Posted on 01/07/2024 8:58:35 PM PST by nickcarraway
“The Sopranos” debuted 25 years ago, but what makes it a masterpiece is how much older its themes are. In 1827, Goethe wrote a poem that begins, “America, you have it better.”
The German genius ended with the wish that America’s children, when they took up the pen themselves, wouldn’t write stories about “knights, robbers and ghosts.” He wasn’t just warning Americans to stay away from childish entertainments and fairy tales — though it’s easy to guess what he’d think of “Star Wars” and other Disney products.
America was a new land with new promise, and Goethe hoped it would grow up to tell stories that didn’t depend on the bloody feuds and status conflicts of Europe, as attractive as those might be to the romantic imagination.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
No it did not. And it clearly showed that they - the characters - destroyed everything and everyone they came into contact with. And eventually, many of them, themselves too.
However, they were much more honorable than any politician.
Fixed it.
:)
“You want some gabagool, why don’t you get it from one of your little Russian whoo.........”
It can be watched today on YouTube for free or potentially several other venues.
What made the Sopranos so good was the different characters around Tony. They were all very flawed sociopaths. Guys that could seem like your friend one minute and not think twice about killing you a few minutes later.
Some of the episodes were so crazy that they were instant classics. They also took on subjects that were not allowed to be spoken about anywhere else on television at the time. Which are now commonplace. You do have to have a tolerance for swearing and occasional nudity(Tony owned a strip bar),
It was a great show, with great characters and great writing. I would strongly suggest you give it a try. It is much better than anything on cable/streaming TV today.
Paulie was my favorite character. The episode when they were stuck in the car out in the Pine Barrens of NJ was classic.
You had a Tic Tac?
The show was a view into a culture that no normal person would want to live in - if they knew the price of living in it. Yet it gave us compelling characters and stories. Week after week, for eight and a half years.
That was hilarious.
Wow 25 years. I’m getting old. Still a great show. And no it didn’t glorify anybody. It showed them to be petty and dumb But good for drama, usually stemming from their pettiness and stupidity. “Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this.”
I always thought of The Sopranos as more of a dark comedy.
It certainly straddled the line between drama and comedy. There’s a lot of really messed up comedy in there. How do you not laugh when Christopher finds out Ralphie wore a wig?
Made funnier by the fact that Fox is one of the channels that passed on it. Thankfully.
My favorite scene was Tony with Janice..
“I wonder what’s French-Canadian for ‘I grew up without a mother?’ ‘Ah, sacre-bleu where is me mama!’”
Those 2 going at each other was cruel comedy gold.
Television did have its "knights and robbers" phase 60 years ago when westerns dominated the screen and the schedule. That template came back with a vogue for cop shows. The recent fixation with superheroes is similar. We also had comedies and (less often) dramas dealing with ordinary, mainstream Americans in ordinary life situations.
But television has done all that. It's exhausted the heroic mode and that of everyday life. Where to go next? To the outsiders, the marginals, the lowlifes. That was territory that had been touched on by gangster movies, but hadn't been fully explored and exploited. So that's why we have The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, Narcos, Ozark, etc. Something is truly at stake in those shows. it's life or death. There's real conflict, risk, and drama there. At least there has been. This vein will eventually be exhausted like the others.
Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri : [turning to Christopher] You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator.
Christopher Moltisanti : His house looked like s___.
The Corleones would have rubbed out Tony in 5 seconds.
“The Sopranos,’ now 25, is the ultimate TV series about America — not the Italian mo”
That’s one idiots opinion.
The ONLY thing the Sopranos TV show representated was a bunch of stereotypes, and nothing truly “representative” of Italian Americans or Americans generally.
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