After hearing for years about how great The Sopranos was, along with being an avid viewer of more recent HBO shows, I took a chance and bought the first two seasons on DVD. Having just concluded the final episode in the 2nd season I am astonished at how disappointing the show has been so far.
In a relatively short review it's impossible to touch on all the things I saw wrong with the show so I'll use a few examples to illustrate my point.
1) Anthony Jr. (aka A.J.) is perhaps the most bland, uninspired and essentially pointless character I've seen in any series, ever. Story lines he's involved in feel like they were thrown in at the last minute to take up space. Just watch the episode that starts off with A.J. involved in a swim meet for instance. It's so uninspired, no foreshadowing or buildup of any kind -- just starts in the middle of a race, no ending, just him noting his father isn't there and ... oh well.
It's scenes like this that anyone with a fragment of imagination could have made so much better, and relevant. But it's just one of so many missed opportunities and seemingly pointless sub plots in this series.
2) Christopher and Adriana are sitting in a bar with his two "assistants" when she screams at him for nearly burning down the apartment cooking up his heroin. Later we see him in Italy shooting up and it seems to be building towards a drug addiction and potentially interesting story line. Sorry, it goes nowhere. Back home he still wants to write screenplays, then he doesn't, then he does, then he doesn't when Tony confronts him about it.
Another missed opportunity that was replaced by a pretty pointless affair with a Hollywood executive and messy, uninspired scenes including an episode ending with him dumping his screen play in the garbage complete with melodramatic music that seems to indicate that chapter of his life is over (thankfully!) -- it's not, yet.
3) While in Italy we get a scene with Paulie in bed with a prostitute. The scene stretches on for several minutes as Paulie seems to want a nice conversation while she just wants to go home (and I just want to fast-forward). The scene has no point, no tie-in with the story, doesn't reveal anything about Paulie that we don't already know and seems, like so many other scenes, that it's just filler.
All in all it feels like the writers were creating this series on an episode-by-episode basis, with little if any long-term vision for a season or the series as a whole. What's worse is the impression that they had about 10-15 of solid material each episode then sat around thinking about how to fill up the other 40 or so.
I'm sure die-hard fans will disagree with me on this, but I couldn't help feeling that if this show wasn't about the mafia not only would it have not been as popular or critically acclaimed, but it wouldn't have made it to season 3.
Then again, maybe I've been spoiled and jaded by The Wire, a show so far superior to The Sopranos on every level it's almost insulting to compare them.
In a relatively short review it's impossible to touch on all the things I saw wrong with the show so I'll use a few examples to illustrate my point.
1) Anthony Jr. (aka A.J.) is perhaps the most bland, uninspired and essentially pointless character I've seen in any series, ever. Story lines he's involved in feel like they were thrown in at the last minute to take up space. Just watch the episode that starts off with A.J. involved in a swim meet for instance. It's so uninspired, no foreshadowing or buildup of any kind -- just starts in the middle of a race, no ending, just him noting his father isn't there and ... oh well.
It's scenes like this that anyone with a fragment of imagination could have made so much better, and relevant. But it's just one of so many missed opportunities and seemingly pointless sub plots in this series.
2) Christopher and Adriana are sitting in a bar with his two "assistants" when she screams at him for nearly burning down the apartment cooking up his heroin. Later we see him in Italy shooting up and it seems to be building towards a drug addiction and potentially interesting story line. Sorry, it goes nowhere. Back home he still wants to write screenplays, then he doesn't, then he does, then he doesn't when Tony confronts him about it.
Another missed opportunity that was replaced by a pretty pointless affair with a Hollywood executive and messy, uninspired scenes including an episode ending with him dumping his screen play in the garbage complete with melodramatic music that seems to indicate that chapter of his life is over (thankfully!) -- it's not, yet.
3) While in Italy we get a scene with Paulie in bed with a prostitute. The scene stretches on for several minutes as Paulie seems to want a nice conversation while she just wants to go home (and I just want to fast-forward). The scene has no point, no tie-in with the story, doesn't reveal anything about Paulie that we don't already know and seems, like so many other scenes, that it's just filler.
All in all it feels like the writers were creating this series on an episode-by-episode basis, with little if any long-term vision for a season or the series as a whole. What's worse is the impression that they had about 10-15 of solid material each episode then sat around thinking about how to fill up the other 40 or so.
I'm sure die-hard fans will disagree with me on this, but I couldn't help feeling that if this show wasn't about the mafia not only would it have not been as popular or critically acclaimed, but it wouldn't have made it to season 3.
Then again, maybe I've been spoiled and jaded by The Wire, a show so far superior to The Sopranos on every level it's almost insulting to compare them.