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Torquemada posted:I think there’s a real danger that there’s not actually that many shows that can stand up to the kind of analysis Jerusalem provides. That said, maybe something a bit simpler might be a nice change of pace for him? At the risk of asking him to sign his life away, I wouldn’t object to Breaking Bad, The Shield, or Deadwood. Justified, Fargo, Rome, 24 (lol), or Babylon Berlin would all work.
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May 6, 2020 22:00
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Torquemada posted:I think there’s a real danger that there’s not actually that many shows that can stand up to the kind of analysis Jerusalem provides. That said, maybe something a bit simpler might be a nice change of pace for him? At the risk of asking him to sign his life away, I wouldn’t object to Breaking Bad, The Shield, or Deadwood. Rewatching parts of this show during the shutdown definitely made me revise it upward in my top shows. I'm pretty sure I'd put it above Breaking Bad now, which really relies a lot on plot momentum and suspense (which to be fair makes it super exciting the first time through), but isn't as layered.
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May 6, 2020 22:07
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24 would be loving hilarious. Jerusalem will have to stick with the gimmick and write his reviews in real time.
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May 6, 2020 22:08
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do game of thrones coward also I love these writeups, they're exceptional insightful and add huge amounts of depth to an amazing show, thank you so much for doing them, etc etc
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May 6, 2020 22:11
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24 recaps would be good if the format was mostly analysis of US Politics/actual war-on-terror horror stories from the week that the episode originally aired, occassionally peppered with "Alright, so this is a pretty good action sequence, for a network TV show."
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May 6, 2020 22:32
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Sinteres posted:It's funny because that's what he told her from the start. He didn't trick Melfi, Melfi tricked herself. True. How do you do therapy when "there are certain things I can't talk about"? And she knew that. I don't know if it was hubris, the challenge or a professional obligation on her part but, yeah. And Elliot, as big of an rear end in a top hat as he was to her, ultimately got her to see the light and realize the futility of the situation. But that dinner scene was unprofessional and revealed that Elliot was really projecting his fascination with Tony onto his patient. Also, revealing his patient's information publicly like that made me really hate him right then. loving smug rear end in a top hat. ... This is one of my favorite episodes of the series. Where Everything Turns to poo poo. And I mean poo poo. Everything that happens seems inevitable in retrospect but, man, once the house of cards started to crumble it crumbled loving fast. There are no happy endings for these people. Whether it's karma or whatever, the end is always death or jail. Or maybe the WPP. And everyone they brush up against gets damaged. We're looking at decades of hypocrisy, lovely misguided parenting, rationalization and greed - passed down through generations - culminating in a huge fireworks display here. Gee, why are my kids so hosed up when I spent so much money? Why is all this violence happening when I've solved all my problems through violence? Why is everyone so greedy when we're just going business? Why is everyone looking for revenge and to settle scores when all we've done is rip people off, steal, lie and kill those who became inconvenient? Why does my therapy not work when I am not honest in any way but spent a fortune? These are not reasonable people. They're thieves, extortionists, adulterers, rapists, drug dealers, liars and killers. When Tony lays down on that spring mattress in his wife beater, what does he have? The camera is careful to frame him as a corpse on a slab at the same time it flashes back to Bobby's prophetic statement from the boat outing at the cabin - another reason I'm gonna jump ahead one episode and say he died when the screen went black. Chase says "it's all right there" and that last shot is showing us him dying and staring at the door that awaits him. Purgatory, Heaven...Hell. Tony Blundetto offers Tony a door to walk through in one of the coma episodes and Tony is scared to walk through it. If I remember right, Tony is holding an assault rifle similar to the one he bought for Bobby at the cabin while he's lying on that "mattress slab". The scene is shot like a million other dead body scenes in a morgue that show you the bottom of the person's feet. Melfi "shows him the door" as well when she says she's done with him and motions towards it. The final scene in Made In America revolves people entering and exiting a door while a loving bell tolls. It is all right there, IMO. ... I'm not sure what Tony was "seeing" when he was looking at and talking to AJ. I'm sure he was sad and reflecting, to the extent that he's capable, but I think he was back to the "all business" parent/Mob Boss again and was not loving Around, inadvertently passing the torch of the damage his father did to him to his son but, at the moment, with no other loving choice, I think he was in survival mode. He was done with "therapy", such as it was and, while it cured his panic attacks, when you look at how he used it, it was almost entirely centered around him trying to apply the psychological lessons to his job - which often made him a worse boss. ... Man, Janice is the Kiss of Death, isn't she? Ritchie, Ralph and Bobby. What do we make of that? Never have sex with Janice. ... I think we're seeing Meadow officially turn into Carmela here too by going into law - not just by being a mob wife but also justifying the life and making money off it. She's going to be a mob lawyer probably and specialize in 4th amendment type things while marrying into the family. Assuming we think she lives. poo poo, sorry for the rant. Just trying to keep the thread juiced and I love this episode. EDIT: God drat, Jerusalem. Write a book, get on a Patreon podcast or...something. You have fans, do a lot of work, are really smart, a good writer and there seems to be demand for your poo poo. Your threads are better than the similar books I've read on The Wire (All the Pieces Matter) and The Sopranos (Sessions). BiggerBoat fucked around with this message at 22:52 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 22:40
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Sinteres posted:Rewatching parts of this show during the shutdown definitely made me revise it upward in my top shows. I'm pretty sure I'd put it above Breaking Bad now, which really relies a lot on plot momentum and suspense (which to be fair makes it super exciting the first time through), but isn't as layered. This is how I felt about BB. Its not a bad show, its good, but nowhere near this. Its funny how the Sopranos is mostly void of suspense, its a cheap thrill really. But keeping people on the edge of their seats is an easy way to maintain viewer base.
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May 6, 2020 23:30
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Sinteres posted:Rewatching parts of this show during the shutdown definitely made me revise it upward in my top shows. I'm pretty sure I'd put it above Breaking Bad now, which really relies a lot on plot momentum and suspense (which to be fair makes it super exciting the first time through), but isn't as layered. Honestly, I'm not sure if any show with the more standard 40 minute, 8-13 episode format can compete just based on screen time alone, the level of development the Sopranos could throw at tertiary elements would be an obscene luxury for Vince Gilligan.
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May 7, 2020 00:00
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My main problem with breaking bad is the all the characters are annoying in their badness, it's like a whole show of Janices.
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May 7, 2020 00:21
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Oh man The Shield would be great.
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May 7, 2020 01:28
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I will miss these write ups  Another vote for The Shield here
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May 7, 2020 04:04
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Bloodbath posted:I will miss these write ups As much as I'd love to see some of those arcs towards the end get a write up, I'm not sure I could condone the amount of procedural mediocrity that would have to be rehashed.
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May 7, 2020 05:38
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But seriously that train store owner would have had 8 grand in his pocket and a unsullied diorama if the hitmen waited until Bobby was in the parking lot.
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May 7, 2020 05:49
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lurker2006 posted:I'm not sure I could condone the amount of procedural mediocrity that would have to be rehashed. Yeah you are probably right. I love The Shield, Breaking Bad etc but agree it doesn’t have the potential depth of analysis Sopranos has. I’m not sure anything does.. that’s why this is the greatest television ever.
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May 7, 2020 06:12
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Bip Roberts posted:But seriously that train store owner would have had 8 grand in his pocket and a unsullied diorama if the hitmen waited until Bobby was in the parking lot. Maybe he lifted Bobby's money roll before the cops came edit::: you could also prob do something itneresting twith the shield . Just do like the main arcs and stuff and how they implode you wouldnt have to go over every time they catch a rapist or drug dealer or whatever unless it added something significant to a particular characters story. banned from Starbucks fucked around with this message at 06:53 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 06:44
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Sinteres posted:I was pretty resistant to the idea that he was a sociopath for a while too, and like I said, I don't technically know if he fits all the criteria or not. I think as an audience we fell into the same trap that Melfi did though, where we buy his into his occasional crocodile tears and overlook what a monster he is deep down. A big part of my objection to the idea is that... it's just too easy an explanation. It's such a sweeping generalization that not only allows Elliot and eventually Melfi (and yes, the audience) to feel superior to him, but it reduces an incredibly complex character to "he bad". Part of the appeal of Tony Soprano, outside of the amazing performance of course, is that he's a very flawed but very human person. There isn't a single easy label to slap onto him and consider the problem solved (or unsolvable, in this case). As I've stressed many times in prior write-ups, there can be no doubt that Tony is a horrible human being. But he's not that way by default, and he's not incapable of change. Part of the frustration comes from the fact that he resists change even as he simultaneously demands it. His endless hypocrisy infuriates, but it also engages and entertains. And that plays a big part in my distaste for the dinner party scene, because it and the subsequent final therapy session (which is incredibly well acted, I have to say) gives Elliot and Melfi and, again, the audience itself too easy an out. I'll talk more about it in the last couple of write-ups, but it did annoy me that the same people both in and out of the show who greedily drank up all of Tony's criminal actions like a tasty treat were so quick to condemn him. In the latter case, the meta knowledge that the show was ending seemed to somehow make it "safe" now to declare it was time Tony got his, and to roundly poo poo on the man they had often been rooting for the last 7 years or so. That too is a sweeping generalization on my behalf, but the term sociopath being thrown so casually about never sat right with me. JethroMcB posted:The resolution of Melfi and Tony's relationship always struck me as a rushed plotline, with the first Melfi/Kupferberg scene in ages just one episode ago and the dinner party, research and decision to end treatment all coming in the first half of this episode. I know she'd hemmed and hawed over Tony throughout the series, but as one of the central pillars of the show it felt like something they could have threaded through the 6B episodes a little more organically, rather than loading it all into the back end. I feel like as the series progressed, Melfi became less and less prominent. I think that wasn't entirely unplanned, Tony gradually just made her another part of the background of his life after all as he did with everything once it was no longer fresh and exciting to him. But it did mean that sometimes a therapy session seemed to be present in an episode just because Melfi needed something to do, and they'd long since (thankfully) abandoned her husband and son as any kind of mine for content. The fact she stood so apart from the rest of Tony's life was important, but it did mean that when every other storyline was ramping up or drawing together for the conclusion, she did kind of by necessity get left aside. BiggerBoat posted:RE: Tony's failure to engage with therapy. Short answer: he CAN'T. How is he supposed to get to the root of his issues by glossing over the violence, the murder, etc? To say nothing of extortion and theft. Therapy doesn't really work if you can't be honest and that's completely incompatible with his line of work and the things he has to do And part of the fault there does have to go to Melfi, who Elliot himself warned several seasons earlier had achieved a great deal with Tony but had reached the end of her rope in terms of what more she could do. It was her who shut down his reluctant agreement to try out the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a different doctor after all. Of course, we shouldn't forget that Tony would have probably resisted or abandoned that same therapy the moment it forced him to have to confront something he didn't want to deal with. The whole point of that section of the show, I think, was to showcase how Tony was paying lip-service to engaging in his therapy but did expect results to just kind of come to him by default because he'd paid. Kind of like Paulie declaring he should be immune from going to hell since he paid money to the Church, as if either religious salvation of therapeutic health were a service industry where you pay your money and they provide you with a neat package, having done all the work for you. Basically, I think Tony could have made the therapy work even with the limitations enforced on their doctor/patient relationship, had he actually engaged in it beyond the surface level. It wouldn't have been easy, and it would have reached a point where she could do no more... but he could have made progress (and to be fair, he did make SOME progress over the years simply from the exposure to her) on a lot of things that were causing him problems. Ironically, it's Carmela who gets right to the heart of the matter waaaay back in season 1 when she asks him if he told his therapist about his father, when Tony believed the major cause of his trouble was his mother. Tony skirted around the edge of that realization many times, and Melfi tried to guide him and even a couple of times outright pushed him, but In Camelot showcased how he embraced the easy fantasy rather than accept the harsh reality, and that was the case far too many times in his life. Which leads to.... BiggerBoat posted:We're looking at decades of hypocrisy, lovely misguided parenting, rationalization and greed - passed down through generations - culminating in a huge fireworks display here. Gee, why are my kids so hosed up when I spent so much money? Why is all this violence happening when I've solved all my problems through violence? Why is everyone so greedy when we're just going business? Why is everyone looking for revenge and to settle scores when all we've done is rip people off, steal, lie and kill those who became inconvenient? Why does my therapy not work when I am not honest in any way but spent a fortune? These are not reasonable people. They're thieves, extortionists, adulterers, rapists, drug dealers, liars and killers. Absolutely agreed, Tony in particular but also many of the others (including Carmela to a large extent) refuse to accept that they are to blame for so many of the problems that they have, finding any excuse to blame anybody else... but also constantly talking themselves up as self-made or paragons of common-sense, and looking down on others for the very thing that they are doing themselves. Anyways, I could write all loving day and night on the show and I sometimes find myself rambling, or going on such a wild tangent that I end up massively rewriting or completely excising a chunk of text (sometimes I end up talking myself OUT of my original point while trying to defend it!), so I'm glad you're all enjoying them. No idea what I'll do next, I had tried to time this to end about the same time a pretty massive personal project of mine was going to come to fruition and I could concentrate on that, but COVID-19 ending up putting paid to that idea and my schedule is hard to lock down at the moment. I'd thought about maybe doing Twin Peaks but it might be nice to focus on something a little less dense next time around. I would LOVE to do The Shield but I don't think I can take on another 80+ episode project so soon after The Sopranos, especially since the great parts of The Shield are balanced by a lot of real filler... but man that final season really was something utterly extraordinary. Made in America is still to come, and as noted earlier in the thread I will very specifically be stopping that write-up before the final scene, because it (understandably) dominates so much of the conversation that a ton of what happens in the preceding 55 minutes gets unfairly lost in the shuffle. I'll write up the final scene after we've had time to discuss Made in America, and boy howdy do I have a hell of a lot to say about that single 5 minute sequence.
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May 7, 2020 07:00
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Vichan posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d2RlyAz6VQ 
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May 7, 2020 08:19
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i'm going to ask the crucial question about the finale: would a slowly rolling car actually have enough momentum to roll over a human skull, exploding it so violently a watching youth vomits?
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May 7, 2020 09:04
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Am I the only one who laughs out loud at that scene every time? There is something just so over-the-top there, and it has to be intentional
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May 7, 2020 09:09
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MrMojok posted:Am I the only one who laughs out loud at that scene every time? There is something just so over-the-top there, and it has to be intentional The guy that waddles over going 'holy poo poo!' always made me laugh
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May 7, 2020 09:47
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Jerusalem posted:A big part of my objection to the idea is that... it's just too easy an explanation. It's such a sweeping generalization that not only allows Elliot and eventually Melfi (and yes, the audience) to feel superior to him, but it reduces an incredibly complex character to "he bad". Part of the appeal of Tony Soprano, outside of the amazing performance of course, is that he's a very flawed but very human person. There isn't a single easy label to slap onto him and consider the problem solved (or unsolvable, in this case). I think that's true for early season Tony, but I think by late season 6B that potential for change has only moved him deeper into something that at least looks a lot like sociopathy. If he chose that instead of defaulting into it by nature, to me that makes him even less sympathetic. Either way, he seemed to have a real opportunity to show growth after his coma, but very quickly degenerated to his lowest point in the series instead. I don't think fans are hypocritical for turning on the character as he becomes more and more of a monster--I pretty much think the way he killed Christopher (and was gleeful about having done so) was meant to make us feel that way, even if David Chase also condemns the fans for wanting Tony to meet a grisly fate. I think the way we applaud the therapist Carmela saw for telling her some hard truths and refusing her blood money while thinking Melfi may have been too harsh about ending treatment with Tony is kind of interesting. Yes, of course she did owe him more professional courtesy after years of treatment (particularly with his son's recent troubles), so I don't think the actual way she went about firing him as a patient was the best possible way to do it, but the decision was clearly long overdue. And again, whether or not the study fully captures him as a human being, the way it describes criminals using therapy to become better criminals is something we had demonstrated to us multiple times over the course of the series. Melfi genuinely did seem to be enabling his criminal behavior, and was never going to make the kind of progress with him that could even hope to make up for that fact.
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May 7, 2020 14:16
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Jerusalem posted:I'll talk more about it in the last couple of write-ups, but it did annoy me that the same people both in and out of the show who greedily drank up all of Tony's criminal actions like a tasty treat were so quick to condemn him. In the latter case, the meta knowledge that the show was ending seemed to somehow make it "safe" now to declare it was time Tony got his, and to roundly poo poo on the man they had often been rooting for the last 7 years or so. I remember David Chase making a lot of these same complaints, he was so mad that people wanted Tony's blood after so long, as though he hadn't spent 7 years slowly and methodically convincing everyone that Tony was irredeemable and evil, and that the parts of him you loved and cheered for were dead or dying.
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May 7, 2020 14:39
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Ishamael posted:I remember David Chase making a lot of these same complaints, he was so mad that people wanted Tony's blood after so long, as though he hadn't spent 7 years slowly and methodically convincing everyone that Tony was irredeemable and evil, and that the parts of him you loved and cheered for were dead or dying. I think it's fair to say that the guy who wrote that ending liked to have things both ways. 
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May 7, 2020 14:45
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Sinteres posted:I think it's fair to say that the guy who wrote that ending liked to have things both ways. Haha, a fair point!
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May 7, 2020 14:50
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I would absolutely love for J-Ru to go through Homicide: Life on the Street. It is one of my all time favourite shows. It is also the Andre Braugher power-hour in terms of acting.
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May 7, 2020 16:48
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Jerusalem posted:Anyways, I could write all loving day and night on the show and I sometimes find myself rambling, or going on such a wild tangent that I end up massively rewriting or completely excising a chunk of text (sometimes I end up talking myself OUT of my original point while trying to defend it!), so I'm glad you're all enjoying them. No idea what I'll do next, I had tried to time this to end about the same time a pretty massive personal project of mine was going to come to fruition and I could concentrate on that, but COVID-19 ending up putting paid to that idea and my schedule is hard to lock down at the moment. I'd thought about maybe doing Twin Peaks but it might be nice to focus on something a little less dense next time around. I would LOVE to do The Shield but I don't think I can take on another 80+ episode project so soon after The Sopranos, especially since the great parts of The Shield are balanced by a lot of real filler... but man that final season really was something utterly extraordinary. I feel like with the Shield especially in the early seasons, it might be better to multiple episodes at a time and have a quick paragraph on some of them. Just "In this episode, the Strike Team breaks up a cock fighting ring, here are some quick notable character moments that set up things about the characters that will pay off later" MrBling posted:I would absolutely love for J-Ru to go through Homicide: Life on the Street. I'd love to finally watch that show, but it's a nightmare to find on streaming, which is absurd given how important it is to the history of TV. The first google result I got for "Homicide Life on the Street streaming" was a DVD box set retailing at 252 dollars.
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May 7, 2020 16:53
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The Vosgian Beast posted:I feel like with the Shield especially in the early seasons, it might be better to multiple episodes at a time and have a quick paragraph on some of them. Just "In this episode, the Strike Team breaks up a cock fighting ring, here are some quick notable character moments that set up things about the characters that will pay off later" Yeah, it is kinda weird. I think maybe you can buy the seasons on itunes. Or you can plop down $95 here https://www.shoutfactory.com/product/homicide-life-on-the-street-the-complete-series?product_id=5064 and buy DVDs like a person from 2005.
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May 7, 2020 17:08
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I dunno if I could handle Andre not as Holt, like when I tried to move to six feet under after Dexter E: it has the Babylon MC from Scarface? I gotta watch this codo27 fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 18:20
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One thing about the sociopath beat, I almost wonder if it was thrown in for an easy out for the not insignificant part of the audience that wasn't looking for nuance. Tony was presented with opportunities for change, but doubled down on his own worst impulses as the series dragged on. Even when he was nearly killed the changes he made were only superficial. In most stories it arcs around that the lead deep down is a good person who learns to be better. Society and media is built around these redemption arcs that just don't exist for Tony. So all his little concessions and small acts of kindness work because we have been conditioned to say "this is where Tony changes".
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May 7, 2020 18:25
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Jack2142 posted:In most stories it arcs around that the lead deep down is a good person who learns to be better. Society and media is built around these redemption arcs that just don't exist for Tony. So all his little concessions and small acts of kindness work because we have been conditioned to say "this is where Tony changes".
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May 7, 2020 20:47
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While we're all assigning work to Jerusalem, I wanna vote for Twin Peaks: The Return, which we already discussed in the Twin Peaks thread  We should all chip in and buy Jerusalem... I dunno, a lot of onion rings for the finale? Something, to say thank you. escape artist fucked around with this message at 21:31 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 21:21
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SA truly the last place on the internet where people invest real effort without
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May 7, 2020 21:33
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thats more an indictment of latestage capitalism and not an endorsement of these forums tbqh j-ru you should watch or write or dont write whatever you want. i wish you could recap raw and smackdown like this though. lmao also mad men absolutely is the show people have been wondering exists further up this thread. loads of subtlety and important moments conveyed purely by acting choices and not through just dialogue or actions. its incredible how many people to this day have the complete wrong read on most of what happens in that show. much like the sopranos! if there was truly a vote for what you would watch next and not just people sad that The Content is about to end and hoping to get more, that is where i would vote. "vote". """vote""". or the leftovers. damon lindeloff was very bad and then he made that show and now hes good. sorry folks, i dont make the rules.
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May 7, 2020 21:57
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I agree that Mad Men is the closest thing to an heir this show had, which makes sense given how heavily involved Matthew Weiner was in The Sopranos. Boardwalk Empire is obviously somewhere in that conversation too, but it's not in the same ballpark of quality aside from some occasional high moments, and imo gets dragged down by Buscemi (who I like!) not being remotely in Gandolfini's league in that type of role.
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May 7, 2020 22:03
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I would like Jerusalem to write about whatever they want to next
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May 7, 2020 22:09
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Big Dick Cheney posted:I would like Jerusalem to write about whatever they want to next Yeah for sure.
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May 7, 2020 22:16
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Oh yeah mad men! That or breaking bad wild be the ones I'd most like to see. This is an amazing collection of analysis, and you should totally put it into a pdf Jerusalem.
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May 7, 2020 22:24
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Big Dick Cheney posted:I would like Jerusalem to write about whatever they want to next If he writes it, I will read it.
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May 7, 2020 23:26
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Steven Van Zandt's Twitter feed is 'what if Silvio was gambling all the time.'
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May 7, 2020 23:48
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Paper Lion posted:thats more an indictment of latestage capitalism and not an endorsement of these forums tbqh Trust me. You wont find someone more willing to indict capitalism in any form than me
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May 8, 2020 00:53
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