that's my sopranos rewatch completed. it's super rare for me to rewatch tv shows in their entirety, but to me the sopranos has really earned that reputation of THE pioneer show of hollywood-budget sophisticated longform storytelling on tv. it's frequently hilarious in a very understated way too, which was what originally made me start rewatching it. like that's what i was in the mood for
somebody asked me recently what it's about, and beyond "new jersey mafia" i kinda glibly summed it up as "really horrible but entertaining people" which i know is underselling it. i really like how the show constantly switches between humanizing its characters and then disgusting you with just how cruel they can be. it'll have your heart bleeding for a character's despair one minute and in the next they're the most despicable person you can imagine -- and then they somehow still make you feel sorry for them the next time they're brought low. it denies you any sense of comfortable stability in how you view the characters. i know that became really the hbo drama trademark but it's really good from their first attempt
anyway things that really stood out to me on rewatch:
you can see the showrunners slowly develop and shape the characters and plotlines around what their actors are able to do. extremely rare phenomenon. for instance, it's crazy what a small and fairly straight role paulie walnuts is to begin with, and then with time they clearly realize just what a funny and charismatic actor tony sirico is, which develops into paulie becoming one of the most memorable side characters in the show
on rewatch i genuinely just really came to appreciate how tertiary characters are occasionally elevated to protagonists for short periods of time. the johnny sack saga is so good
i don't think any actor has ever facilitated a deviated septum better than james gandolfini. genuinely brilliant actor in all respects but my god the way he can make a scene tense by suddenly turning his nasal breathing super audible.
fascinating how important older cinema is to these characters! it feels like a form of characterization that would NOT be written into a similar series set today. tony's home cinema is a very central location for several seaons and is frequently used both for colour and black and white movies. obviously these men adore the godfather, and tony patterns his idea of masculinity on john wayne and gary cooper (who he is SHOWN repeatedly watching and enjoying the filmography of, so obviously they're not just vague macho icons to him) but even christopher whose lack of sophistication is frequently the butt of the joke ("I must be loyle to my capo") loves to constantly reference classic movies. notice for instance just how frequently he greets groups of people with "ho! it's the [old movie characters]", or when richie aprile gets obsessed with the gladiator, it's christopher who argues that spartacus is a better movie.
the entirely visual storytelling at times, man i've missed that in other tv shows. i think my favourite is when meadow's idiot boyfriend has just left her dorm room, and she glances over to a scrabble board where we get a series of closeups where very long complicated words are offset by tiles spelling "ass" and "fart" and it's never acknowledged aloud or commented on but it so clearly shows how badly matched they are intellectually.
i'm so appreciative of my bad memory in this case because there were so many characters' fates i just could not remember even though i remembered how emotional they made me on my first watch. it's not that many years since i watched this but i was once again on the edge of my seat wondering how ade would fare.
i know very very little of what the internet has said about the sopranos (other than it being super good and how divisive the final segment is -- I LOVE the ending btw), but this time i sensed a little bit of a quality drop in the last two seasons. still worthwhile, but i couldn't help but feel there's a lack of interesting antagonists, and already established conflicts kinda just float in and out without the really iconic moments to make them seem important. the first plotline/character that falls flat for me is the steve buscemi one. i can tell what they're trying to do but they never really achieve it imo.
there are a few missteps underway, sure. obviously 9-11 made as big of a dent in this show as other contemporary-set shows (at least they try to turn it into character moments instead of trying to say anything about "the state of the world" at large) and also i'm super miffed about that really interesting female don who only has two scenes, the final of which involves her sexual humiliation in a way that feels uncharacteristically mean for the show.
i was just as wrapped up in the furio plotline this time around. no one has ever deserved a milf more than furio
