Does anyone else think Mad Men is better than the Sopranos? They both have pretty similar themes: work life vs. family life, the American Dream, midlife crisis, etc.
But I think Mad Men is just a more consistently solid show.
>No oddly weak/out of place episodes like Christopher or A Hit is a Hit. >Doesn't take as long to hit its stride. >No plotlines that end up going nowhere. >No obvious antagonist, the characters only face their own demons. >Comfy as fuck.
Yes, but that's because it learned from The Soprano's mistakes and successes.
Aaron Murphy
>le soap opera for men >better than the greatest show of all time Haha, no, you plebeian scumbag.
Jack Ramirez
By a hair yes. They're essentially equal but Mad Men was much tighter. Weiner exerted an unrivaled amount of creative control and wrote the overwhelming majority of episodes, while Chase was more hands off.
You've never watched it. Lack of violence?
Luis Cox
Seen two seasons, actually. It's daytime soap opera-tier at BEST. Not even the best drama of the decade, let alone better than The Sopranos.
Jordan Barnes
>A character has an affair >DUDE ITS JUST A SOAP OPERA LMAO >I'M A RETARD WHO CAN'T LOOK BEYOND THE SURFACE LEVEL
Zachary Russell
>Not even the best drama of the decade
What would that be?
Evan Torres
bump for discussion
Adrian Morales
Christopher was a great ep. though.
Lucas Gonzalez
Breaking Bad
Jonathan Harris
what's wrong with your favorite show being a well made soap opera? it's got drama and sexy people
Connor Howard
I mean it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen but it was really awkward and clunky.
Nicholas Rivera
That was the point. They used the levity of the overall columbus plot to couch and emphasize Bobby's pain and revelation, kicking off the final major thread of the series. Not to mention the emotional whiplash for the viewer.
Ethan Collins
Well calling it a soap opera would imply its like a guilty pleasure or something. It's not.
I do watch guilty pleasure shows like TWD but I acknowledge that they're usually pretty bad. Mad Men isn't like that for me, it has much more going on than just being a well made soap opera.
It follows these people's lives for around 10 years and we watch them grow and change as the world around them changes. It's just fantastic.
Adam Hughes
I liked the Bobby parts of it but it was like 15% of the episode. The rest was this out of place examination of how people use their cultural background to further their own victim complex.
It was also perhaps the only Sopranos episode where a character just explains the meaning of the episode to another character at the end. For a show that's great because of the subtleties, it was heavy handed as fuck.
Jonathan Hughes
how is that different from a 10 year long soap opera
Noah Bennett
>>No plotlines that end up going nowhere. I think Mad Men had much more of this than The Sopranos did
>no obvious antagonist Every season has a new business-related crisis to overcome, it serves the same purpose as Tony's psycho relative of the year plots
James Wilson
The characterizations, subtext, themes, and writing is far better in the sopranos.
Aiden Wood
>The rest was this out of place examination of how people use their cultural background to further their own victim complex.
It was also symbolic of the general nature of indifference and bullshit that these people surround themselves with to keep them protected from the true tragedy that lurks around the edges.
The first three seasons showed how everyone managed to keep it up, but Christopher with it's invasive bobby subplot shows how this protection is starting to fail and it begins in earnest the long downward trajectory to the series' finale.
David Chase taught Matthew Weiner everything he knows.
Jace White
You're making a really good argument for it, but I know at the end of the day when I watch it again it's just not going to be as enjoyable as the other episodes, despite what they were going for.
John Brown
Im sure part of it has to do with all the negative backlash i heard about it going in and I'm just trying to be le pin contrarian XD. but there was something oddly affecting about Bobby's speech at the end, and I've always had a soft spot for filler episodes when they are able to expand the universe without having to move the plot forward like all the non bobby scenes manage to do imo.
Also just really like the fucked up almost realish world Chase and co. made up for the series and was just happy to spend more time exploring the mundane aspects of it the way the show does.
Elijah Barnes
>mad manlets btfo
James Sanders
>no plotlines that went nowhere
They had plenty of characters that went nowhere, or worse, got written into a totally contrived ending
Ginsberg is the worse, the lolsorandum schizo guy who turns completely insane over the course of one episode just 'cuz. Or the fucking shitty ending montage where everybody gets the perfect poetic ending, nah, fuck that shit.
Betty's weight gain I'm throwing in there too. Wow, how compelling.
Jordan Sullivan
The only character who got a contrived ending was Peggy, but that was just fan-service. She finished her arc when she walked into McCann. All the other characters got perfectly fine endings, just because it wasn't depressing like Sopranos doesn't mean it wasn't fitting.
Ginsberg was implied to have had issues for as long as he was around, it was only in that episode that he snapped.
I'll give you the weight gain thing, that was pointless. But Sopranos had shit like Ray Curto being a rat for the whole series only to have a stroke and die, Feech getting out of prison only to be sent back like 2 episodes later, and Melfi pretty much became a plot device to have Tony voice his inner feelings after Employee of the Month.
Jayden Diaz
January got pregnant in real life. I thought is was a master stroke how they worked around it.
Jeremiah Evans
Sopranos wasn't depressing, everyone just got what was coming to them
Ethan Peterson
Totally agree, but watching the lives of all the characters we had spent 6 seasons with completely go to shit was still pretty rough
Owen Perez
Fuck no
Henry Ross
Thinking Breaking Bad is a better show than Mad Men is not only the the ultimate reddit giveaway but the ultimate giveaway that you suffer from autism due to the fact that you need some level of empathy to understand Mad Men ...please just get the fuck out with your shitty opinion
Isaac Baker
Mad Men is far and away better that The Redditpranos.
Most episodes of Gilmore Girls are better than The Redditpranos.
Michael Brown
...
Aaron Perez
spotted the redditfag
Cameron Watson
They are literally my top two but in terms of moods I have a preference for the sopranos, as mad men has a very synthetic vibe (which I know is the point) that I have to take a break from sometimes
Nathaniel Kelly
It's an entertaining well crafted show, which is what it was meant to be. Stop pretending it's Michelangelo's Pieta.
Jonathan James
Go back to the Walking Dead thread pls
Wyatt Roberts
This is 100% true
Luke Robinson
Definition of a soap: a television or radio drama series dealing typically with daily events in the lives of the same group of characters. That's literally most shows these days. You use the word almost as a pejorative. When it's really not you fucking retard.
Ethan Harris
yes
Jacob Rogers
Mad Men's problem is that it is basically unwatchable for plebs. Nowadays, Cred Forums acts like Sopranos is the pinnacle of high culture, but back when it was on, normies enjoyed the shit out of it just for the surface level mob shit. Mad Men has basically nothing for retards to cling on to other then 'le fifties fashion and le whiskey.' Both shows are fantastic to overanalyze and watch closely for all the subtext, but Sopranos is also a great surface level story.
Tyler Watson
Good, fuck plebs. All they do is complain about how it's "too slow", "every character is an as whole", or "nothing happens". The less we hear their thoughts the better.
Samuel Russell
why the FUCK do my fucking pleb friends get bored watching mad men?
Colton Wilson
You answered your own question my man.
Wyatt Rodriguez
Mad Men has a lot going for it, it's comfy, it's consistently funny, and the aesthetic is really nice.
But it definitely isn't easy to get into, it took me like 4 tries to get into it, and I love it.
There are a couple of plot lines that don't get resolved in Mad Men, but that isn't bad, just like the ones in the sopranos.
Sopranos has more emotion in it, it's hard not to feel sad or happy in a lot of episodes in The Sopranos, mad men doesn't do it as much as sopranos.
Sopranos also has/had more impact on the medium, Tony was basically the beginning of the "morally grey" protagonist in tv.
Cameron Carter
Watching Mad Men right now and it wasn't that difficult to get into. S1 was the worst season out of what I've seen but Breaking Bad for example had a much slower first season.
