The Sopranos

One of the running jokes with my friends is how long it takes me to jump on bandwagons. Books, movies, music, tv. One prime example is Seinfeld. I didn't start watching it until maybe season 3 or 4, even when my friends were telling me how great it was. It WAS great. It IS great. In my opinion, the best tv series ever. The Sopranos is another example. My excuse is/was that I don't have HBO. But even after being released on dvd, it still took me until maybe last year to start checking the series out.

I finished Season 3 yesterday. While I'm finally getting and seeing the subtle humor (whether intentional or not is up to some debate I think), I'm still not seeing what all the hype was about. It's good, it's different, but I'm not sure I would have made it to season 3 if I had been watching it real time. As for the humor, I question the humor aspect based upon listening to the commentaries that are part of some of the episodes. The directors and the creator (David Chase) make comments about inside jokes, extremely subtle lines, the way the actors made something funny that might not have been written that way, etc. So that makes me question whether the humor was intended or just a part of the actors playing it that way. I guess it's both and maybe that is the genius that everyone else sees.

Season 3 did have, so far, my favorite episode - Pine Barrens. Basically a debt collection gone bad - way bad. The stuff in the woods is very funny and the comments on the commentary (by director Steve Buscemi of Fargo fame) gave a lot of insight into how they filmed the wood scenes. He mentioned several times how the actors underplayed scenes that made the humor even better. The episode had a very "Fargo" feel, which he said wasn't intentional at all. It just happened to snow at the location before and during the 4 day filming.

I will start Season 4 in the next week or so (thank you Netflix). I'm not sure what direction Season 4 will go in, but I have to think that a couple of the regular characters have to have something bad happen to them. Time will tell.