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The Sopranos is one of the greatest television shows ever aired, no argument. For 7 years since the ending people have continued to discuss the show and its meanings, analyzed the characters behaviors and actions, and weighed in on what the show was trying to say. For a second, forget all that. Forget the cultural phenomenon that Tony Soprano created. Forget the endless seasons of back and forth arguments about whether or not Tony was justified in what he did. Forget the entire popular cultural that sprang up around the show; watching parties, constant articles speculating on what might happened, the “who’s getting wacked” bets, etc. Let’s go back to a show that debuted on HBO and for a brief moment was ignored and consigned to the dustbin of history as some piece of shock violence premium cable. Let’s start with what was at first a major curiosity that in a matter of months dominated the pop culture scene and ended up creating a legacy that defined what TV dramas could actually achieve. Let’s start at the beginning of what some people have called the “Great American Novel” and is heralded by others as on the of the greatest contributions to the medium to date. Imagine sitting down to see the show when it started. Watching some no-name actor named James Gandolfini, maybe known for a supporting role in Crimson Tide, take control as a major player in a New Jersey Crime family. Watch him come to exists as a fragile, broken human being who’s recurring therapy sessions are as important to the show as any other aspect of his life, and experience the life he leads as a boss of a criminal organization. Anyone watching the Sopranos for the first time now will have a much different experience. Since Tony Soprano graced our screens, we’ve seen the likes of Vic Mackey, Walter White, and Don Draper who have redefined what TV drama means. The entertainment world has been decisively shaped by what The Sopranos did, and every serious drama since then owes a small part to it. Of course, it goes without saying ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS. Anyone who’s interested enough in the show to give it a try deserves the chance to experience it as the rest of us did and allow them a place to express their mind and discuss the episodes they’ve seen. In this thread we'll be re-watching the entire series of The Sopranos, on a schedule of 1 episode per week, 16 years to the day that they first aired. quote:The point of this thread is for those of us who have already seen the show to go through and relive what many of us believe to be the greatest show to grace the television screen, along with giving new viewers a place to think and talk about the episodes in a friendly, safe space. Our spoiler policy will be to attempt, as much as is possible, to only discuss "texts" (ie, episodes) we've all watched together. If you find yourself relying on facts from future seasons to critique someone else's viewpoint, consider being polite and tabling the conversation until that episode. Thanks to Tao Jones for the amazing cast list and descriptions. Schedule (all at 7:00pm EST) Episode 1: The Sopranos. January 10 Episode 2: 46 Long. January 17 Episode 3: Denial, Anger, Acceptance. January 24 Episode 4: Meadowlands. January 31 Episode 5: College. February 7 Episode 6: Pax Soprana. February 14 Episode 7: Down Neck. February 21 Episode 8: The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti. February 28 Episode 9: Boca. March 14 Episode 10: A Hit is a Hit. March 14 Episode 11: Nobody Knows Anything. March 21 Episode 12: Isabella. March 28 Episode 13: I Dream of Jennie Cusamano. April 4
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 05:11 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 21:51 |
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I'm excited about this project! For general Sopranos discussion, posting quotes, etc: here is the main Sopranos thread. If you've never seen the show before, spoilers happen all the time in that thread, so be warned.
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 05:30 |
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I will say this, one thing that allowed for a lot of discussion in The Wire Rewatch thread was just that, we all knew what happens so going back and talking about these early episodes and being able to contrast them with later ones lead to some interesting insights.
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# ? Dec 21, 2014 20:22 |
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I'm in. My stepdad had every season on DVD and they've been sitting around for years now with nobody watching them. I tried to start watching about 3 years ago but I only made it halfway through the first season, so I won't be going in 100% blind. Plus I've seen about 5-10 episodes here and there throughout the years (even a few of them on their original live air date) I'd catch one with my parents or a roommate every now and then. I'm spoiled on some larger plot arcs, but that's not really what I'm interested in watching for anyways. When I last saw them it was before I had watched Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc. and I hadn't really learned to appreciate the concept of a character study. The little bit that I've seen here and there always really impressed me, and obviously people rave about it all the time. When I go back and watch shows that are no longer airing I'll occasionally find its TVIV thread in the archives for some extra insight, so a rewatch sounds perfect!
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 01:55 |
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Boywhiz88 posted:I will say this, one thing that allowed for a lot of discussion in The Wire Rewatch thread was just that, we all knew what happens so going back and talking about these early episodes and being able to contrast them with later ones lead to some interesting insights. There's an active Sopranos thread for that. I'm really hoping that this manages to encourage a few people to take the plunge and start watching the show for the first time more then serious discussion about comparing the start of the series to stuff that came years later.
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 04:25 |
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Ive never followed any of the rewatch threads so I dont know the rules wrt spoilers and poo poo but I think we should just post in the other thread for spoilery/forshadowy poo poo. Its not that hard to follow two threads at once and I know if i was watching it for teh first time I wouldnt want to have to scroll past pages of spoilered text
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 04:42 |
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I think it's one thing to mention that, for instance, psychiatry and what it can accomplish is an ongoing theme/question in this show, but another thing to mention that the scene where Tony eats a ham sandwich foreshadows that episode in season 6 where he's assassinated by a guy named Oscar Meyer. I think if everyone uses their best judgment, we'll be fine.
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# ? Dec 22, 2014 05:15 |
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With spoilers just use your best judgement, youll know a spoiler when you see one (or write one rather). Or just use tags if you think it is borderline.
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 06:07 |
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Is anyone else going to be watching this blind, or even somewhat blind like me?
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 14:43 |
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timp posted:Is anyone else going to be watching this blind, or even somewhat blind like me? If we get stickied during the watch days we might bring in new viewers. I assume its from PM'ing the mods and asking but I don't have that feature.
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 15:23 |
I'm coincidentally three and a half seasons in, so I'm glad there's a non-spoiler thread, it'll be interesting to see what everyone thinks of what I've seen so far. I will say that this is the best drama about eating dinner (with the occasional mafia subplot) I've ever seen.
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 18:59 |
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Barry Foster posted:I'm coincidentally three and a half seasons in, so I'm glad there's a non-spoiler thread, it'll be interesting to see what everyone thinks of what I've seen so far. one of the most rewarding parts of watching The Sopranos is the love you'll develop for baked ziti, and prosciutto
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 19:10 |
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That picture of James Gandolfini at the start of the thread is not how I remember Tony Soprano loving hell
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 19:32 |
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This has always been on my "Yeah I'll watch that someday" list and I don't use HBO Go nearly as much as I should, so I'll try to follow along as best as possible. Also, keeping an eye out for spoilers. If we end up needing to institute rules like in the Oxx&Occ Who Review Thread then we will but for now let's try to just keep it cool. I'm not usually the person who does the daily stickies but if you need a sticky, PM or tweet me. I think OSG does it most of the time, though.
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# ? Dec 23, 2014 20:10 |
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Aye Doc posted:one of the most rewarding parts of watching The Sopranos is the love you'll develop for baked ziti, and prosciutto So what, no loving ziti now?
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# ? Dec 25, 2014 16:23 |
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Excellent. I just got the Blu-rays of this, it'll be fun to have people to watch along with!
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# ? Dec 25, 2014 17:33 |
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This might be common knowledge, but every single episode of the Sopranos is available to Amazon Prime members on Amazon Instant Video. I had no idea until I got my Fire TV stick that basically every HBO show worth watching other than GoT is on there. It is going to be a very sedentary holiday season in my household. Anyway, if you have Prime and have yet to see this show it would be foolish not to participate.
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# ? Dec 25, 2014 20:26 |
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Yeah sure I can do this
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# ? Dec 25, 2014 20:44 |
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Out of respect for Jimmy I will follow this thread but I swear to chri
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# ? Dec 27, 2014 05:11 |
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as someone who only just finished watching the whole six seasons inside a year if you're umming and ahhing about taking the plunge then stfu and get in on this poo poo because the Sopranos is one of the best things I've ever seen
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# ? Dec 27, 2014 13:32 |
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britishbornandbread posted:as someone who only just finished watching the whole six seasons inside a year if you're umming and ahhing about taking the plunge then stfu and get in on this poo poo because the Sopranos is one of the best things I've ever seen It's one of the very few shows that has literally no bad episodes and that no one ever suggests "Just skip the first X episodes or season X" like you see so frequently today when discussing long TV series. Plus, its 56 minutes once a week during the TV off season, literally the best time to start watching one of the best television shows ever.
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# ? Dec 28, 2014 09:39 |
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Yeah there are bad plots within episodes but every single episode is largely awesome.
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# ? Dec 28, 2014 11:45 |
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Can I get a mod to sticky this thread tomorrow a few hours before 7pm EST?
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 04:27 |
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timp posted:Is anyone else going to be watching this blind, or even somewhat blind like me? Me! I'm game for this. I've watched the first several episodes a few months ago but I had a hard time getting into it and soon got sidetracked into watching other things. I think it might be a difficult show for me to binge watch like I usually do, so a more spaced out schedule spurred on by this thread might be just the thing I need.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 06:17 |
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I watched the first episode a while ago and it was good, but I never kept going. I will follow this thread.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 07:07 |
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Ixtlilton posted:I watched the first episode a while ago and it was good, but I never kept going. I will follow this thread. Hopefully the fans from the Soprano discussion thread will be able to pop in and answer any questions without spoiling things. There's tons of things you'll miss on your first run only because the show is so packed with stuff going on.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 08:22 |
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I've never watched this show and it's on Prime (I think) so I will try to follow the thread as well.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 17:29 |
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This is a fantastic idea. I powered through the series over a couple months, and in the end I wish I'd spaced them out. Every episode is so dense and full of symbolism that they really deserve to be contemplated and discussed on an episode by episode basis. The show is known for popularizing the serialized format for television, but I was always amazed by how self-contained each episode feels.
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# ? Jan 10, 2015 20:07 |
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So, for anyone who watched it for the first time I'd love to see some posts on your thoughts. The first season is a bit dated, "Clinton says Medicare will be bust by 2000" and there's a pre-9/11 mindset, and the having the story being cut between Tony's normal life and his sessions with Melfi were revolutionary at the time. There's a bit of blatant symbolism at the start with the ducks flying away and Tony's panic attacks, but it gets much more subtle later on and you could spend hours watching and rewatching and noticing new details every time. David Chase fought hard with HBO for how he developed Tony Soprano as a character, and College is probably where he finally won his fight and HBO backed off to let him create. College is also considered the best or one of the best episodes of the entire series.
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 10:40 |
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Aye Doc posted:one of the most rewarding parts of watching The Sopranos is the love you'll develop for baked ziti, and prosciutto Last time I watched through the entire run I ended up eating a ton of Italian subs from the deli down the street By the same token, when I got really into Wong Kar-Wai a couple years ago I ate a whole lot of Chinese food
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 10:48 |
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Criminal Minded posted:Last time I watched through the entire run I ended up eating a ton of Italian subs from the deli down the street I ended up hitting up Subway more often then usual to get their Spicy Italian with a ton of vinegar and onions during my run through. One notable thing about the show is that any portrayal of food is always absolute excess. Tony with a massive loving bowl of pasta, the family dinners with a huge amount of take out food on the table, just massive consumption in general.
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 13:32 |
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I watched the pilot today, and I have to say that if I didn't know it was supposed to be one of the best shows ever I probably wouldn't keep watching. I will admit that I'm not much into gangster / mafia stuff so it's not like I'm sitting in the heart of the demo, but unlike The Wire which grabbed me immediately on a topic I didn't really care about, this pilot seemed more like "here's a good show that's not for me". Because I know so many people like it, I'm willing to keep going. And I'm sure when it premiered it was much more revolutionary television story telling that it seems to be now. Things I liked: + Edie Falco, who is the best character. I wish the show was about her instead of Tony. Her inner life seems much more interesting than his. I don't know if that's because tortured middle-aged men have become a thing SINCE this show, though, so this might be a case where it's hamstrung through no fault of its own by me watching it so late. + The generational tension on both sides of the fence (in the mafia family). Not so much the women's relationships with each other - the mother is funny but will get old soon, and the daughter is just insufferable. But Christopher vs. Tony vs. Jr was cool. + The angle they opened with the therapist potentially getting caught up in this through her husband / boyfriend somehow. I got the impression he was like a lawyer or something but that might not be correct. + The whole thing with the restaurant owner who's such an idiot and they keep trying to protect him from himself and he never figured it out. I liked him, too. + The little son, how chill he is. I worry for his future. Things I didn't like: + Unnecessary violence. If this is a show about this dude's inner conflict, I don't need a guy getting shot in a butcher shop over lines of cocaine. The slyer sides of the violence, like the body disposal, were much more interesting. + The idea of the ducks was a lot better than what the ducks turned out to be. How gloriously weird he was at the beginning with them was something I was hoping would pay off in a cooler way. + It was hard to follow what was going on with the timeline. + The therapist is a bit on the nose. Hope her dialogue gets a little more subtle in the future. Things that were super dated: + No way you could run over a guy and beat the poo poo out of him without 100 of those watching people pulling out their phones. He'd be on YouTube so fast. + Yep, you can show boobs on TV. Cool. + Degenerate!!
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 21:21 |
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Sophia posted:Things that were super dated: This is actually even dated for when it aired. The pilot struggles in some areas where its clear they hadn't really nailed the direction they wanted to take the show yet, so you end up with really odd things like Tony personally running some guy down with his car in front of a hundred witnesses like it's 1950 and he's not worried about the law. They were also working on structuring how the therapy fits it, so it's a bit more awkward than in the rest of the series. As you see in the pilot, one of the original ideas was that everything that happened in Tony's life would be filtered through his therapy sessions (ie "nothing. we had coffee" when flashing back to the car escapade), but they ended up going with a more linear approach when the show got picked up. So you'll probably find the timeline a lot cleaner and the therapy less on the nose.
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 21:48 |
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My favorite part was right at the beginning of Tony's session with Melfie, she's giving him those ground rules and she says she's "technically" supposed to go to the cops if he tells her about his crimes with a tiny smile on her face that almost implied a wink. Like she subtly suggested she might not go to the cops even if he did cross that line.Sophia posted:+ No way you could run over a guy and beat the poo poo out of him without 100 of those watching people pulling out their phones. He'd be on YouTube so fast. Season 1 premiered in '99. Youtube didn't exist until 2005. I don't think anyone had camera phones for several more years either. It's a bit unbelievable that it still wouldn't get traced back to him by the license plate or whatever, but that would just go back to Christopher, and who knows if the car was even registered to him. As for the violence level, that's part of the reality of it. To not make us see the mess of blood or not hear his dying gasp, and just skipping to the lighthearted cleanup would be too easy for the viewers. It's supposed to bother you. Kristofenpheiffer fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Jan 11, 2015 |
# ? Jan 11, 2015 22:20 |
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Kristofenpheiffer posted:Season 1 premiered in '99. Youtube didn't exist until 2005. I don't think anyone had camera phones for several more years either. It's a bit unbelievable that it still wouldn't get traced back to him by the license plate or whatever, but that would just go back to Christopher, and who knows if the car was even registered to him. The Rodney King thing happened in 1991 and was all over the news worldwide. Stuff like youtube today means everything is being filmed and uploaded all the time, but even back in the 90s pulling something like Tony did with the car was taking a massive risk - he just needed one guy with a camera (people used to walk around with those!) or a video camera to film him and he'd be in jail. Even though the first episode explicitly has Tony talk about the glory days of the Mafia being behind them, it still seemed to want to incorporate some of the stylistic imagery of stuff like Goodfellas and Casino where guys were able to just put a savage beating on somebody in the street with impunity.
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 22:43 |
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A few things that are interesting to me, as someone who's watched the series a few times: + At the point in time when this show was created, the Italian mafia in New York was much more of a force than it would be by the time the show ended. As a result, crime films in general tended to glamorize or romanticize the lives of mafioso, whether by making their lives operatic as in The Godfather or in more subtle ways as in Goodfellas. One of the things this series is trying to do is criticize or satirize that tendency of movies and/or crime fiction. (I think The Godfather, in particular, is satirized quite a bit in many episodes, but I'll talk about that if we get there.) The grim details of Christopher's first hit might be intriguing, but it's something that someone who watched crime movies would have seen a hundred times. The fact that we're also shown some of the aftermath, with Christopher and Big Pussy disposing of the body, is a prank on the typical way murder was presented in film. + The song in the murder scene is "I'm A Man". + This show is a show that is about a family, but is consciously about the adults and old people in the family. Almost every other television show about a family has consciously been about the children and adults. (Meadow and AJ are part of the show, but if this show had followed convention they'd be the characters we're meant to empathize with.) Even though shows that are "about a family" have shifted to being concerned with the adults and sidelining the children (Breaking Bad, for instance), Sopranos is still groundbreaking in treating the old folks seriously. Old people in film are often oracular voices of wisdom or harmless comic relief. In the pilot the two main antagonists in Tony's life are his mother and Junior and while there are funny aspects to both of them, we see they aren't harmless. + I think Tony's feeling that the good days are over and his current life is a kind of apocalypse ( "I got in at the end") has become a general feeling in American society, but in the time it was originally recorded it might have been a more provocative thing for a character to say. In the late 90s, things were going well for a lot of the economy and there was a positive feeling throughout much of American society -- Communism was dead, liberal democracy and free market economies were going to spread throughout the world, we've arrived at what some social critics called "the end of history" and there was just some mopping up to be done before a golden future arrived. But the Mafia had been under pressure from law enforcement and Giuliani's use of the RICO laws for a decade. Before the government was able to prosecute the bosses, the Mafia structure worked to insulate them from individual arrests; those changes helped challenge the entire structure of the mob, so I can see why Tony might have felt that way. But this pessimistic statement of his that now seems unremarkable might well have been something that only people in particular circumstances(depression, mafia involvement, for instance) might have said.
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# ? Jan 11, 2015 23:49 |
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Jerusalem posted:The Rodney King thing happened in 1991 and was all over the news worldwide. Stuff like youtube today means everything is being filmed and uploaded all the time, but even back in the 90s pulling something like Tony did with the car was taking a massive risk - he just needed one guy with a camera (people used to walk around with those!) or a video camera to film him and he'd be in jail. I'm not saying it wasn't stupid or risky, just that it's not unbelievable. Any witnesses could easily be too terrified to pin it on Tony, and if someone was standing there filming, Chris or Tony likely would have noticed and beaten the poo poo out of them. Plus Tony was out to prove something. He said the guy was telling people he was soft. He had to make an example of him, and what's more effective than a brutal, public assault that nobody can do anything about without putting themselves in danger.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 02:13 |
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The guy wasn't just some random civilian, he owed money to the Mafia. People who end up owing money to organized crime usually aren't upstanding citizens themselves, or at least aren't too keen to go to the authorities. It's sort of the modus operandi of organized crime throughout history.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 02:32 |
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Sophia posted:Unnecessary violence. If this is a show about this dude's inner conflict, I don't need a guy getting shot in a butcher shop over lines of cocaine. The slyer sides of the violence, like the body disposal, were much more interesting. The violence becomes such an integral part of the show that by season 2 people were getting super excited and take bets on who'd get wacked, how many people would get murdered, etc. For the first season, there's a bit of excessive violence here and there but at some points it's almost comedic. As dark as this show gets there is some amazing black comedy that occurs pretty regularly. Dealing with the aftermath of either planned or random acts of violence is also a huge part of the show and how the fallout effects the mobsters and their associates. I'll agree with you that the first episode is a bit rough, especially when compared to more modern TV dramas, but at the time it was as revolutionary as it gets. Also, there was quite bit of creative conflict between what David Chase was trying to do and what HBO thought would get ratings. Throatwarbler posted:The guy wasn't just some random civilian, he owed money to the Mafia. People who end up owing money to organized crime usually aren't upstanding citizens themselves, or at least aren't too keen to go to the authorities. The violence committed by Tony and co. is usually framed in the context of the show as noble and measured when any sane person would view it as horrific and brutal. Real life mob guys have given interviews and mentioned how the slapdash way that organized crime is portrayed in the show would get them all caught within months. pentyne fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jan 12, 2015 |
# ? Jan 12, 2015 04:40 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 21:51 |
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Kristofenpheiffer posted:Season 1 premiered in '99. Youtube didn't exist until 2005. I don't think anyone had camera phones for several more years either. It's a bit unbelievable that it still wouldn't get traced back to him by the license plate or whatever, but that would just go back to Christopher, and who knows if the car was even registered to him. Well yeah, that's why I said "dated". It was something that screamed "this show was made 15 years ago", that's all. It wasn't a criticism. Though EvilTobaccoExec is probably right that even in 1999 people wouldn't have just stood around and watched like they did. Plus a huge HMO probably has security cameras on its campus! On the violence, I've never bought the argument that violence on its own is worthy of shock in a good show. A mediocre show shocks you with how violent something is. A great show shocks you with what the violence of something means. You could make an argument here that it was trying to contrast the light-hearted, novelty-music underscored car violence that Tony perpetrates with the cold, dark violence of the younger generation, and I wouldn't necessarily argue with that. They underscore it a few more times with taking the guy to the bridge with subtle threats, and how Tony originally tries to send the guy on a cruise - the soft touch - and then Christopher blows up his restaurant - the hard touch - but straight up shooting a guy's brains out didn't have enough emotional resonance in a first episode (for me) to make it worth it. I don't know these characters yet. I don't really care about them and their ways, so it stuck out like a sore thumb. It had the same effect for me as when there's some random sex happening in Game of Thrones, just because they want to have something on the screen that people will talk about. A great show doesn't have to do that. It is interesting all on its own. That doesn't mean that violence can't exist in a TV show, and this show will probably have plenty of it! But I hope it gets smarter about it than that.
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# ? Jan 12, 2015 05:03 |