The Sopranos Vs. The Wire

you want it to be one thread, but it's the other thread

lol

midgets!

also a perennial fave: Did he have hands? ... Did he have a head? ... Then it wasn't us.

that guy was really good.

Shakespearean

I dont understand what americans mean when they type this word

I am not convinced that they do either

/Pinefox

I think they mean "so good it could be classic literature"? idk

The instances of "sopranos is......shakespearean" above *as a contrasting quality to the wire* are imo using a descriptor out of any useful informative quality other than "i like this" and tbh the world would be a better place if when we liked something but didnt feel like getting into nuts and bolts why we just said "i like this"

The effect it would have on ilm for a start would be only positive

so every thread should be "I like Wire" and follow-ups "me 2!"?

I'm only here for nuts and bolts!

I'm only here for nuts

these shows come from a period when people felt the need to justify taking TV seriously by comparing it to Serious Art. it’s like those contemporary reviews of Sgt Pepper that strained to compare it to classical music because rock/pop wasn’t deemed important enough to deserve all this exegesis

there are plenty of ways to say I like this/I hate this/this bit was good/these themes are interesting/etc without such unnecessary analogies

When I hear "Shakespearean," I think it refers to dialogue that is lyrical, and harder-to-comprehend than naturalistic language, but that rewards the attentive listener.

kind of like that post? that

I mean, the Sopranos is definitely Shakespearean in the sense that many Sopranos characters remind me of the dudes that sing "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" in the musical, Kiss Me Kate

kick him right in the Coreolanus for example

dmac: the point i was making was that the scene with paulie and tony seemed reminiscent to me of sequences in lear and in caesar. I can dig up indicating text if you really want? as it happens, I studied shakespeare for a few years as an undergrad so i don't claim to be a scholar but the connections between specific plays seem fairly obvious and often intentional.

it's almost like there is a long history of contemporary media narratives being modeled on the plays of William Shakespeare of Englande

the use of "shakespearean" also includes a nod to the "great man of history" mythopoetic qualities that motivates most of willy's work and that was reflected in the wave of 2000's "dads acting badly" prestige tv

or yes, what sarahell said

pine barrens episode gets compared to beckett a lot which I can see

I was wrong these literature analogies aren’t always unnecessary just sometimes they are overused

and far from *in contrast* to the sopranos i think the wire's machinations are regularly shakespearean in scope, complexity and profundity! i just don't think it makes sense to write that as it sounds fucking stupid in print.

all of which is to say, i don't feel the need to be all "show with guy with gun who go bang is just like big famous bald english guy word stories," it's just a point of comparison that feels accurate. we could make a list of pop culture important stories that AREN'T shakespearean but that are about generations of difficult people fighting for control if that helps clarify things?
I'd start with star wars

Game of Thrones doesn't feel shakespearean at all to me even though it clearly would like to be

honestly haven’t heard many people call the sopranos “shakesperean” but lots have used that descriptor for deadwood, which imo definitely fits DJI’s definition

Milch was explicitly GOING for Shakespearean both in dialogue and plot/character construction, just with a lot more 'cocksuckers'
though again, do you think i was speaking of country matters?

I think ive done this thread some service tbh

No more of that

EB Farnum doing a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bit was always fun in Deadwood.

lear and cordelia in the cage hearing old tales of court news, who loses and who wins and the mystery of things were the original quarantine binge watchers

these shows come from a period when people felt the need to justify taking TV seriously by comparing it to Serious Art. it’s like those contemporary reviews of Sgt Pepper that strained to compare it to classical music because rock/pop wasn’t deemed important enough to deserve all this exegesis

there are plenty of ways to say I like this/I hate this/this bit was good/these themes are interesting/etc without such unnecessary analogies

― Left, Friday, January 22, 2021 1:36 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

These shows definitely started this trend but we're, unfortunately, still living in this era

yes but this is ILX

I've seen many allusions over the years about how "Dickensian" The Wire is, a point made explicit by the newspaper guys in season 5.

These shows definitely started this trend but we're, unfortunately, still living in this era

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, January 22, 2021 2:52 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

tv is total trash now tho? netflix and other streamings settled on flooding the market with a glut of low quality crap and seeing what sticks ditching the “golden era” style high budget stuff marketed to the more discerning audience that liken tv shows to fancy things like books. there hasn’t been a new show in the wire/sopranos vein in years

flopson, we can discuss the Shakespearean and Dickensian qualities of Tiger King ...lol

i haven’t seen anyone compare ‘emily in Paris’ to Henry James

xps All the best shows lately have been comedies.

flops, i disagree? the market has changed where there is less reason for networks to invest millions in a complex, brainy, blockbuster violent-intrigue heavy-and/or-dour prestige drama but they are still very much being made and discussed! Better Call Saul, Fargo, Ozark, Power, For All Mankind, The New Pope, Morning Show, I May Destroy You, Unorthodox... and that's just a few of the non-genre ones (you might also incude Devs, Legion, Kingdom, Expanse, His Dark Materials, Westworld). if anything, the public's willingness (i think after the bridge?) to allow for non-usa shows to crack rotation has presented a lot more options for this sort of show.

Mid range tv shows are better for the investment and interest and talent now given to tv, top class tv shows id agree arent as good, the worst stuff is worse than ever because of the talent and investment thrown at horrific fan service

But its only a few years since twin peaks the return so...?

there's basically more good stuff available to watch right now (both new releases and classics) than anyone has time to see but it's not readily available from a single source unless you're willing to devote a fair amount of money and effort to organize it, is how i break it down to an extent. I could spend six hours a day for the next three months just getting caught up on backlog.

that's kind of my problem now is there's too much content to watch and I don't like to be confined to my house watching tv all day (which is why the pandemic has been a challenge). takes a lot for me to even decide what show to give a chance to next, esp since usually the stuff my friends are hyping is shit I don't like

A legal source u mean

i stand very much corrected

i'm surprised nobody at Netflix has done an edgy reimagination of Judy Blume's Fudge series

(waits for someone to tell me they already have)

you're thinking of Stranger Things

xp though honestly even if you go via torr3nts and who would do that not me, it is a LOT of work to use that network for discovery and regular updates.

WHICH IS WHY I WAS PUSHING ILPLEX AS A CURATOR ENGINE but it didn't quite catch on here. maybe because i put it in 77 out of an abundance of caution

Ozarks and Better Call Saul and etc. are a pretty big step down from Sopranos and The Wire.

flops, i disagree? the market has changed where there is less reason for networks to invest millions in a complex, brainy, blockbuster violent-intrigue heavy-and/or-dour prestige drama but they are still very much being made and discussed! Better Call Saul, Fargo, Ozark, Power, For All Mankind, The New Pope, Morning Show, I May Destroy You, Unorthodox... and that's just a few of the non-genre ones (you might also incude Devs, Legion, Kingdom, Expanse, His Dark Materials, Westworld). if anything, the public's willingness (i think after the bridge?) to allow for non-usa shows to crack rotation has presented a lot more options for this sort of show.

― the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Friday, January 22, 2021 3:28 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is all a really generous way of saying that the combo of A) people feeling flattered when their middle-brow tastes are justified and B) Episodic TV giving writers 13 pieces of content a year instead of a movie's one funds the internet churn, so now we have to have 8 billion 12-paragraph articles comparing every episode of Brooklyn 99 to Dostoevsky

i'm arguing objectively (grim and gritty hour long dramas in the mold of the 2000's heights are being regularly produced) which i think can be absolutely asserted.

I think there's a non "insane" argument that the collective Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul epic can comfortably stand up quality-wise against, say Mad Men, but then we're arguing subjectively and i don't wanna be called a diaper drinker.