What show are you watching right now?

[brewster]

Without The Sopranos, there is no Breaking Bad, there is no The Wire, there is no Mad Men, There is no Deadwood, There is no The Shield.

I always have problem with this kind of statement, it denies the "when it's time to railroad you railroad" idea. People love to say we wouldn't have personal computers if not for Steve Jobs, which is bullshit. It was an idea whose time had come due to a number of factors. I suspect the same thing was true of the Golden age television.

There were a number of 90s shows previously that delved into long story arcs, like Wiseguy and NYPD Blue. The Sopranos built on that, and did it very well with excellent writing, acting and production values, but I would never say no one would have done it ever except for them paving the way.

If you've never seen Wiseguy dig it up. Has a young Jonathan Banks, AKA Mike from Breaking Bad. They had a unique idea that by using very short arcs of 6 to 10 episodes they could get major actors to take brief roles in an era where TV was not prestigious. This included Kevin Spacey, Jerry Lewis, Ron Silver, Tim Curry, Stanley Tucci and Debbie Harry. Only three characters remained arc to arc, Banks being one of them as the undercover agent's handler.

[C-Mag]

Without The Sopranos, there is no Breaking Bad, there is no The Wire, there is no Mad Men, There is no Deadwood, There is no The Shield.

I only watched the first 2 seasons of Deadwood, even that turned into a stupid soap opera.

Continuing story lines are good in shows, turning the entire thing into an ongoing drama and soap opera is tiring and stupid as fuck.

Frankly, I miss episodic TV. Why do I care if Jerry has a different gf every week or if Ponch and Jon miraculousy are healed a week later from a bike wreck.

[TheReal_ND]

[brewster]

Frankly, I miss episodic TV.

I think there's still like a 100 versions of Law and Order for you. Clearly some people like the long movie format or it wouldn't be so successful, personally I'd slit my wrists if I had to watch another cop and lawyer procedural. Or cop and zombie, cop and vampire, cop and Satan, cop and immortal, or cop and whatever. I thought I'd love Ripper Street since I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and Jerome Flynn (Bronn from GoT) but I can't do another fucking episodic procedural.

I was rewatching Little Big Man on Amazon and realized the idea of the the revisionist western is dead since the form has been dead so long anyone under 40 would have no idea what they were revising. My teenage daughter wouldn't get most of the jokes in LBM. Once upon a time half the network shows were westerns.

[C-Mag]

Frankly, I miss episodic TV.

I think there's still like a 100 versions of Law and Order for you. Clearly some people like the long movie format or it wouldn't be so successful, personally I'd slit my wrists if I had to watch another cop and lawyer procedural. Or cop and zombie, cop and vampire, cop and Satan, cop and immortal, or cop and whatever. I thought I'd love Ripper Street since I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and Jerome Flynn (Bronn from GoT) but I can't do another fucking episodic procedural.

I was rewatching Little Big Man on Amazon and realized the idea of the the revisionist western is dead since the form has been dead so long anyone under 40 would have no idea what they were revising. My teenage daughter wouldn't get most of the jokes in LBM.

I don't mind long format, but every fucking thing is long format now, and I don't think the story telling is getting any better.

It's a great marketing thing. Try to make you care about the characters and find out what happens to them.

[TheReal_ND]

It's ten minutes of dialogue and 30 minutes of silent reactions everytime someone says something. Mix with suspenseful music and or sodomy and you have the secret ingredient to long form drama

[StCapps]

Frankly, I miss episodic TV.

I think there's still like a 100 versions of Law and Order for you. Clearly some people like the long movie format or it wouldn't be so successful, personally I'd slit my wrists if I had to watch another cop and lawyer procedural. Or cop and zombie, cop and vampire, cop and Satan, cop and immortal, or cop and whatever. I thought I'd love Ripper Street since I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and Jerome Flynn (Bronn from GoT) but I can't do another fucking episodic procedural.

I was rewatching Little Big Man on Amazon and realized the idea of the the revisionist western is dead since the form has been dead so long anyone under 40 would have no idea what they were revising. My teenage daughter wouldn't get most of the jokes in LBM.

I don't mind long format, but every fucking thing is long format now, and I don't think the story telling is getting any better.

It's a great marketing thing. Try to make you care about the characters and find out what happens to them.

Episodes matter. All the best long form shows know this. It's a balance.

[StCapps]

Without The Sopranos, there is no Breaking Bad, there is no The Wire, there is no Mad Men, There is no Deadwood, There is no The Shield.

I always have problem with this kind of statement, it denies the "when it's time to railroad you railroad" idea. People love to say we wouldn't have personal computers if not for Steve Jobs, which is bullshit. It was an idea whose time had come due to a number of factors. I suspect the same thing was true of the Golden age television.

There were a number of 90s shows previously that delved into long story arcs, like Wiseguy and NYPD Blue. The Sopranos built on that, and did it very well with excellent writing, acting and production values, but I would never say no one would have done it ever except for them paving the way.

If you've never seen Wiseguy dig it up. Has a young Jonathan Banks, AKA Mike from Breaking Bad. They had a unique idea that by using very short arcs of 6 to 10 episodes they could get major actors to take brief roles in an era where TV was not prestigious. This included Kevin Spacey, Jerry Lewis, Ron Silver, Tim Curry, Stanley Tucci and Debbie Harry. Only three characters remained arc to arc, Banks being one of them as the undercover agent's handler.

Without the high viewership money making of The Sopranos, combined with high quality television and a lack of censorship not proving to turn viewers off from "offensive" content, the other shows would have never been greenlit, or if they were wouldn't have lasted as long as they did without The Sopranos as an example to television executives that they could make them a lot of money and bring the viewers to their channel. The presence of other good shows before The Sopranos doesn't mean a big bang would have happened without it, or if it had, it would have been a much smaller bang.

The Sopranos seriously deserves the credit for launching the golden age of tv, those are just the facts.

[brewster]

Without the high viewership money making of The Sopranos combined with high quality television, the other shows would have never been greenlit, or if they were wouldn't have lasted as long as they did without The Sopranos as an example to television executives that they could make them a lot of money and bring the viewers to their channel. The presence of other good shows before The Sopranos doesn't mean a big bang would have happened without it.

My point is some other show would have set that precedent if it hadn't been made, the market was ripe for it the way it was ripe for PC's, railroads, steamboats, whatever. The trend was already building. Very few market changing innovations truly come out of the blue, they just seem that way sometimes to the people not paying attention.

[StCapps]

Without the high viewership money making of The Sopranos combined with high quality television, the other shows would have never been greenlit, or if they were wouldn't have lasted as long as they did without The Sopranos as an example to television executives that they could make them a lot of money and bring the viewers to their channel. The presence of other good shows before The Sopranos doesn't mean a big bang would have happened without it.

My point is some other show would have set that precedent if it hadn't been made, the market was ripe for it the way it was ripe for PC's, railroads, steamboats, whatever. The trend was already building. Very few market changing innovations truly come out of the blue, they just seem that way sometimes to the people not paying attention.

Was it though? What show came along after that had anywhere near The Sopranos ratings and quality? The closest would be Game of Thrones, which would have been too violent and had too much nudity to greenlight had The Sopranos not come along and prove that can sell and win them mad emmy's.

Breaking Bad didn't have the ratings until then end, The Wire and Deadwood were literally running on The Sopranos money to fund them, Mad Men was greenlit because a writer from The Sopranos proved he knew what he was doing and they let him do his own show, Breaking Bad ran off Mad Men money until The Walking Dead came along. Without Tony Soprano, FX wouldn't have had the balls to make Vic Mackey the main character of The Shield. The trend wasn't moving in that direction, The Sopranos changed the direction of the trend entirely.

Oz came before The Sopranos and it was only the whiff of a changing trend, that would have been an outlier without The Sopranos coming along to actually make that trend sustainable enough to turn into a Golden Era of Television. If wasn't for Oz, there probably have been The Sopranos either, Oz is the show that gave HBO the balls to greenlight The Sopranos, but just Oz would not have triggered a TV Golden Age all by itself, and no show HBO produced after The Sopranos had the juice to drive the TV Golden Age Big Bang.

If it wasn't for The Sopranos, there either would have been a short golden age, or no golden age at all, and it would have happened a lot further down the road if it even happened at all. It was a complete gamechanger.