FYI, major plot spoilers in the Sopranos are in this post, but mostly the third paragraph.
It's up there. If it's not the best ever, then it's in the conversation.
My favorite ever is the Sopranos, because for me, it's just the right mix serial drama but light-hearted at moments, and I feel like you can generally watch any episode of the Sopranos alone or in sequence and still enjoy them. The Wire is great, but I haven't watched it since it came out or shortly after it went off the air, and if you threw me into the middle of Season 3, in a random episode, it'd be really hard to understand what's going on because as the show goes on it becomes more and more difficult to understand what's happening without understanding the sequence of events that led up to it.
I think the Sopranos is mostly unique in that way, especially compared to today where you have really heavily serialized shows that are very tough to follow unless you've stuck with the sequence. The Sopranos was good about making almost every episode have an independent plot within that episode, and so you can watch them either as a serialized show one after the other, or as independent episodes alone. The Wire is not nearly as bad as some contemporary shows (for instance, if you miss even 20 minutes of Westworld, a later episode might make no sense or and other shows have completely abandoned the idea of telling stories within an episode, and every episode of a show is just fodder for the greater story arc of that season).
So, for me, I usually put the Sopranos at #1, and the Wire at #2. I think the Wire might be better but I end up liking the Sopranos more. There are moments in the Wire that have affected me more than in the Sopranos... like Adrianna's death, Chrissy's death, and so on, really got to me in The Sopranos. But, when I talk about the Wire I still say "... fucking Wallace, man..." and "ugh... Dookie..." "Man, stringer..." and I like shake my head when I talk about them. THe WIre, in that way, draws more emotion out of me than most other notable events in the Sopranos perhaps other than Adrianna's murder... which is one of the most memorable moments of media for me, one of those moments where I sat in my chair for like 60 seconds after it happened and was like ".. holy shit."
It's up there. If it's not the best ever, then it's in the conversation.
My favorite ever is the Sopranos, because for me, it's just the right mix serial drama but light-hearted at moments, and I feel like you can generally watch any episode of the Sopranos alone or in sequence and still enjoy them. The Wire is great, but I haven't watched it since it came out or shortly after it went off the air, and if you threw me into the middle of Season 3, in a random episode, it'd be really hard to understand what's going on because as the show goes on it becomes more and more difficult to understand what's happening without understanding the sequence of events that led up to it.
I think the Sopranos is mostly unique in that way, especially compared to today where you have really heavily serialized shows that are very tough to follow unless you've stuck with the sequence. The Sopranos was good about making almost every episode have an independent plot within that episode, and so you can watch them either as a serialized show one after the other, or as independent episodes alone. The Wire is not nearly as bad as some contemporary shows (for instance, if you miss even 20 minutes of Westworld, a later episode might make no sense or and other shows have completely abandoned the idea of telling stories within an episode, and every episode of a show is just fodder for the greater story arc of that season).
So, for me, I usually put the Sopranos at #1, and the Wire at #2. I think the Wire might be better but I end up liking the Sopranos more. There are moments in the Wire that have affected me more than in the Sopranos... like Adrianna's death, Chrissy's death, and so on, really got to me in The Sopranos. But, when I talk about the Wire I still say "... fucking Wallace, man..." and "ugh... Dookie..." "Man, stringer..." and I like shake my head when I talk about them. THe WIre, in that way, draws more emotion out of me than most other notable events in the Sopranos perhaps other than Adrianna's murder... which is one of the most memorable moments of media for me, one of those moments where I sat in my chair for like 60 seconds after it happened and was like ".. holy shit."
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