Breaking Bad vs Mad Men vs The Sopranos vs The Wire

[aufheben]

The Sopranos doesn't have the complexity of The Wire but I think it is more artistic and is legit the funniest show I've ever seen. Mad Men is good too but like 95% of that show is in their office. I don't think I ever watched Breaking Bad in its entirety.

 

[HanSolo]

T1 (very good, in contention with the best shows ever made)
The Wire
Sopranos

T2 (very good if a bit overrated)
Breaking Bad

T3 (very strong production value and acting but lacked a certain quality to give it very strong staying power to really be considered among the other three.)
Mad Men

 

[alko]

Pardon me, but never heard about Wire (yes, im from Europe, Middle East Europe). It is really such spectacle? Also after such many years?

 

[Jugitsu]

Pardon me, but never heard about Wire (yes, im from Europe, Middle East Europe). It is really such spectacle? Also after such many years?

It's widely regarded as the best HBO series of all time. Which is saying a lot. It's easily my favorite tv show of all time and I've watched most of the highly touted shows.

 

[Supermassive]

Pardon me, but never heard about Wire (yes, im from Europe, Middle East Europe). It is really such spectacle? Also after such many years?

It is the most authentic of the big four.
Breaking Bad does suspense and WTF moments better.
Sopranos does character development better.
Mad Men does costume and style better.
But all three are unabashedly fiction.
The Wire is unapologetically non-escapist in nature.

Upon first watch, I'd vote Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire
Upon rewatches, I'd vote the opposite.

 

[tacogeoff]

They were all enjoyable but for me it is the wire and by a fairly wide margin.

 

[Ceremony]

Pardon me, but never heard about Wire (yes, im from Europe, Middle East Europe). It is really such spectacle? Also after such many years?

 

[NyQuil]

Pardon me, but never heard about Wire (yes, im from Europe, Middle East Europe). It is really such spectacle? Also after such many years?

It's a bit challenging because there is no hand-holding at the beginning.

Characters are thrown at you, slang, nicknames, and at first you're a bit overwhelmed. Which I think is by design.

You have to stick with it through all of the first season and eventually you realize why it's considered so great by so many people.

 

[K Fleur]

The season of The Wire that focuses on the school(I think season 4?) is the best season of a television show that I have ever seen.

The rest of the show is amazing too.

 

[CantHaveTkachev]

the Wire continues to be the most overrated show ever (and I enjoyed it)

 

[RobBrown4PM]

There's the wire

Then there's the Sopranos

And then there's everything else by a very wide margin

 

[The Macho King]

I've probably come around to appreciating the Sopranos more, because when you think back to the Sopranos you largely think back to the entire series, while the Wire I immediately think "season 4 best, season 5 meh, season 2 grows on you, season 1 very good, season 3 uneven but ends strong".

I think that's easy to explain because of how the Wire told essentially five different stories with largely the same cast of characters (with some entrances and exits), while the Sopranos told one story, but it's easier to think of Sopranos as a cohesive whole in a way that I find difficult with the Wire.

Breaking Bad I feel is just buoyed by a very strong performance by Cranston but the plot honestly feels thin and absurd at times. There's also the whole "Walter White was actually a piece of shit the whole episode and isn't really sympathetic." It's a 45 hour version of Falling Down.

I'd go:
Sopranos
Wire






Mad Men


Breaking Bad

 

[chicagoskycam]

The Wire is so overrated. If you wanted to say a Season of the Wire vs. any of the other shows seasons, yes but as an overall series. No way!

 

[chicagoskycam]

I've probably come around to appreciating the Sopranos more, because when you think back to the Sopranos you largely think back to the entire series, while the Wire I immediately think "season 4 best, season 5 meh, season 2 grows on you, season 1 very good, season 3 uneven but ends strong".

I think that's easy to explain because of how the Wire told essentially five different stories with largely the same cast of characters (with some entrances and exits), while the Sopranos told one story, but it's easier to think of Sopranos as a cohesive whole in a way that I find difficult with the Wire.

Breaking Bad I feel is just buoyed by a very strong performance by Cranston but the plot honestly feels thin and absurd at times. There's also the whole "Walter White was actually a piece of shit the whole episode and isn't really sympathetic." It's a 45 hour version of Falling Down.

I'd go:
Sopranos
Wire






Mad Men


Breaking Bad

I think the secondary characters were one of the best aspects of BB, better than any other series.

 

[Neutrinos]

It's widely regarded as the best HBO series of all time. Which is saying a lot. It's easily my favorite tv show of all time and I've watched most of the highly touted shows.

The Sopranos took America by storm

Game Of Thrones became a global phenomenon

The Wire wasn't mainstream enough to be considered widely anything

 

[The Macho King]

I think the secondary characters were one of the best aspects of BB, better than any other series.

Sopranos blows it out of the water with secondary characters, but I was referring primarily to the plot being absurdist. You have the plane crash season, a lot of absurdist "White is now a badass" stuff, the kind of forced/hammy tension with his DEA agent brother-in-law...

I don't know. Never resonated much for me. It was good at times, but it also felt more like a "spectacle" than a consistently strong story. And the secondary characters outside of Walt's immediate family + Jessie are basically just reductionist comic book characters in a way that I never felt with stuff like the Sopranos, the Wire, or Mad Men.

 

[Neutrinos]

The Sopranos could've gone on for 20 more seasons because we enjoyed watching those characters interact with each other, and the story line was really secondary

Breaking Bad was a story line driven show. The audience cared less about the characters, but we wanted to see what was going to happen next

 

[Jugitsu]

The Sopranos took America by storm

Game Of Thrones became a global phenomenon

The Wire wasn't mainstream enough to be considered widely anything

Perhaps widely is pushing the narrative a bit.

You're right, The Wire especially at the time wasn't a mainstream show like the Sopranos and Game of Thrones. The show started gaining its due respect much later, which is a shame because it could've been even longer.

I personally find it the best tv show of all time. And I'm not alone in that assessment. I never jumped on to the Sopranos hypetrain and to this day, I haven't been able to finish it. Game of Thrones was good for the first 5 seasons, after which it became more and more hot pile of cow dung, that climaxed with the biggest disappointment in the history of television with its final season. Made it practically impossible to rewatch the show, knowing how it ended. Becoming the biggest tv show in the history was also the downfall of GoT.

Bottomline is: The Wire is definitely a recommended watch today for someone who hasn't seen it and is wondering whether to bother.

 

[chicagoskycam]

The Wire was just so f***ing boring at times. Very well done but zzzzz

 

[chicagoskycam]

Sopranos blows it out of the water with secondary characters, but I was referring primarily to the plot being absurdist. You have the plane crash season, a lot of absurdist "White is now a badass" stuff, the kind of forced/hammy tension with his DEA agent brother-in-law...

I don't know. Never resonated much for me. It was good at times, but it also felt more like a "spectacle" than a consistently strong story. And the secondary characters outside of Walt's immediate family + Jessie are basically just reductionist comic book characters in a way that I never felt with stuff like the Sopranos, the Wire, or Mad Men.

I don't think so. There is a need in this thread to dump on the other contenders to make one stand out. I didn't care for the wire but hey, it's subjective. Sopranos benefited from casting seasoned actors, many that had already played a role in some mob movie and they were great! Vince would pull these nobodies in for 1 episode and they would just kill it. He just had a knack for casting some great supporting roles.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

3 of these shows are well done and at times very entertaining charcter studies of a single person adrift in their world.

The other is a complex, densely and realistically populated indictment of an America that itself is adrift. It also happens to be crazy entertaining.

3 of these are therapy sessions.

The other is reality.

This isn't even close in my mind.

The Wire.

 

[member 51464]

I personally got the most enjoyment out of Mad Men, and if it weren't for the flashback scenes, it's the one iis be most likely to ever rewatch start to end.

It was just so on point in every regard.

 

[Dubi Doo]

Mad Men
Sopranos
The Wire
Breaking Bad

I like humor in my shows, sue me! These are my 4 favorite shows ever. Only other one that comes close is The Americans, which would round out my top-5.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

The Wire was just so f*cking boring at times. Very well done but zzzzz

I never found The Wire boring. The fact they kept me enthralled despite not having hardly any big gun fights and major action sequences in a crime drama is a testament to the writing of the show.

 

[kook10]

I am just getting around to watching Mad Men now. I am sorry for having waited so long - it is very good. It is worth noting that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner was a writer and executive producer on the Sopranos. He actually got the job on the Sopranos by sending David Chase the script for what would eventually be the Mad Men pilot years later. They shot that pilot (which became the first episode) in NYC at the same stages and with mostly the same crew as the Sopranos when they were on hiatus between the two parts of the final season. They moved to LA for the rest of the run. I'd say that Weiner had a pretty good run of TV there.