Sweet 16 (Old Dramas): The Sopranos vs. Twin Peaks

Both shows are landmarks in making television compete against film. Which do you choose?

 

F U C K

 

I'm going with my heart on this one, sorry Tone

 

This sucks.

 

man this is so fucked

 

This should have been split so both could go farther. This could have been the final two and been completely worthy. Sopranos has to take it all so I can’t go against it, but ugh.

 

I think Breaking Bad/Mad Men/The Wire all would probably take down Twin Peaks.

 

I have a twin peaks tattoo and still felt like I needed to vote for the sopranos but stood my ground

goat against goat

 

Only one of them would deserve to

 

get twin peaks the fuck outta here

 

yeah, this should be another blowout

 

I made it to the "bad" part of Twin Peaks, and there is no "bad" part of The Sopranos

 

When Twin Peaks came out, there was nothing like it - so it was Must See TV

When Sopranos came out, ditto.... But there was social media at this point.

If there was social media when Twin Peaks came out, it'd have been wild.

This is a tough choice - which had the most impact on me, when it arrived...

I was younger when Twin Peaks was out.

 

What social media was there for most of the Sopranos run? AOL Instant Messenger?

 

Oh... FB or Twitter? No?

 

Those were pretty new, especially Twitter. We were all using MySpace in 2004 until Facebook overtook it but the only way to share something with your friends was the bulletin feature which was used for stuff like dumb surveys.

 

You guys weren't putting Sopranos quotes as your AIM away messages when you were in middle school?

 

I like the sopranos a lot and I recognize it will win, but it really doesn’t come close to my all time favorites. Twin Peaks does.

 

Sopranos

 

Twin Peaks for me.

 

Twin Peaks is so hard to compare to other shows. When it’s at its peak (no pun intended) I think I am more impressed by it than any other show. But as was mentioned it does have a significant stretch in season 2 where it is not very good. Still there are very few shows I feel comfortable saying are better, Sopranos just happens to be one of them.

 

Part of this comes down to legacy. Twin Peaks has a tremendous legacy, but The Sopranos is what people think of when you talk about the evolution of television from mindless entertainment to serious long-form storytelling. It is the Godfather of TV shows, and I doubt it will ever be surpassed.

 

Sopranos is obviously one of the greatest shows of all time but The Return alone is better than any season or seasons of Sopranos imo. It's pretty much the greatest thing I've ever experienced on television and I don't know how anything could top it.

 

Talking to people my age, if I asked them which one they liked more -TP or Sopranos, they would think back to 1990 and what they were doing - most were in college at that time, and were listening to new wave/alternative music, college music, etc... and into TP at exactly the right time.

Sopranos, their kids were being born, maybe the parents were up in the middle of the night, feeding them, and watching the show on demand (yeah, TP, you could not - you HAD to watch it then, right?)

SO things have changed a bit from one to another - TP meant a lot at the time. If I Had to binge one now, with my wife, it'd be Sopranos, but I could definitely stay awake for both.

Different times, 10 years apart, but socially, Sopranos meant more, I guess. A lot more people were watching/dissecting it.

But alas - the question is - which am I choosing as better. Which meant more to me?

It won't win. But I choose Twin Peaks. Sitting in college lunch room, discussing it over coffee felt better

 

Honestly surprised someone who was in college in 1990 is on Chorus