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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
But the best show OF ALL TIME???
What about (here we go)... Northern Exposure? Lou Grant? The Smothers Comedy Brothers Hour...?
. . . but I like it. "The Wire" is in most ways "better," but I "The Sopranos" offered a sort of delirious pleasure few could match. By the way, considering he was an actor on "The Sopranos," had a zillion hits going back nearly 45 years, both with the Four Seasons and under his own name - not to mention a European remake hit this year - you think you could do Frankie Valli the favor of spelling his name correctly.
When people who haven't seen the Sopranos ask me whether I think they should watch it, I say no. Why? Because the show is well-written, well-acted, and highly entertaining; before long you will be addicted; and then you will feel compelled to watch episode after episode of cruelty, despair, and increasingly cartoonish violence. I wish I'd never started watching it.
It's interesting to me how many of the letters in this comment thread amount to "I love this or that show because it makes me feel so bad." Not that I want sweetness and light, but I don't understand why evil and hopelessness seem to be the only things that count as drama, or even entertainment. Shakespeare wrote comedies as well as ferocious tragedies, and some of the comedies are among his best plays.
It isn't easy being a young, smart feminist trying to break into a male dominated field such as telebision, but it's wise to perservere and bring socially-relevant themes to an audience which hates our labias and the freedom they represent.
Especially when it comes to an oppressive Patriarchy who loves to see SEXUALLY LIBERATED WOMEN get knocked up because they are afraid to use BIRTH CONTROL because the non-womb having patriachy of the so-called church enjoys the site of WOMEN BEING PUNISHED WITH BABIES!
They like their women knocked up and knocked around. I hope the goddamned pope dies of cancer while staring at my clitoris as I pleasure myself unashamedly to a fantasy that DOES NOT INCLUDE sexually repressed college republican frat boys who think it's ok TO LIE about whether they won't make fun of the mole on your breast and then do and why should I shave down there anyway you're the ones with the hangups!!!!!
I've said it a million times. The Wire is the best show on television. Deadwood is the most entertaining. As long as we're employing the fiction that dramas are better than comedies, Sopranos is third. Otherwise it's Larry Sanders. And probably Arrested Development. Then Sopranos. Which was great. Let's keep in mind there's 700,000 television shows out there and we're having a discussion on the top two or three.
And a moment for Deadwood. If you were to take the top twenty characters ever on television, five or six of them would be from Deadwood. Swearengen is tops, obviously. E.B.Farnum? Calamity Jane? Etc. I could talk about Deadwood all day. Aren't we supposed to be getting two more two hour episodes?
Your favorite show sucks. And you are a moron.
Sabado Gigante is the greatest thing on television ever. Now shove that up your precious asses. Unless of course you think they'll make an HBO series about you shoving it up your precious asses first.
...but Grouch Marx' "You Bet your Life" (I mean he had Lord Buckley as a contestant; okay guest) or any of the old Steve Allen shows are better than most since, never mind increased production values. Showin' my age but hey, check out You Tube on this...
The correct answer is "The Shield."
Sorry, but the best TV shows of all time were:
Eastside Westside (26 episodes in the 50s, canceled because it was too controversial), starring George C. Scott
The Outer Limits
Lou Grant
Fawlty Towers
"The Sopranos" is a tour de force. "The Wire" is a masterpiece. Therein lies the difference between the two shows.
I remember watching the commentary part of one of the "Wire's" DVD's. The desire to work with and create a cinematic form and experience was exquisitely realized. In nearly every scene, character, shot. The writing, concept, and execution of "The Soprano's" was great, extremely powerful but also highly uneven. "The Wire" works at a level of power and sublimity that never wavers. The humanization, the depth of exploration of the drug world and underclass is unparalleled.
Chase is a great writer, Simon and Burns are better. The meticulous imnterweaving of "The Wire", the stripping away of the masks of the present world to reveal the reality we constantly ignore is extraordinary.
The death of Stringer Bell and others was as or more powerful than any hit in "The Sopranos". The ending of season four carried more pathos and tragedy than any moment I can remember in "The Sopranos".
"The Sopranos" is Richard III. But "The Wire" is King Lear. Which is the greater play? The more mature achilevement, vision realized?
I truly think "The Wire" compares to Shakespeare as great tragedy. I do not believe the same of "The Sopranos", and I am a fan.
"Oz", "Deadwood", "Six Feet Under". Phenomenal shows. We are lucky to have had them.
"The Wire" is the greatest program produced for television ever.
The Wire is the best show. It has the best actors by far. Also Deadwood is a great show. What ever happend to Carnival. I loved it. I got into the Sopranos teh last 2 eason and but enjoyed it but still think the Wire is better. Of course "Six Feet Under" was excellent.
The new HBO sereis "Tell Me That You Love Me" is god awful.
Tideswimmer asked, 'I wonder if either "The Sopranos" or "The Wire" would have the power to change someone's whole world view for life?'
The Sopranos, not really--from my viewing of it, anyway (I didn't follow it so closely in its last couple of seasons). Great entertainment at times, and extremely well done in many respects, but I didn't find it exceeding the bounds of entertainment.
But The Wire, change someone's worldview for life? Oh, indeed! I often come away from that show feeling that I've learned something substantial about how real-life society works, in areas I'd only guessed at before. It engages me on levels I just don't get from TV, rarely get from films, and only get from books when the books are damned good. And how rare to find anything that teaches so much without you having to force yourself to follow it!
From my discussions with people in local government and law enforcement, I actually have learned a lot: my guesses about real life events, informed by what I've learned from The Wire, match up with what they actually see in their jobs. It doesn't make me an expert on local politics, but I now have a decent (and realistic) intuitive grasp of that system, where I had none before. The show has changed the way I appraise the motives and effectiveness of how I see my city being run.
It takes the intellectual concept that government is a collection of overlapping, conflicting, self-interested hierarchies, and makes the nuances of that system tangible, in a way that you might need a decade of real-life experience to pick up otherwise--as well as teaching the cumulative impact of those forces on the lives and culture of citizens at the lowest rung of the economy.
As exciting melodrama, I think it falls a little short of the high water mark of the Sopranos; but if you take into account how much you actually learn from it, the overall experience (of seasons 3 and 4 in particular) is unmatched by anything else out there to date.
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
