Grid Effect

This is the second half of our Sopranos-Wire season ranking (there is no good shorthand for this description). Let me just preface this by saying that even though these seasons fell in the second half, each and every one of them is immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking, but in the work of splitting hairs, these fall by the wayside. In fact, this second half will probably be really disagreeable for people who are fans of both series’. See the top six seasons of these two shows here.

7) The Sopranos - Season three

Best Episodes: “Employee of The Month”, “University”, “Pine Barrens”, “Amour Fou”

As far as fan favorites go, this and season one of The Sopranos probably rank one and two. Which has always surprised m, because season three is when this show redirects itself as a predominately morbid drama rather than a casual satire. Season three was building towards it, and you can pinpoint it to a single incident that they made the leap: When Ralphie killed his pregnant mistress in “University”…and Tony ended up letting him live. Through two and a half seasons we had almost come to admire some of these characters, especially Tony, and that wasn’t David Chase’s intent at all. So he managed to keep Ralphie as his antagonist, and make everyone else just as despicable as he thought they should be.

The Wire - Season two

Best Episodes: “Hot Shots”, “All Prologue”, “Storm Warnings”, “Port In A Storm”

Probably the least favorite season of hardcore Wire fans, mainly because it is the whitest and it was so startling coming of the street corner filled first season for the series to make such a dramatic shift to the loading docks. Simon’s obsession with parallelism and institutions is at its most raw here. We see Nick Sobotka (D’Angelo), Ziggy (Wallace) & Frank (Avon, we guess) playing a working class mirror image of their drug cartel counterpart. This season, in hindsight, was absolutely necessary. You can’t capture the image of a city until the plight of the working underclass is depicted, and if he had left this storyline out, he would have been ignoring a dominate sect of the population.

9) The Sopranos - Season Four

Best Episodes: “No Show”, “The Weight”, “Whoever Did This”, “Eloise”, “Whitecaps”

This season is most memorable for the separation that concluded probably the darkest and dreariest season of television that we can recall. There was a solid eighteen month hiatus in between seasons three and four, and during the layover 9/11 happened. There was some debate as to whether or not they would keep the shot of the towers in the opening credits and Chase opted against it under the premise that the series is supposed to reflect the day it is airing. And holy shit does he take that moniker seriously.

Chase always tried to reflect the times in his art. This season, the one following 9/11, was appropriately hopeless in more ways than one. As we were treated to tales of suicide, kids taking arrows through the chest, Tony’s murderous obsession with animals, red herrings, dementia and everything else in between. A work of art, without question, but one that few people can watch a second time.

Few things spark more warmth in the heart of a mobster than a horse who unknowingly and unwillingly runs races for you.

10) The Sopranos - Season Two

Best Episodes: “Commendatori”, “The Happy Wanderer”, “D-Girl”, “Full Leather Jacket”

This is where me and your average fan will more commonly butt heads. I’ve always felt that season two was too much of a replica of season one, and instead of building on the themes they laid out in the debut, they just rehashed the same points repeatedly. This season, even more so than one, is the most sympathetic to Tony Soprano and his ilk, but they gave us super-villain Richie Aprile, Furio, and introduced us to Janice, so it wasn’t in any way a total loss. This was by far the funniest season and the plot development, with everything from Chris’ shooting to his aspirations as a screenwriter, Tony’s waffling on therapy, Melfi’s professional conflicts and Big Puss’s demise are handled brilliantly. It just  comparatively brought little to the table in terms of actual subtext and character development.

11) The Wire - Season Five

Best Episodes: “Transitions”, “Clarifications”, “Late Editions”, “-30″

Fake serial killers, newspapers, politics, drugs, cops, robbers, internal conflict…Basically we thought this season of The Wire tried to do too much. It still turned into a phenomenal closing chapter, but there was much bitching about the lack of depth to essentially all of the newspaper characters sans Gus, and we attribute this to being the largest cast they’ve ever had, along with their shortest season by and episode and a half (the finale was ninety minutes). They gave the series a proper and satisfying conclusion, but the introduction of about ten new characters dropped it in these rankings considerably.

We’re not going to attest to the believability of the portrayal of the newsroom, because we’ve never worked in one, but so many of the characters were often one-dimensional caricatures that we weren’t used to seeing, if they had done a sixth season and fleshed them out, we probably wouldn’t feel this way. In short, given the scale of this series, it was almost impossible to end it appropriately, but we were more than pleased with the final product.

12) The Sopranos - Season 6A

Best Episodes: “Join The Club”, “Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request”, “The Ride”, Cold Stones”

This wasn’t technically a full season, and we wonder if maybe we have it cellar-dwelling on this list, but this almost seemed like it was biding time for HBO just so they could squeeze a few more episodes out of a hit series. Still, they provided us with issues of homosexuality, drug use, traditional masculinity and theology. Actually, the series would have seemed small if not for these twelve episodes.

This season, even more so than the season that Tony almost died in, will probably be remembered as the Vito season more so than anything, and I’ve always maintained about Vito that when he is killed, you’re supposed to sympathize with why he was killed, not that he actually was. Vito, much like 95% of the characters on this series, was a scumbag. He had killed an innocent bystander in just the episode beforehand. His death wasn’t tragic in that it took place, but rather because of the intolerance that drove it.

There it is. Our highly opinionated and subjective list. If you apply twelve points for the best season and one point for the worst, then divide the total by the number of seasons for each series, you get an average score of 7.2 for The Wire and The Sopranos clocks in at an even 6, which is much closer than it appears. If 6A of The Sopranos had switched places with season two of The Wire, David Chase’s series would have come out victorious. However, by our flawed, statistical measure, The Wire was the better overall series. Again, this is highly debatable and we welcome any opposing point of view, but just be sure that whatever your opinion is, assuming it isn’t identical to ours, is dead fucking wrong and you should be ashamed.

Back with links or something tomorrow.