK, so hardly any well-written show has 0 violent scenes these days - even Californication which is, in all ways about sex and nothing but, has the 16 year old chickie beating up Duchovny.
But to love a show, to call it the best of all shows, that is relentless in it's aggression and demoralization? What are you missing in your well-ordered, safe life that you have to wallow in it over all other forms of entertainment?
It seems we have both critics and letter writers with very short memories. How likely is it that the two "best TV shows of all time" are on the air (or just ending) right now? Someone mentioned The Prisoner, but what about The Honeymooners (or are comedies barred from being any good, like at the Oscars)?
Personally, no show has given me more 'moments' while watching than Northern Exposure. Best show I've ever seen.
...as several other commenters have pointed out. Maybe I'm prejudiced because, although I try to give almost every new HBO or Showtime series a fair trial (because they've paid off so often in the past), I could never get into either of these.
But "the greatest ever"??? We've got shelves here full of DVDs of television series good enough to warrant purchasing. TV goes back a long way. The Twilight Zone, anybody? Kung Fu?
"Both these shows are about crime and degradation, and most of all, violence. How do they even show up on the top of anyone's list? ... to love a show, to call it the best of all shows, that is relentless in it's aggression and demoralization?"
Well said. There's plenty of gritty, hardcore, scary stuff going on in the world. I get it from the news and from living. I have stopped watching stuff like that on TV. I have mostly stopped watching anything, but when I do, it's got to be something that has some redeeming value, something that either provides genuine pleasure in the moment or helps reinforce the constructive tendencies in me, helps me engage with the world in a positive way when I turn the set off. There's no time in my life on this ball of rock hurtling through space for fare like these two shows.
I don't know about the Sopranos being the best tv show of all time, but it just might boast the Best Character of All Time (Tony, obviously) and best Theme Music of All Time (that pounding rhythm is Tony's own insanely aggressive heartbeat).
Although honestly, I don't think the Tony character would have been 1/10th of himself without the jaw-dropping James Gandolfini playing him. Look at any still shot of this amazing actor; each square inch of his face is revealing a new thought, a different feeling, an entire story.
Whoever said Six Feet Under is the best tv show of all time, yep, that just could be. Come to think of it, Nate also is right up there as a character who gets under your skin forever.
You'll be doing this all over again except with Madmen & the Sopranos. Madmen is brilliant
"Of all time" usually means "in the speaker or writer's lifetime," when you get right down to it. Which means that there are whole sections of life and art which are simply dismissed. I don't think either Sopranos or Wire needs hyperbole and agree that, Damn!, those are two fine shows! I liked early Wire better than later Wire and feel pretty much the same about Sopranos. Sopranos has always been A-1 entertainment with great scripts and ensemble acting. Wire is tougher on the eye and ear but is one of the most important shows about our American world that's been written -- again with superb scripts and acting. And that's not even getting into the positive impact they've had across the board -- in TV,in our thinking, and in the possibilities for unknowns and even non-actors to have a chance at a part.
I see the headlines touting The Wire and The Sopranos as the best show of all time. Maybe the last ten tears.
Neither of these shows with an ensemble cast would have been possible without Hill Street Blues. And I am sorry, but a tv show about a group of people I would rather not be around (yes, I grew up in an Italian neighborhood where there were guys with knives and guns who at lower level acted like racist militias--yes, there were signs going up to the Murray Hill neighborhood that stated "Niggers Keep Out") or even be reminded that such people existed as best show ever. Nope.
I can remember watching The Twilight Zone in the late 50s or early 60s and know that was great. How about GE Theater? I Claudius perhaps? Put a sense of history to your selections please.
Rojomojo
No contest. Ernie Kovacs.
You guys have short memories.
The Sopranos is wonderful entertainment and I can't fault anything about it. Nothing. But The Wire cuts deeper, as if it were a pathologist's report describing a particularly aggressive cancer, which in this case happens to be the capitalist system.
A close friend of mine, a now-retired AD who escaped from the street life of the South Bronx and got his start as a gofer in the blaxploitation films of the 70's, agrees completely. His take: "There's not an ounce of fat on that m**********r. It's the best thing that's ever been on tv and you can tell anyone I said so!"
I haven't read this entire thread and may have missed something pertinent, but David Simon did say in an interview that the only character in the show not to have been drawn from his and Burns's years on the street is Omar, who might have been the hero of a Sergio Leone
western.
I guess I'll never "get it" with regard to The Sopranos.
I can't separate the screen characters from the real-life version of mobsters who are sadists, murderers, extortionists, pimps, drug sellers, loan sharks -- you name it. Couple of weeks ago those who ordered the baseball bat deaths of two of their own as depicted in the film "Casino" were convicted of those and other brutal murders.
I don't know how one "humanizes" these monsters.
I spent my JHS and HS days in Newark, NJ, aware that some people around us were very bad people and made kingly incomes while my dad made maybe $100 per week doing honest work.
Maybe that's part of why I don't get it. These bastards can burn in hell.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
