The Sopranos Episode That Defined an Era
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 28 апр 2021
- Subscribe for more video essays: bit.ly/2cxs4Z3
Support me on Patreon: bit.ly/2d46QD6
In 1999, The Sopranos changed the course of TV history with it's fifth episode "College," an episode that would come to define the next two decades of TV storytelling
Follow me on Social Media:
Twitter: / skipintroyt
Email: skipintro@standard.tv
#thesopranos #antiheroes #difficultmen
![ian - Fit Check (Feat. VonOff1700) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sDGWDBg45Dw/mqdefault.jpg)
That sexual tension between Carm and Father Phil built and built for years, then the first time we see those two actors together in Nurse Jackie?
Fucking like animals. Like all that tension was finally released from another universe. 🤘🏻🤘🏻
I remember being struck by the script on the show, at one early point Tony simply announces 'I gotta take a piss,' which I couldn't remeber hearing on a tv show before.
Back in the 80s I remember watching a British political miniseries called A Very British Coup where the intro was a close up shot of the water in a toilet bowl followed by a stream of urine and the main character (thankfully off screen) whistling as he peed. I sat there thinking ‘ok. Didn’t know you could film that’
Except Tony Soprano is not an antihero, he's a villain protagonist. These terms have unfortunately become muddled in modern cultural discussion, but they are two very distinct things. An antihero is someone who does heroic things but with traits or methods that are not considered "traditionally heroic." This might range from simply a bad attitude or bad habits to actions that are straight-up illegal, but they are all ultimately in the service of some greater good. A villain protagonist is someone with selfish ends who, as the POV character, the audience is nonetheless made sympathetic to. They might be truly evil or simply morally gray, but unlike an antihero their goals are not in any way heroic.
I think that regardless of anti-hero vs villian protagonist the point is the same that Tony Soprano is the first of that trend of villian protagonists.
Always loved that episode not so much for Tony's half (I came to the Sopranos after Breaking Bad, Dexter, etc. so it was all kinda de rigeur) but for Carmella's half. I think the Sopranos was kind of unique in how it treated her as an equally important character to Tony with equal screen time and dramatic weight to lift, in a way that other violent masculine anti-hero shows noticeably didn't (I'm thinking of how much hate Skylar White got from Breaking Bad's fanbase, and how that didn't happen in the Sopranos). Might be something worth looking into when you finish Copaganda...
I'm pretty sure Carmela also had a pretty significant hate against her. It's just that the Sopranos came out in a very different version of internet discourse.
I agree with you, whenever someone brings up this episode to me I immediately remember her confession scene
I also think of Carmella’s section of the episode more. As an ex-catholic it left much more of an impression on me than the school trip.
BTW Carmella/Edie Falco got a decent amount of hate as well. When Anna Gunn wrote her op ed for the NYT about the hate she had gotten for playing Skyler she specifically mentions Carmella Soprano as being in the same group as Skyler. They may both have been complicit in their husband’s actions but neither one was the instigator yet they both became known as ‘screaming harpies harshing their husbands’ mellow.’ I hate it so much.
@@mixmastermind thats unfortunate to hear. I'm almost finished with the show and she's one of the most sympathetic characters on the show
She absolutely does get that same amount of hate. So does Meadow
It's pretty weird to consider the idea of a lead character willfully murdering someone for non-self defense reasons "groundbreaking." But that's The Sopranos for you: modern television would be a whole lot different without it.
People like that exist around you and yeah it’s always groundbreaking when television allows truth. Same could be said for the first toilet in tv.
Also apparently you didn’t watch the video lmao.
It annoys me how often the Sopranos gets overlooked in modern discourse by hack youtubers. People talk like Breaking Bad (an amazing show) and the walking dead of all things (a bad show) started the concept of Premier television, but the Sopranos 100 percent was the genesis of it all
Genesis award has to go to Twin Peaks, imo. First show to prove that TV could provide compelling drama rather than light-hearted forgettable comedies/game shows and pulpy don't-think-about-it-too-hard stuff like soap operas and cop shows. I believe it was the first show to have feature-length episodes, unless you count low budget low quality TV miniseries of the back half of the 20th century as bridging that gap.
Exactly. I mean, I ADORE Breaking Bad (I haven’t seen Walking Dead) and I do believe Ozymandias is one of the most remarkable episodes of any show in the history of television BUT it wouldn’t exist without The Sopranos and every brilliant episode it created.
11s##1¹11
It really gets into the concept of humans assuming we deserve life, and bad people deserve death. But some people don’t think people deserve life.
i took a tv history class and this is the very episode of the sopranos we watched in the class when we got into modern television
I would love to take a TV history class
yo did we take the same class?
Not sure if the amount of people online who unironically support Tony Soprano are worse than the people who unironically support Vic from The Shield
Oh man, how about the people who think Don Draper from Mad Men is a role model
I don't even think it's right to call Tony an antihero as much as tragic villain/villain protagonist.
Or the ones who unironically think Walter White was only an anti-hero and think that Skyler was a villain. Lolwut
As soon as you mentioned the title of the episode, I immediately remembered the entire plot of it and it’s been WELL over a decade since I had seen it. Never thought about it before but that definitely is the subplot that stuck with me most in the series while the scene that has seared in my brain is the expression of realization on Adriana’s face in the car near the end of the series.
Every time I'm on a long car ride with my dad I get a sudden urge to ask him if he's in the mafia
I ask my Sicilian grandpa, he just chuckled and said "there's no mafia"
@@Josep_Hernandez_Lujan Sounds very mafia😂
Jackson’s pink hoodie antis his eye shadow…oh and the essay was wonderful as well👍👍
I dug the hoodie as well!
Hey, I know you're hard at work on the next episode of the copaganda series, but It'd be interesting to get your take on the British BBC series Line of Duty. It's a show about an anti-corruption unit of the Police, and it's huge over here right now, with it's finale this weekend. I'm enjoying the show, but can't get my head around the politics of the show. Thanks for the content as always!
Yeah, would be interesting to hear your take on the show.
The first season of the sopranos was phenomenal. This episode sticks so hard to your ribs it’s insane. I don’t remember which episode but the one where Tony’s son gets in trouble and tony has ice cream with him in the end I feel also cements these ideas of a terrible person doing retched things all while being a father and connecting to what so many people feel in there family’s. Great video
Lol yeah its incredible at times I see so much of my dad in Tony but then I remember Tony is a mass murderer and get disgusted
I remember when the show came out simply being flabbergasted with a mobster sitting with a psychiatrist. Back then mental illness was somewhat more taboo, unless perhaps you lived in California or something. The incongruity to earlier mobster portrayals was almost shocking at the time. To have Tony then act like a complete vindictive sociopath in this episode was a masterstroke, kinda like this analysis my boi.
I feel that period in the 90's was marked by white melancholy in mainstream movies. Stories from BiPOC creators of this time, have a different feel to them, one big example being Spike Lee.
1999 releases, right
Was summer of Sam from 1999?
@@kostajovanovic3711
Not sure
Really was hesitant to start a new TV analysis channel, but you're amazing. Love your perspective and your inflection
So happy for this & excited for all the work you do! Thank you!
In a weird destined turn of events, the first episode of The Sopranos I ever watched was "College" and I was immediately hooked. On German TV the show was just buried and it aired tuesday nights at like 11 pm, but through destiny I just happened to accidentally stumble onto this Episode and everything changed...
That's an awesome story, I watched it last year. I had watched all the great shows starting from 90s to now, Twin Peaks, Mad men, The Wire, Shield etc and also some of the most obscure and cult shows. Yet somehow this show evaded me. I was aware of it, I had heard it was great. But somehow I started watching it last year in the middle of pandemic. And what a ride it was. I was happy that I had waited to watch it till that moment, it sucked me into its universe and made me forget everything else. I haven't been able to enjoy or actively indulge in a TV show since. Watching all those great shows could not prepare me for this. It had a deep and profound impact on me.
That's great. I always tried to turn Germans on to shows like this. When I first came to Germany, there was a very negative attitude about American television shows. Now everyone here loves shows like How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory. These shows are the equivalent of McDonald's. Corporate product. The more challenging and realistic shows get ignored or aren't shown. Have you also seen The Shield and The Wire?
Amazing Documentary ! Thank you for producing it !
You always make high quality videos also make another video on Lost please
So glad I found this channel 💪🏾
Awesome work!
Had no idea sopranos was so recent! Didn't know much about it before this, thanks!
This video supposedly only around 20 minutes old, yet your comment is from 3 days ago.
@@TheSpiderman7285 videos likely get shared on patreon early
Always interesting insights. Thanks. The book, Difficult Men explores this well.
Great stuff as ever
Wait a minute, this is a new video? I saw a video almost identical to this a few days ago.... did you see the same video and steal the concept, it's too similar to be by chance.
commenting so that youtube knows i want more of this bc i was on my xbox app and fat fingered not interested when i meant to hit save to watch later. also this was a really good video and made me think of the sopranos and that ep in a different light. thanks!
Tony is just a villian we are following. He isn't an anti hero.
I swear I’ve seen this video before or at least a video on this exact same subject.
Pure kino?
Yeah there's another one with like 800k views but its kinda just a recap and then goes into how it changed television i think this one goes a lot more in depth in terms of story and character analysis
So that is what archer was referencing in "terms of enrampagement" - Me watching the magnum PI clip
I should point out that Homicide: Life on the Streets implies at least two police murders, and this is back in the nineties.
@Lucien Hicks The Wire is widely considered one of the best tv show of all time. It won a lot of awards
I feel like we can draw a pretty straight line from TV growing up to our society growing backwards.
Okay but Reunited from Steven Universe let gay people exist in western animation and that gives me life so they'll have to share the most important spot
you should look at Mission Hill, it featured Tom Kenny playing a gay character in 1999, the same year that Spongebob started, and it’s great
It’s ‘BO-din,’ like, rhymes with ‘Odin.’
Great series though, love your stuff.
I can see by the way you move your hands when you talk, you had the makings of a varsity athlete.
Interesting take!
The Practice, to be fair, did introduce Alan Shore, who wasn't quite an upstanding member of society...
Excellent vid. A personal favorite episode of mine (but I mean, cmon... pine barrens) But it left me wondering about your phrasing. The way you left the video made me think you believe this time of “retribution” is over. If so, what comes next? What aspect of American culture will come to define the next decade/decades?
When you finish the copaganda series you should do a video about either 30 rock, or community or it's always sunny, I rewatched all 3 of them in quarantine and just popped how their humor are so unique, and different from anything else, even the other things from their creators.
30 rock would be interesting, i feel like there are way more video essays about the other two already
I literally just saw a video about the same thing a week ago
Totally agree about this episode. When I started watching the show, I wasn't sure if I could justify spending the time on it until I got to this one.
P.S. can't wait for spooky cops haha, thanks for doing what you're doing
How are you not going to mention Oz? I mean it did all this before every tv show.
He did mention Oz.
Soprano is not an 'anti-hero' which is a character who does heroic things while having unheroic traits not simply a troubled character - the word anti-hero has become divorced from its meaning - a lot of the shows you mentioned are not about anti-heroes. None of the characters on breaking bad or madmen are anti-heroes: they're not out there saving lives despite dark flaws, they're just out for themselves: really only dexter and House fits the actual definition of an anti-hero.
I always thought killing Ralphie was the epitome of the shock kill. Maybe I'm just jaded. Anyway, I'm subbed now (thank you RUclips recommendations).
It was a brutal scene and Ralph was more sympathetic than he'd ever been due to his son's recent brush with death. But we had seen Tony and Ralph do plenty of bad shit at that point, and I had no doubt in my mind that Tony would kill him over a horse. It was only because it was against the rules that there was a question about whether he'd do it.
Extremely memorable and excellent episode though.
Edit: I'm open to being wrong tho, I've only recently watched the Sopranos for the first time and so maybe I'M the one that's jaded
Tony Soprano is like a mobster version of Shrek, with all his layers and love for onions."
"You know what they say, Tony Soprano has layers like an onion, and they all stink."
"Tony Soprano's layers are like a finely crafted lasagna, except instead of pasta, it's just more Tony Soprano."
"Tony Soprano may be a mobster, but he's also got a heart like Shrek, especially when it comes to those he loves - and onion rings, of course."
"I heard Tony Soprano has so many layers, he needs a team of gangsters just to keep track of them all."
"You think Shrek's swamp is dirty? Wait until you see Tony Soprano's secret hideout - it's like an episode of 'Hoarders.'"
"Tony Soprano is like an onion - every time you peel back a layer, you uncover a new crime."
"Some people say Tony Soprano is scary, but really he's just misunderstood, like Shrek."
"If Tony Soprano and Shrek got together, they'd have one heck of a smelly onion roast."
"Tony Soprano's layers are like an onion, except instead of making you cry, they make you beg for mercy."
Surprised i didn't sub after watching your shield video, that issue is now fixed.
Hey excuse me you'll have to make your videos *less amazing* , actually, because I started binging them and forgot to subscribe. Your videos are so funny and full of insight that I completely forgot to subscribe!
Very good pick for the most Important Modern Live-Action TV Episode. What would you pick for the Most Important piece of Animation in that late 90s to mid 2000s time frame? I'd, personally, narrow it down as between five candidates:
1. Mad Love, The New Batman Adventures
2. Tales of Ba Sing Se, Avatar: The Last Airbender
3. Bitter Reunions, Danny Phantom (Like The Sopranos, it has better episodes than this, but this is a pretty decisive marking point.)
4. Dark Harvest, Invader Zim
5. Jurassic Bark, Futurama
My belief:
Oz paved the way for modern tv
The Sopranos Defined what modern tv is
The Wire Perfected modern TV
Yep that is so true thats the point of the episode that David Chase is making a point about acts of cruelty in the Sopranos and understanding these folks are not good people we are following.
Did this channel have a different name once? I don't remember subscribing to a channel with this name.
Used to be called "Ideas at Play"
@@Ch1ckenKatsu I adon't remember that name either but thanks!
So I watched Soprannos way after it aired (was too young when it first aired) I was never really suprised that Tony killed the guy.
“It was the eighties who knows”…😂
Finally, a Sopranos episode
When the Paw Patrol Copanganda episode? :P
The Godfather trilogy was already adapted for the small screen with deleted scenes but I get what u mean.
I haven't shut up about this show in 5 years.
I’ve been watching through the show recently, don’t think it’s possible to not enjoy it
Just finished my third rewatching. To me it beats even Breaking Bad, because Sopranos has so many relate characters. Even the most heinous ones still have humanity. In Breaking Bad, you find almost comically unhinged and destructive people that remind of supervillains more than anything.
@@Grogeous_Maximus Having seen Breaking Bad as well, I actually would have the the opposite opinion. The level of depth to each individual character I believe surpasses the Sopranos, and that’s not any slight towards it. Not to put down the actors of the Sopranos, but I believe the writing on that show doesn’t let the actors breathe as much and do more than just speak as Breaking Bad pulls off.
Engagement. Thank you.
The other thing about this episode is that it was the only episode in the entire show that was completely unrelated to the plot of the season/series.
House of Cards: The story of a sexual predator trying to gaslight an entire country. Also the character he played in the show was pretty evil too.
Im late but whats the song in the background
I'm The Sopranos and this is Jackson
Great video! But the actual best episode of modern television is the Game of Thrones season 8 finale :))))
He said important, not best!
It's pretty striking how much this concept has degraded over the last 20 years. At the start it was the thing that confronted the entertainment, now it is the entertainment.
To be fair, the Sopranos also kind of regularly did the opposite of this, the audience would be waiting impatiently for Tony to kill someone or a big showdown and in the end it would happen in a very mundane way or the characters would never be seen again (Richie and Firio are good examples) in season 4, many people complained that it was 'boring' cause there was no 'action' and the climax of the story was the dissolution of his marriage, not any big showdown, it's why I still consider groundbreaking today cause it embraced anticlimax and ambiguity in a way I havent seen other shows do
@@kristinalfc5846 I haven't seen much of it in a long time, but I would be interested in doing a rewatch to see the ways it is different from the modern (western/American) television landscape, of which I have tried many shows and enjoyed basically none.
@@jpickens189 I was afraid to rewatch cause i thought it would lose the magic it had when I was younger but it blows shows like Breaking Bad out of the water for me, unlike its reputation, it's a show that's very interested in the mundane minutiae of every day life and is much more character driven than shows these days that are obsessed with plot and tying every thing together neatly, S2 onwards esp the writers didnt care about satisfying or shocking anyone, they just did what they wanted
Is this a reupload?
No, but it might seem familiar because this video is blatantly plagiarized from Pure Kino. ruclips.net/video/Jj3g6CCNB-A/видео.html “The Sopranos - The Episode that Changed Television Forever”
@@faerieprincess1232 This or both made their video essay from the book "the revolution was televised" cited at 7:18
Sync please !
They put on a TV show what had been in movies for 40 years.
It's a new trend that's paradoxically been around forever. I mean look at Hamlet.
tony is an all star
What makes these characters antiheroes? Arent they all villains?
I'd go with Leftovers s2x08 but it can't even be described without hours of context, and I also haven't seen The Sopranos. I should watch The Sopranos.
Leftovers is a great show, underated and underappreciated. I had seen it before watching Sopranos. But every great show you can think, including Leftover owes its debt to Sopranos. And this episode in particular wouldn't exist without Sopranos. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but you will have to watch Sopranos first. I can point out the origins of this episode straight back to a later episode of Sopranos in Season 6, Episode 2 & 3.
You two are just convincing me I ought to watch The Sopranos. Honestly, Leftovers is my favorite series, easily, but I really do feel like most showrunners could learn a lot from it, considering how much plainly doesn't work in most tv I find myself watching, even the relatively popular ones. Reminds me of how The OA tried to be almost like Twin Peaks or something, and it came across as a farce, not justifying itself nearly enough. Mr. Robot season 4 was mostly a let down to a previously consistently fantastic show.
I suppose I don't watch much older tv though. I never got around to The Wire either, or Six Feet Under. I'm worried about the Dexter limited series. HBO rarely disappoints though, Game of Thrones notwithstanding
Tony is not an antihero, that's not his character role. He is a rather sympathetic villain though.
My man I subscribed on nebula and you dont have closed captioning there! I understand english but I sometimes enjoy subtitles! Please fix! Thank you
Shouldn't have called him Teddy
Did you say SPOOKY cops? 🛸
When it gets too hard for the ruling class to peddle fictionalized versions of real-world supervillains (read: themselves and their goons) as "superheroes"...
shrek is a good guy. how dare you
I disagree only slightly about your anti-hero take. We had already been dealing with antiheroes and troubled men protagonists for decades by the late 90s, not only in cinema but in TV. I guess it really depends on what you would classify as "antiheroes" but I would argue that characters such as Sonny Crockett, J.R. Ewing, Archie Bunker, hell even Al Bundy and several others represented a shift to damaged men anti-hero protaganists. And if we're simply talking about charachters refusing to comply with societal roles you would have to look no further than the Murphy Brown's, Roseanne Connors, Cagney and Lacey etc of the world. It's a small point but I'd argue the most important moment in modern television history would be the episode where Col. Blake's helicopter was destroyed returning from Korea. It was the first time to my memory that a "good guy" got completely fucked over in a tv show and really sort of traumatized a lot of viewers. Prior to that episode of MASH, there was an assumption of plot armor immortality to TV protaganists. The only "good guys" who died were usually extras or minor charachters (eg. Red Shirts.) Even if protagonists did die, it was from things like old age or doing something heroic. This was random. It was to no end. There was no moral. It was a complete tragedy. I think that episode changed America's expectations about the mortality of our characters. Characters were now in this unstable world where they could die at any moment, just like we could. In fact, now it's almost an expectation that some of the major characters will die in any drama we watch and the modern American audience is sort of like a vulture waiting for each episode to see if this character will get killed or not. Sorry, if you read all this, but think about how that "will he get killed or not?" anxiety drove so much of the Sopranos audience speculation and buzz regarding Chris, Tony and others. I can't see how that's not the most important episode in TV history.
The name of the episode of MASH is Abyssinia, Henry.
Here's the wikipage: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssinia,_Henry
great analysis. you look cute.
is this a non official copaganda episode? i think so
James Gandolfini gone too soon.
The Shrekpranos.
Nice plagiarism
Algorithm feeding comment.
😅
You're wrong. the most important modern tv episode is that one on saved by the bell when Jesse took caffeine pills. lol
good morning rat
No more fake laughs plz
I think this episode might be why modern drama TV is too intense for me.
I hate the word 'rat'....
Surely an important factor in the commonalities between Tony, Walt and Don - to list just three anti heroes - is that there white men. With this observation in mind, the lack of black anti-heroes (and by extension other marginalized bodies) in popular culture demonstrates we're collectively not ready to offer the same empathy to those who aren't white men. By extension, we might ask what this anti-heroic white man serves to normalise, at a time where our heroic figures - Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos, to list just 3 - are marred in controversy and ethical dilemma. Food for thought!
Luther.
Snowfall, The Wire (Omar), and Nacho Varga from Better Call Saul are all pretty solid examples of non white anti heroes.
Those are not antiheroes, those are villains as protagonists. In order to really identify with them, you should be a really bad person, otherwise, you never enter the game. You can empathize with them on a certain level but if you crossed that, you are screw. Speak volumes of how our society is at the bottom of decadence. I wish all the modern characters in shows die. For example in the world of Game of Thrones, almost everyone is a motherf...I was really wishing that all die. I begin to root for the withe walkers, but...we all know how that ended.
Most important? Lol, first thought was "this guy sounds like a baby".
Yup, I was right.
You plagiarized this wholesale from Pure Kino. Take the video down and apologize, nerd
I feel like the sopranos is overrated. It’s hard to rewatch the series again. But I push through it because I hate network tv and commercials! But I say that to say this. This episode is the episode I come to think about when my friends or coworkers are discussing the sopranos. So it’s not shocking that I found out today that critics believe it’s the best episode in the series. Because it’s definitely the most memorable for me.
P.s. it still breaks my heart to see the sopranos, mad men and breaking bad clean up at the emmys! But the wire doesn’t even get 1 nomination! 🤬🤬😡😡🤬
It's interesting seeing how you interpret media like this since you're not old enough to have actually been there. You're not very good at capturing the reality of social response or even critical acclaim but, it's interesting.