1.The Wire
2A/2B.Breaking bad = The Sopranos
Following a fitting and quality finale, where do you rank BB on the pantheon of great shows, tbh?..
I'd have it in the top 3 with the Wire and Sopranos, easily above any other shows I've watched..
If I had to break it down:
Breaking Bad had easily the best final season of the 3, and depending on your feelings towards the Sopranos finale, probably the best ending..
Walter White and Tony Soprano are probably the two most fascinating and polarizing characters in TV history, while the Wire wasn't centered around their characters, despite the memorable figures on the show..
The Wire is obviously the deepest show from a social and moral perspective, and the Sopranos offered an interesting psychological perspective, along with the memorable dream analysis, while Breaking Bad doesn't really attempt to send a message or anything..
Breaking Bad's characters are scarce and you already know that all of the main characters are going to live until the end of the series, Sopranos as well(although to a lesser extent), while the Wire had an abundance of characters, allowing them to frequently kill off key characters..
Breaking Bad is the least predictable and offers more "shocking" moments, while the other 2 are more centred around dialogue..the Wire and Sopranos are a lot slower, which turns off a lot of people, tbh..
Sopranos has the most charismatic characters and by far the best dialogue IMO..it's the funniest show of the 3..the Wire has it's fair share of charismatic characters, though..I've never found Breaking Bad to be particularly funny tbh, and I don't understand why people find entertainment in the Skiny Pete and Badger characters, I don't find them funny in any way, tbh..
Breaking Bad doesn't have a weak season and it progressively improved, which is a rarity in any facet of entertainment.. season 5 of the Wire is a weak point(although overplayed) and season 6A of Sopranos was easily the weakest season of all 3 shows IMO..the Vito was dull and an overt attempt at sending a message/trying to be edgy..
Last edited by HarlemHeat37; 09-30-2013 at 10:53 AM.
1.The Wire
2A/2B.Breaking bad = The Sopranos
Unfortunately I can't jump into this discussion just yet. I'm currently getting caught up on SOA and Mad Men. My next shows I plan to watch are The Wire, The Shield, then Sopranos (in that order). I'm way behind on my TV watching![]()
The Wire is still #1 for me, but BB made it closer than I thought possible.
Breaking Bad is the only show I've ever seen that got progressively better every season and went out at its peak. If I were ranking the seasons, I'd go: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. (I might put 5a behind 3 and 4 if you split season 5 up, but I'd still have 5b at the top.)
The Sopranos deserves credit for changing TV to the degree that shows like The Wire and Breaking Bad can air and thrive, but I give the latter two a leg up because they started strong and got better. The Sopranos' best seasons were 1 and 2... The Wire hit its peak in seasons 3 and 4, and BB just kept getting better.
As someone said in the other thread, those are the clear top three and I'm not sure there's a close #4 right now.
1) Breaking Bad
2) LOST
3) The Sopranos
Sopranos and 24 I liked better. Season 5 of BB was by far the best season.
I've never seen a single episode of the Wire... can I get this on Netflix? Hulu? Amazon?
The Shield is an underrated runner here. I still need to catch up on Wire and finally get over my hate for Sopranos and watch it.
shield looks like a joke with all these flop casts who are known to be in flop shows even when they were the antagonists/protagonists...
I've heard great things about The Shield, I should check it out, tbh..
Should I watch Lost?..I always hear mixed reviews about it..
I just started watching the Sopranos so I can't comment on it yet.
Between the Wire and Breaking Bad, I still rank the Wire as the higher show. I like watching character study shows and the Wire does it exceptionally well. There are numbers of characters I liked on the Wire. Breaking Bad is definitely easier to follow and I do agree that it didn't have a weak season. Season 5 of the Wire, while still great, is inferior to the other seasons. And to be honest, the Wire can have pretty boring moments, but that's more of a problem if you are new to the series. The Wire gets better after more viewings. I'll have to rewatch Breaking Bad to see if it gets better with more viewings. So I still rank the Wire over Breaking Bad, even though Breaking Bad just got better and better as each season progressed.
I haven't seen much drama shows but my rank is:
1. The Wire
2. Breaking Bad
3. Game of Thrones
Walking Dead
At the dumb s who call TWD the best drama on television. Can't wait for the next black character to get the axe as always.
Worst final scene ever.
I gotta easily take The Wire #1: Bubbles, Stringer, Omar, Prezbo, and Dooky are just incredible characters, and DeAngelo, Wallace, Snoop, Partlow, and Wee-Bey were such memorable supporting players. And even the ty characters had really memorable scenes; e.g., Ziggy getting beat down and having his car stolen by Cheese right in front of Frog 60 seconds after Zig was threatening Frog for coming up short.
For #2 it's a tough call for me between Sopranos and Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad's characters were so much more interesting whereas everyone in Sopranos was completely one-dimensional and I never found myself rooting for any of them. But Sopranos had some really creative episodes like when Tony was dreaming about Big Pussy at the fish market and the two Kevin Finnerty episodes, and I thought it was a so much more interesting portrayal of the mafia than either of the Godfather movies, Casino,... , everything but Goodfellas (which is the only thing I put on par with Sopranos for portraying the mafia). Still, it made a lot of sense; the DeCavalcante Family that Sopranos was based on is the most re ed crime family I think I have ever heard of, and everyone on the show save Melfi was portrayed as an overemotional dip . But watching the transformation of Walt as he burned the world down around him was pretty incredible; especially seeing the way he took Jesse down to with him.
So #2 is a coin-flip. I said Sopranos yesterday, but now I'm not so sure.
I gotta agree that Breaking Bad just got better and better as the series went on. I can't think of any other show where I'd rank the seasons in the order 5,4,3,2,1 (for The Wire I'd rank them 4,2,3,1,5; not sure about Sopranos). Breaking Bad would make you think they were painting themselves into a corner so many times and then the series would just surprise the out of you.
The last 3-4 episodes alone of BB catapult it above The Sopranos IMO. I admire everything about The Wire and its hard to put anything above it. I'd have BB above it if we were to nitpick parts of the show tho.
1st season is fantastic and then you can stop and not miss a thing.
Isn't even close to being as good as On Wheels IMHO!
Wow, this thread is surprising.
I'm so far through the first season of The Wire and I thought it moved extremely slow. However, several people told me that this was the case and that I needed to be patient until season 3 and 4.
I would agree that Seasons 3 and 4 are the peak, but if you don't like it after the whole first season, I don't know how much more you're going to like the rest of the show.
Not so much that I didn't like it, it just moved slow. Part of my problem is that I've been watching it during these last few episodes of Breaking Bad and I'm far more invested into that. Now that BB is done, maybe I will appreciate it a bit more.
I'd put Breaking Bad and The Shield as my top two. It's free streaming on Amazon Prime. It's similar to breaking bad in that it gets stronger every season and they bring the series to a great conclusion. Also the main character is a bad guy that you root for.
Like other said Lost is good for a couple of seasons then it's just more of the same.
Six Feet Under was great, and may have the greatest series finale in TV history at least in terms of being an absolutely perfect way to end that show, but overall it's not close to BB or The Wire.
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