Yeah I just watched this one and was thinking the same thing. There’s a lot of little moments like that of bad acting in the first season to be honest.
I am always surprised when people say they liked the early show the best. There is a lot of identity searching throughout the first accent. Gandolfini hadn't even picked out a voice yet.
I know this is crazy, I'm a huge tv nerd and looove HBO but I've never watched the sopranos. I'm in quarantine for the next 21 days (at least) so I'm going to remedy that.
The evolution of Bobby Bacala from a dumb cartoon character to the moral center of the family is really impressive.
Soprano Home Movies is so good because of Bobby. When Tony forces him to get his first kill it was heartbreaking.
It leads to his downfall, just like anyone who gets close to Tony. It is Bobby, of all people, that casually suggests killing Hesh instead of paying him back.
after thinking about the ending for a few days, i think i really like it -- there was that line of dialogue earlier in the season where someone (maybe it was even Tony) observes that 80% of the time, being boss ends in either death or imprisonment, and i think by withholding any semblance of a neat resolution, positive or negative, it ends up being a clever way of tipping the hat towards that endless cycle without acting out a drawn out narrative where the show declines in quality by having him move towards either of those scenarios. plus, i don't even feel like the show is really/primarily about the mafia as much as it is just a backdrop to contrast the mundanities of regular life drama, and i think the ending really highlights that. like, once Melfi makes it clear that she doesn't think she can help him anymore and that maybe there are limits to being able to help someone in his position (waste management), it feels like Tony's arc is more or less complete, at least the parts of it concerning his growth, and the way the latter half of the series got progressively darker and more nihilistic also reinforces that for me. idk! im still thinking about it, but i really liked it and enjoyed my time watching it. definitely deserves the hype.
The scene where Ralph beats the stripper to death might be the darkest moment in this show. Holy shit. It’s so brutal.
completely agree w both of those, both genuinely shocking and horrific scenes, don't think I've really seen violence of that level in a tv show before