[doorgunner69]

Too bad I did not watch TV back then, sounds like it was a good show; if you like east coast city based stuff.

[whitney69]

I guess I missed something. Years ago they were talking about the Simpsons. I thought for sure they would say The View now.

wy69

[whitney69]

I guess I missed something. Years ago they were talking about the Simpsons. I thought for sure they would say The View now.

wy69

[Celtic Conservative]

It was a show that glorified criminals. Hard pass.

CC

[jmacusa]

I have a tremendous respect for the Italian people. They've given so much to the world in culture, art, music, architecture, medicine and cuisine.

I have none for the Mafia.

They're nothing but a bunch of asocial murdering parasites who produce no wealth, render no useful service and degrade everything they come in contact with and give a bad name to a great people.

[hotsteppa]

One of the best TV series ever made. In today’s woke culture, could not be made again. The world has gone soft.

[MayflowerMadam]

Wow. That long ago. Doesn’t seem possible. We’ve been looking for a series to binge watch on our down time and this could be good.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Groundbreaking for its time, and it still holds up well today, though the flaws are more obvious. David Chase's mommy issues, his tiresome "pebble in the shoe" antagonist for Tony every season (Richie, Ralphie, Tony B), the way characters would develop major personality traits that had never been seen before overnight (Tony has a major gambling problem out of the blue, Ralphie is suddenly into BDSM, Vito is suddenly Village People-gay and gets an entire arc devoted to his romance with a fry cook). Some really bad throwaway episodes. The final "war" between New Jersey and Brooklyn, which takes all of two episodes.

Again, the series is still quite watchable, and it paved the way for other great TV series, but The Sopranos is very lucky to have gotten James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano - an amazing talent. The story lines certainly weren't what carried that show.

[stuckinloozeeana]

Never saw one episode.

[Demiurge2]

It’s OK if you’re into brutal, corrupt, not very bright people who use the F word at every opportunity.

[Ge0ffrey]

It’s very dark without a moral compass. Halfway through the second season I gave up.

[yelostar]

It’s hard to distance from the violence and cruelty but it wasn’t gratuitous and always fit the story line. Sadly, violence and cruelty are always functioning in the world, and in some circles they are motus operandi. They existed not in the outward public world of the characters, but in the hidden and powerful alter-world, the one where the real decisions were made. Sounds familiar.

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.

[discostu]

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.”

[x]

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.”

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.

[Wuli]

“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.