The Official Good Television Thread

[Vegard Pompey]

Last night I watched the final 2 episodes of The Sopranos. I loved how it ended. I'm still processing everything, but now that it's all over I only have one real complaint; I didn't like how

Spoiler

Christopher was killed off, felt cheap and unsatisfying for some reason.

Other than that, I can definitely see why it's a lot of people's GOAT show. I liked how it never held the audience's hand too much, while dishing out a lot of quite complex themes. The constant references to psychology, philosophy, pop culture, current events. Everything felt so rich, like each episode was a movie in its own right, and I never once felt like I was sitting through filler.

Uncle June's story arc was probably the saddest for me, although he's hardly a sympathetic character, but seeing someone who's so sharp and vicious at the start turn into an incontinent, forgotten bag of bones riddled with Alzheimer's (the irony was of course, gold) was surprisingly devastating. Such good writing across the board at making such shit people sympathetic in the right moments.

Tony Soprano being the most interesting case. By the end his pile of sins is so huge that I think most viewers are either for or against him, with little middle ground, and they set you up for the ultimate judgement to be handed out to him. But that ending was perfection. Personally I believe Tony lived beyond that day and died of natural causes. I'm choosing to ignore all the breadcrumbs.

There's a level of detail in the show that still feels unprecedented today. You'll pick this up if you ever rewatch the series, but the show maintains a stable of tertiary characters no one gives a shit about that show up here and there seemingly for the sole purpose of making the world feel more real. You know how Tony Blundetto seemingly shows up out of nowhere in season 5? At least that was how I felt, when I first watched it. When I rewatched the show, I noticed the Blundetto family being namedropped several times throughout the series, and Tony B's mom appears onscreen in seasons 2 and 3! I have a large family, and I have relatives I've heard being namedropped here and there but rarely or never met, and the Sopranos somehow perfectly captures that feeling of a vast number of people existing in the periphery of your life and generally not mattering except sometimes when they do. It's a degree of realism and an eye for detail that just blows my mind.

Don't know why I brought up this in particular, it's a trivial thing but one of 1,000,000 reasons I love the show.

 

[CiG]

It's funny that you feel that way because

Spoiler

Christopher's death is one of the most haunting moments of the entire series for me. It comes out of nowhere and has no real bearing on the plot of the season, and that's kind of the point. Killing Christopher is just something Tony did on a whim because he saw that he could get away with it and benefit from it.

You know what, that's actually a good point. I think it's still just so fresh in my mind and the way it came out of nowhere is all that's in my mind still, but I think with some space I'll agree with you here.

There's a level of detail in the show that still feels unprecedented today. You'll pick this up if you ever rewatch the series, but the show maintains a stable of tertiary characters no one gives a shit about that show up here and there seemingly for the sole purpose of making the world feel more real. You know how Tony Blundetto seemingly shows up out of nowhere in season 5? At least that was how I felt, when I first watched it. When I rewatched the show, I noticed the Blundetto family being namedropped several times throughout the series, and Tony B's mom appears onscreen in seasons 2 and 3! I have a large family, and I have relatives I've heard being namedropped here and there but rarely or never met, and the Sopranos somehow perfectly captures that feeling of a vast number of people existing in the periphery of your life and generally not mattering except sometimes when they do. It's a degree of realism and an eye for detail that just blows my mind.

Don't know why I brought up this in particular, it's a trivial thing but one of 1,000,000 reasons I love the show.

I can relate. I also have a huge family with tons of people I only know by their names being mentioned. Another thing related to that is how the show constantly forces the audience to attend funerals for people we barely knew or met, and even the attendees mostly seem uninterested. This reflects my childhood a lot, and it was always bizarre to me that these people I'd never met were suddenly so important to my immediate family. The show definitely captures a lot of the insanity of big family dynamics.

Btw how many times have you rewatched it?

 

[CiG]

Aw yeah.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Chernobyl
the first episode of this is really effective. they've authentically recreated the inside of the plant and the helpless, literally sickening horror of living (or dying) through the disaster. i can't remember the last time i so urgently felt the need for a shower after watching something, the entire thing is horrifying to think about and just as horrifying to watch. i know it's likely an urban legend, but the way it ends on that slo-mo of the infamous bridge of death is shiver-inducing.

if i'd stopped there, i'd have missed out on an amazingly claustrophobic and unpleasant set piece under the plant, where the radiation detectors overwhelm the speakers as the flashlights fail. that's about it. if the last four episodes were merely a little dry and boring (and they are) i'd accept that, it's inevitable that the aftermath of the disaster would be less exciting than the disaster itself. but now that the writing takes centre stage it becomes clear just how hackneyed it is (quippy oscar-bait level bants like the "are all miners like that?" exchange made me glad these guys all have radiation poisoning), and even if the show had been meticulously accurate there isn't anything like enough nuance here to prevent it feeling like disaster porn. the animal-killing stuff is a good example, it thinks it's profound and it should be profound but its big speeches and conversations only expose the shallowness of the showrunners' perspective on what's being shown. my boy barry keoghan's pretty much wasted.

the above is a problem, but the real problem, the one that's a dealbreaker for me, is that the thing is riddled with inaccuracies and stereotypes i can only describe as agenda-driven, and which unforgivably contradict the show's stated purpose. if you're gonna justify giving a disaster the united 93 treatment by couching it in a moral about the dangers of lying, it's probably best not to litter your show with seven shades of bullshit, from numerous misleading details about the minutiae of the disaster and how it was handled to laughable fictional sub-plots about a one-woman army going up against the trigger-happy KGB and vodka-drinking bureaucrats in her quest for the truth, or a woman catching radiation poisoning from being around her partner like he's contagious with fucking smallpox and being saved because her baby "absorbed" it all. man, i don't even disagree that russians are the most compulsive liars on the planet, it's incredible the kind of trivial bullshit these fuckers will lie about, they'll lie about what they had for breakfast if they can get away with it. but as always when lording it over other cultures we fail to acknowledge our own fairly pitiful track record, and by the end the show ends up feeling less like an exposé of the specific institutional failings relating to the disaster and more like an unintentional microcosm of our current political clusterfuck, where everyone thinks they know better while also making the exact same mistakes. even some of the things stated as fact over the portentous end credits are fucking unverified or straight up false!

i can't give this more than a 2/5, even that feels generous to me in some ways but i was at least made suitably uncomfortable by all the more visceral aspects of its depiction of the disaster, and that's not nothing i guess. it's great horror when it decides to be, but bad drama and worse history. that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't trying so desperately hard to present itself as a historical document full of hard-earned wisdom about the failings of others.

next up on my watchlist, the randomizer chose pompey's and/or rms' favourite show, the leftovers.

 

[CiG]

Savage.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

100% agree with that take.

 

[CiG]

Outside of a few scenes that were faithfully recreated from flashbacks in The Sopranos, The Many Saints of Newark is the definition of a worthless TV spin-off movie. Miscast across the board and totally lacking in any of the show's spirit.

I honestly regret watching it, worse than adding nothing it detracted from the legacy, which is rare.

 

[rms]

It's funny that you feel that way because

Spoiler

Christopher's death is one of the most haunting moments of the entire series for me. It comes out of nowhere and has no real bearing on the plot of the season, and that's kind of the point. Killing Christopher is just something Tony did on a whim because he saw that he could get away with it and benefit from it.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked it. Personally I didn't get how brilliant the show was until my second viewing, but I was pretty young when I saw it the first time. Nowadays I have to stop myself from rewatching it annually.

I just finished my fourth or so rewatch of the Sopranos too. Still great feel very much the same way of Chris.

Gonna rewatch True Detective season one soon.

 

[no country for old wainds]

new series of justified dropping in july. the ending was perfection so my instinct is to shit on the idea, but to be fair there's a lot more unused source material so whatever, i'm sure i'll watch it. apparently tarantino was heavily involved with getting it off the ground.

 

[CiG]

I need to give Justified a proper chance already.

 

[CiG]

Curious, who was everybody's favourite character(s) in The Sopranos?

 

[rms]

Curious, who was everybody's favourite character(s) in The Sopranos?

Paulie

 

[Slammed]

Watched The Muppets Mayhem this week. Good to finally see something worthwhile on TV again!

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Curious, who was everybody's favourite character(s) in The Sopranos?

Hard to decide with so many great characters but I think I'd have to go with Christopher. His arc is the most volatile and consistently the most fun to follow. The Christopher-centric episodes generally rank among my favorites, and I love his forays into screenwriting and the entire Cleaver subplot.

Paulie is amazing too. Every behind-the-scenes story I've heard suggests Tony Sirico was basically just playing himself (or a more sociopathic version of himself, hopefully) and I think that makes sense. I don't think any writer, director or actor could ever design all of his strange fucking mannerisms and sell them to the audience, you just have to cast a real original and let him do his thing.

If I continue past those two I'll just be namedropping the entire cast.

And to answer your earlier question, I've seen the show maybe 3 or 4 times in its entirety. Hard to say exactly because I've watched some seasons out of order.

 

[no country for old wainds]

I need to give Justified a proper chance already.

i get that s1 can feel a little too episodic and goofy but it's worth powering through, it has a few great eps and then season 2 is arguably the peak. i think we've all told you this already tbf but seriously it's worth it

 

[Slayed Necros]

Curious, who was everybody's favourite character(s) in The Sopranos?

Junior

 

[CiG]

Junior and Chris are my favourites, fully agree with your reasons why @Vegard Pompey.

 

[rms]

Junior is a good #2. Not sure id care enough to rank anyone at 3.

Christopher...funny at times but the more I watch, think he's just a fully developed Anthony Jr

 

[CiG]

Weird take.

 

[rms]

He's a whiny bitch half the time