Breaking Bad was awesome, but The Sopranos has much more going on, more complexities, especially the psychologies of the characters and overall more unusual story arcs. Why is it now ranked below Breaking Bad on all of the "greatest TV dramas" lists? It also has slightly more critical acclaim on rotten tomatoes. It's at 92% whereas BB is 96%.
Sopranos also had a great ending, BB rushed, fumbled and completely dropped the ball at the end, even worse than Game Of Thrones.
shareI LOVE BOTH BUT I GIVE THE EDGE TO BREAKING BAD.
shareLOL, so much of Breaking Bad is unrealistic. Its a great show, but cant hold a candle to sopranos
shareI DISAGREE.
shareEasy on the caps lock Chief. Should i start a list of all the ridiculous over the top unrealistic nonsense in Breaking Bad??
shareTHE CAPS ARE ETERNAL...I DON'T CARE WHAT KIND OF LIST YOU PRODUCE...I WON'T READ IT AS I DON'T AGREE WITH IT...MY OPINION IS MY OPINION...I OWN BOTH SERIES' ON BLU RAY AND HAVE WATCHED BOTH THREE OR 4 TIMES...BREAKING BAD>SOPRANOS.
shareThe Sopranos was the first TV show that changed the entire game. Its the reason why TV is now equal to or better than film.
Breaking Bad was an amazing show, and is still one of the best ever made, but The Sopranos is definitively better, and more important.
The Sopranos has had whole books written about the psychology behind it, particularly in the dream sequences.
Breaking Bad relied on the cliffhanger ending, to almost every episode, to keep people engaged. Sopranos never did that.
Nice point about the Cliffhanger angle.
Not a big BB fan, but anything that promotes Sopranos as the better show, I'm all in.
Love Cranston, but I do think Sopranos was the better show.
More diverse in characters and texture, just more fun to watch from an intellectual/artistic standpoint.
And Intellectual and Artistic Standpoints are the only things that matter, right?
I'll be honest, the dream sequences on The Sopranos bored me and I felt there were too many of them. I always wished I could skip past them and get back to the more important reality of the show. When it wasn't being clogged up by dream sequences it was great and very well written.
I also wished The Sopranos had left some cliffhanger endings every so often. Sometimes the dramatic tension that was promised was never really fulfilled. It's not necessarily a mistake in the writing but it's something I would have liked to see, such as the bubbling tension between Richie and Tony which was cut short by Janice shooting Richie over a petty argument.
I felt the same way about the dream sequences my first time through the series. It was only during repeated rewatches that I started realizing how engrossing they were, and how much richness they added to a show that really was more about the psychology of the main character than anything else.
And yeah, a few cliffhangers here and there wouldn't have been bad. It's only when a series pulls a 'Lost,' and starts depending on them at the end of every episode that I consider it kind of a cheap move.
I think Twin Peaks is the television program that most look to when changing the game. Without Twin Peaks there wouldn't have been a Sopranos. The creators of The Sopranos even say a lot of the show is influenced by Twin Peaks. David Chase along with many other show creators say Twin Peaks was revolutionary and the reason that television is in the golden age it is in now.
shareI know there were a few serialized, cinematic-looking dramas that came before. Someone else brought up 'Oz' in another thread. I'm not claiming that 'The Sopranos' was the first of its kind in that regard. But in order to actually "change the game," a show had to prove to TV networks that that kind of high production value could be worth the giant investment required. 'Twin Peaks' was an amazing show, and I have no doubt that it was hugely influential on future high-budget series like 'The Sopranos,' from a creative standpoint, but it didn't capture the attention of the nation like 'The Sopranos' did. It was cancelled after one season, and later gained a cult following.
It was the national obsession in the early 2000's with the cultural phenomenon that was 'The Sopranos', which gave rise to the big-budget, highly serialized, highly cinematic television series that more and more attracted A-List acting talent. That's when the game was changed.
Actually Twin Peaks did capture the audiences attention in the first season...it was big...really big. 36 million people watched the premiere episode. The problem with the show happened during its second season when people didn't care for the fact that Laura's killer wasn't revealed. The first season had great ratings and a lot of buzz. You might be too young, but I was in my late teens when Twin Peaks premiered and remember that it was a sensation in the first season.
shareLove both, but The Soprano's is a masterpiece.
shareWell they're two very different shows. I don't see the sense in comparing them. It's whichever you like more. I would say I like Sopranos more.
shareI think the popularity of the Sopranos has waned over the years for multiple reasons:
- most people under 30 were too young to watch the show or get caught up in the hype when it originally aired
- most of the cast hasn’t done anything “big” since the show, making it less likely for new audiences to want to go back and look at the actors’ previous work (ie this show)
- not really available in reruns or a platform outside of DVDs and HBO Max subscription
- no spin-off or continuation of the story or characters (besides the upcoming film later this year)
BrBa is better, and I watched both shows religiously. Both are in the top 5 of all time (for me), but Sopranos is lower on the rung.
shareI love Breaking Bad, but I think most of the allure has to do with the cool beats it hit, the plethora of badass moments, the fact that something big felt like it was constantly happening, and the tension-filled cliffhangers that always had me wondering what's going to happen next. It never actually made me think a whole lot, though. What you saw was more or less what you got. And a lot of what you got, while cool-looking and fun, was often very silly and unrealistic. The head on the turtle, for instance, or that two-face moment with Gus, or those comic book-ish hitman brothers, or all the big and elaborate plans the characters would come up with, or Saul Goodman (just generally), et cetera. Again, entertaining to watch. But it never felt particularly deep or impactful to me.
There was something very real-feeling about the Sopranoes, however. It almost felt like I was watching actual people (I got a similar feeling with The Wire). And it felt like the hand guiding their stories had snuck in symbolism and messages about life, culture, masculinity, psychology, society, etc behind every bit of it. It was so rich with complex, thought-provoking elements. And, of course, it also had those same sorts of adrenaline-filled badass moments that Breaking Bad did. Only more spaced apart and more subtly arrived at.
As for why people are ranking Breaking Bad higher on various lists? Because more have seen it, probably. They've had easy access to it from AMC and Netflix for years. More people have those than they do HBO. And both AMC and Netflix still have big advertisements always showing the series off (does HBO ever even mention The Sopranoes anymore?). Not to mention it's newer. So it's gotten free publicity from the likes of reaction channels, YouTube reviewers, and so on. More people seeing it (especially internet-aged users) equates to more votes. And votes matter (look at the otherwise inexplicable rise of cheesy Bollywood films on the IMDb Top 250 lol). That's my guess.