| AlfredoTurkey said: The Simpsons, Seinfeld, All In the Family, The Honeymooners, South Park, Mash, Cheers... there are many shows which were better in their prime. The Sopranos isn't even better, imo, than the Godfather which it owes it's entire existence. |
Well I mean The Godfather is probably considered by a lot of people to be the greatest movie of the last 40 years ... so for the Sopranos to be anywhere close is a huge compliment.
I would say Simpsons from season 3-7 are as good as anything, but they've had so many bad/mediocre seasons after that, that is skews things.
One thing I love about Sopranos is even though it's this crime show, it could be incredibly funny at times, incredibly dark, incredibly emotional, incredibly psyschological even. There's just not many shows that can hit all of those, they're usually one or two trick ponies.
Also before The Sopranos, this idea of the "premium TV series" that things like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc. have taken on ... that wasn't really done before The Sopranos. Before that everything was a fairly formulaic, low-budget, lower-tier of writing episodic type thing and TV was primarily driven by crappy family sitcoms.
Sopranos revolutionized television to have movie-quality writing and acting, long on-going story arcs without care for the "casual viewer" tuning in and not understanding what's happening, etc.
