Ranking The Sopranos (All 6 Seasons Worst to Best)

without further ado the greatest season of the sopranos is [Music] [Applause] what is up everybody and welcome to my ranking of all six soprano seasons now if you saw my review this past weekend of the many saints of newark which is the prequel movie to the soprano series i already teased you this i already told you it was coming and i just finished the finale of the series about an hour ago so now it's time to talk about this show now the sopranos to kind of set the stage of where i am as a fan of this show i watched it for the first time over the past month plus leading up to the many saints of newark didn't quite get done before the movie came out but i was pretty damn close uh i was just too young when this when this show came out i think i was like nine years old uh it was not going to be the type of show that i was going to get into even though i loved mob movies and it just kept missing it you know it ended everybody hated the ending i wasn't sure if i wanted to invest time into a show that i was gonna be pissed off at the ending years went by the blu-ray came out i mean it's right here look i promise the blu-ray it's right here i've had this since the day it was released and i have still yet to put one single episode in until last month so uh this is a show i've been wanting to watch and just have not got around to the movie looked awesome finally gave me the motivation to and i didn't want to review every season so i figured you know what we'll just get all the thoughts out and rank these seasons so goes without saying my experience with this show is going to be extremely different than yours if you're somebody that grew up with the show that watched it from day one when the pilot aired that have re-watched it years and years and years since the the show ended if this is your favorite show of all time my thoughts are probably going to clash with yours just respect it as different strokes for different folks different experiences different tastes i like this show i don't quite think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread so with all that being said and hopefully all the insecure douche bags that would plague the comment section have moved on to another video go ahead and grab your seven and seven grab you a nice gabagool sandwich with some vinegar peppers let's talk about the sopranos now i'll start off by saying there was no season of this show that was just a flat out bad season a lot of shows have at least one of those where it's just like oh good luck getting through that one the reason that this is at the bottom for me was because to me it was just the most boring of all the seasons the story lines that they decided to focus on here interested me the least so number six for me is going to be season four now for me this is the season of this show that very much felt like a soap opera now the show has kind of had that flavor here and there i mean if you are unassuming you might walk into this thinking it's going to be just a slam bang action-packed drama mob style show and there's elements of that of course but a lot of it is family drama character drama and it does get a little soap opery sometimes this whole season felt like a soap opera i mean this whole thing is basically tony and carmella's dissolving of their marriage where he's [ __ ] around with a bunch of different chicks which he's done since the beginning of the show but now it's starting to become more prevalent and starting to really wear on carmela she's starting to have a little bit of a love interest with one of his henchmen furio and that kind of gets teased and goes back and forth through the whole season eventually ending in them separating and just violently getting out all of their marital frustrations on each other where's just like here's all the [ __ ] that i wanted to say and certainly the performances of both gandalfini and edie falco are awesome i think they both won emmys for this season too so i mean that goes to show you but the storyline itself just kind of felt like it was drawn out a bit for me i'm not really that much into marital drama on shows that tends to be my one of my least favorite elements beyond all of that the other elements of this season didn't really interest me all that much either you got joe pintoliano back again as ralphie he's being extra weird i mean they're showing all the sexual exploits of him and janice which was just a very ill-fated relationship from the beginning christopher is at his absolute worst here that's where he's starting to become a heroin addict and he's just slapping around adriana like crazy and i'll get more in-depth on my thoughts on christopher but at this point in the show i was starting to like him and then this season made me dislike him even more than i did before and yeah that doesn't really help when i'm starting to like your character and then you make me not like him again it's like [ __ ] pick a side i didn't have any interest in any of the drama relating to tony and his mistresses and all the other chicks that he's walking around banging because that's been something that's just happened over and over to the point of being like a trope at this point and they fully explored a relationship with one of his little mistresses on the previous season that they did really well so here it just kind of feels like you're retreading familiar territory and adriana her becoming um an unwilling fbi informant because of her friend that was an fbi informer or fbi undercover agent the entire time started out really interesting but then it kind of feels like they fizzled that plot line out and after you get to season five you find out why because they put a lot more meat on the bones of that story in that season but that was another thing where i was like that's really cool i'm interested in that and it just kind of slowly stops getting talked about throughout this season so again not a bad season it's certainly par for the course of some of the things that this show does well and doesn't do very well but for me just a little bit too much soap opera number five for me is gonna be the first season the one that kicked it all off and this season is good but it just doesn't quite realize the greatness of this show yet you know this very much is setting the stage you're getting to know all the characters you're getting introduced into this world into this mob life and you're getting introduced to the tone and the approach of this show which is kind of mixing that mob life action slash drama with family drama family issues and all that stuff is good but here is just the introduction and they do well with it but they do so much better with it in other seasons i think that easily this season is the best season between tony and dr melfi i think that that whole relationship kind of it's like they didn't know what to do with it a lot of these seasons season three they actually put some meat into it and we'll talk about that but here is where it genuinely feels like it has a place in the themes of the show i think this is probably the best season for uncle junior because after this is where he starts going through a lot of issues eventually getting into where he's almost not really written out of the show but you almost forget about him until he shows up here that struggle that power struggle between uncle junior and tony was really interesting to the point where i was actually shocked that he stayed around for the rest of the show because it gets so heated at points in this season that i almost expected that that was going to be the main core storyline of season 1 was tony trying to take out uncle junior and like a lot of things in this show your expectations are subverted because uncle junior men's ways with tony eventually but that whole power struggle of them kind of you know having a dick measuring contest of who is going to run this family i really enjoyed on the flip side of that which seems to be something that i might be in the minority with i was kind of annoyed with tony's relationship with his mother olivia i believe uh not that her performance wasn't great because it was for what they wanted that character to be but she was just an annoying character for me i think it's purposeful and i think that's to add to that kind of tension and that turmoil between him and his mother and give a little bit of context as explored later on for why he has panic attacks why he has insecurity and all that which makes sense but just the on-screen dialogue between them it missed more than it hit for me personally beyond all that the only other thing i can hold against this season is that a lot of the side characters that you come to love like paulie like sill uh even [ __ ] to a certain degree you don't really get a lot of their characters in season one they're just kind of there you get a little bit but they don't really get to explore them until later seasons number four is going to be the final season season six and yes i'm talking about 6a and 6b here i don't understand how you could rank them separately they're very much one season so season six being the final season they do a really good job of exploring this whole story line and this thematic element about no escape about possible redemption and inevitable consequences the first half of the season is very much all of the different members of this family getting some kind of an avenue to get out of this getting some kind of a light at the end of the tunnel that part of them wants to run to but part of them is terrified of and a lot of that is is brought to more significantly with the character of vito which was kind of a mixed bag for me because i thought that his storyline and his struggle was very interesting and it was very gripping at times to where he was a closeted gay man he gets outed now he has to be on the run and go into hiding because the mob family didn't tolerate that and who knows if that storyline would have even made it into the tv series at this point in the in our society but back then was really gripping stuff and then him struggling and wanting to come back and how that all plays out that was all really interesting but it felt very weird in a final season to upgrade this c-level character of the show to almost like a co-lead for the first 10 episodes felt a little strange but i liked the way that they explored those themes of possible escape and then by the second half of the show all of that inevitable consequences to everything that they have done for the six seasons that we have seen i thought that they did a good job with exploring that a lot of the characters endings if you will felt appropriate for where the directions that they were going but in kind of part of the controversial nature of this final season a lot of characters don't necessarily have a a definitive end you know if they get shot it doesn't say whether or not they died or they survive it's just you know they're [ __ ] up if there's somebody that gets a hint that they're going to go this direction they don't say with any sense of finality that they're actually going to do it they just kind of tease that they might be going that direction you know characters like christopher even to where it's a definitive end for his character but to his story arc parts of it kind of feel like they're lingering and left unresolved so again kind of a mixed emotion there that's where you're going to get people debating whether or not this show is trolling you or it's absolutely brilliant and subverting your expectations and doing something different and that debate will go on on and on and on and on for as long as we have tvs to talk about the thing that dragged this season down a lot for me is two elements one of which is the worst element of this show by far for me is aj i think that he is my least favorite character of any tv series that i have ever watched and what's weird about that is that it's deliberate it's not like he's accidentally annoying like they i think every single season he walked into david chase's office and he said here's your script for this season all right i appreciate it man let me open it up all right be an annoying prick all right cool gotcha and that's all you get from this kid for five [ __ ] seasons he's just this whiny entitled annoying little bastard i've heard different uh rationalizations for that about you know the effects of the parents mob life and how they're not really there for them that's all good and fine i'm not saying that it's not realistic to an extent that he might be a little [ __ ] up but as enjoyment goes on tv i wanted this kid to get shot every single season and so he gets a big promotion as far as the story in season six to where he actually starts to get some story line and the first half of the season is he gets a girlfriend she dumps him and he's a whiny [ __ ] about it for episodes upon episodes and then the second half of the season he eventually becomes suicidal and he starts to become like really obsessed with the iraq war out of nowhere and wants to join the army and then changes his mind last minute and it's just again reinforcing how miserable this character is on screen and i don't understand why in the final season you would one attempt to give him anything of a storyline when you failed to do that for five seasons beyond him just being a prick and why you're going this direction like what are you trying to say beyond that the other element that i do not like that i do not like any time in the show when they do it and they do it for like two or three episodes straight in the beginning of season six every sopranos episode that has a dream sequence thank you [ __ ] you thank you i don't want that i'm sure some people can watch those episodes and get a lot metaphoric out of it and get a lot of you know visualizations and all these things and that's all great it bore the living [ __ ] out of me i do not like when they do dream sequences and they do quite a few of them at the beginning of the season talking very briefly very briefly on how i see the ending of this show one i get it if i had watched this show for what was it like seven eight years by the time they got to the final season because there was year breaks and [ __ ] i would be upset if that was the ending that i got and i probably would react stronger to it versus somebody that just watched it all in a month i think that it has a weird mix of being annoying and very uh obviously trolling your audience which is something that david chase has kind of become uh known for to a certain degree i mean just watch the many saints of newark he continues it there but at the same time if you go with certain interpretations which my choice is that tony got killed uh you know calling back to that conversation that he had with bobby twice in this season because they flashed back to it to really draw your attention to it about how you don't even hear the gunshot whenever you're taken out i think it's pretty obvious that's what they were going for and i think all the other crazy theories out there is you're really gonna have to reach to get those but we'll never have our answer so it's a mix of trolling and a mix of kind of uh a side of it i understand being very profound and different so i'm mixed on the ending but that's how i see it number three for me is gonna be season two now for one of the better seasons i'm not gonna have a whole lot to talk about here because i think a lot of what i said about season one carries over here both its strengths and its weaknesses but where season two is better than season one for me is that it's darker it's more focused it's a little bit more streamlined and the storylines that they decided to explore here and certain uh looming threats that are brought up in this season i think work better than season one so i do prefer this but like i was saying a little bit more streamlined between balancing that mob life and the mob drama and some of the action and violence with that family drama i thought that they had a better balance for me personally which is bringing the mob stuff a little bit more prevalent in the family [ __ ] that whole looming storyline about [ __ ] being a secret informant for the fbi was a really tense thing because you just get little details of it here and there and when you get to the scene where tony is looking through the cigar case and realizes that there's a little knockout box and that he has all of his informant stuff all his microphones and everything down there from that moment on you're like oh [ __ ] how's this going to go because he's tony's best friend he's not just one of his capos he's his closest ally and how's he going to deal with this is he going to go full mobster on him is he going to try to protect him is he going to talk to him and all of that was really uh gripping how that all came through by the end of the season i feel like i can't stand is that okay tony did i sit and i really like the introduction of richie where he's brought in and you know he's somebody that's been in jail now his brother's been taken out and alva power the powers have shifted since he's been in prison and he comes back and doesn't really deal well with that and he decides to go back and start getting all of his old debts and starts taking over uh you know certain areas of the neighborhood that was his and not really listening to anybody i thought that he was a good balance of being somebody that was entertaining to watch but also somebody that's obviously going to have to be dealt with at some point and how they chose to deal with that with him right before he's about to marry janus and they get into this argument about his son just the the hilarity the dark hilarity of the scene where he just flat out just punches her in the face and she's like okay yeah all right i'll be back and then he's just sitting there and out of care in the world and just gets [ __ ] gunned down by her which you're just like holy [ __ ] she actually did it that was hilarious i mean for them to build up all season like tony was gonna have to snap this guy's neck because he was just a loose cannon and janus is the one that does it that was one of the more uh awesome moments of that dark humor that the sopranos pretty much carried out throughout the whole series and even though at this point i still was not really a fan of christopher i liked the whole storyline with him and those two stupid guys that kind of became his confidants and his his henchmen as they were taking out hits and they were doing you know different heists and how that all just went horribly wrong because they were like barney fife level of stupid within the sopranos world that was pretty entertaining too coming up to number two we've got season three now this was the first season of the show that i actually genuinely started to enjoy it i was still kind of on the fence throughout the first two seasons because i wasn't quite sure what direction the show was heading if things were going to get more intense if they were going to get more soap opery and they kind of all went in all different directions after that but season three was where i started to see not only really standout characters but standout story lines and standout episodes and season three brings you the standout character of ralphie played by the great joe pintoliano now this guy was so sick and entertaining at the same time he's such a loose cannon and such a a moronic coke head that you never know what the hell he's going to do he's such an unpredictable presence in the show as soon as he comes in but what's even more unpredictable is how tony and the family are dealing with him because there's times where he does stuff where you're like anybody else would have been shot in the face right now for that and they kind of linger around a bit and you know those points where they actually kind of wear him down and get him to see the wrong of his ways and then they promote him to captain and then you're not quite sure if this is all just to make him feel comfortable before they grot him in the back of a car or something and the whole storyline where he eventually kills the the mother of his child and they have to dispose of the body like all of that was just really gripping stuff to where i legitimately did not know what was going to happen to this character like i was pretty sure it was gonna happen to richie the whole time and i was wrong about that so who the hell knew what surprises they had in store for me for ralphie and they had quite a few as far as standout episodes my favorite episode of the series was in this and that was the pine barrens episode where you got christopher and paulie that are chasing this russian through the woods and they end up getting lost and it's a whole survival episode about those two characters and i thought that was just a a really interesting episode for their character dynamic for one but also just again that dark humor of the sopranos so that was a standout christopher finally became likeable for me i mean he was still kind of a bit of a douche but he became more likable as he finally got made and he was finally starting to to get a little bit back and he wasn't having as many reasons to be a whiny [ __ ] about tony not giving him what he wants and tony doing this and that [ __ ] never gives me nothing i started to like him this season and they even gave dr melfi some story line there was some things going on with her son and you get a little bit more into her world and then there's the episode where she's assaulted in the staircase which is a really tense back and forth because you're curious if she's going to use her very obvious very easy ties with tony to take care of the person that did this and then just that that back and forth about is she isn't she just to land on the classic sopranos approach of leaving things unresolved and her just not telling tony and you're wondering for the next three seasons if this is ever gonna come up again and it doesn't for the first time i was actually invested in one of tony's affairs where he starts messing around with another one of dr melfi's patients i believe her name was gloria who seems very normal and then she just ends up being batshit crazy all of that was really cool that was tense about how it if and when that's gonna spill over into his marriage with carmella but where this season takes a little bit of a dip for me which again is kind of a common theme throughout the first three seasons is all of the stuff regarding tony's kids now meadow after this season kind of gets written out of the show to a certain degree and the few times that you do see her she's much more tolerable of a character at this point i hated her and aj equally i was like both of their kids suck completely characters and as people they both suck and there is a lot of focus on meadow this season there's a lot of focus on her romantic relationships to where she's dating a black guy from college and tony has a bit of an issue with that then the black dude ends up being a complete douche bag out of nowhere so then it kind of feels like well that was a waste just to have an argument about race and then you have her relationship with jackie jr which just feels ill-fated from the beginning and even though it's it's more acceptable to the family because she's literally keeping it within the italians and keeping it within the family you just know it's not going to end right so all the drama all the [ __ ] hormonal [ __ ] with her was okay but the less focus on these two kids the better and then of course aj this is where he starts to get into trouble in school and he's vandalizing [ __ ] and every time they have a conversation with him he's just like the most emotionless oblivious [ __ ] kid we're just like what what did i do what's going on i don't know and then of course for those of you smartyards that use the process of elimination my number one is season five and i don't know if that's controversial or not honestly i haven't done a whole lot of research maybe this is everybody's least favorite season who the [ __ ] knows we'll find out in the comment section look down there you'll see it right now season five for me was easily the best season of this show for me it was the most focused it was the most streamlined it had the best balance of all of the different story lines that were not only introduced but actually resolved in a satisfying way by the end of the season which is something that sopranos does not do very often and all of the introductions of different characters and different storylines and different struggles to me was really captivated in this season there was very little negative that i thought about this season you know you start with the whole exploration about uh criminals and mobsters reintegrating themselves into civilian life after they're out on parole they get out of prison for after like a decade or so and you have two very different paths that take that so you have one guy that comes back immediately starts getting back into mob life and goes back to prison immediately which seems to be where he wants to be that's now his normal and then you have tony b played by the great steve buscemi who is the best one season character this show ever had where he's brought in and he's very much trying to live a straight life he comes out he wants to get uh certified to be a massage therapist he wants to open up his own business he flat out refuses some of tony's business offers and wants to stay out of that life and then eventually the struggles of reality where things don't work out and things aren't as easy as a b and c start to push him back into that life and back into a very ill fate a very ill fate for that character and i thought all of that was done brilliantly first of all steve buscemi is just awesome he's a great actor i love seeing him and i loved his interaction with tony especially when they're like giving [ __ ] to christopher and you really do feel like these two characters grew up together because they kind of have that that ball busting camaraderie where they can just riff off of each other and finish each other's jokes and the whole drama involved with tony trying to figure out what to do by the end after tony b starts taking out people that he shouldn't be taken out now the new york city mob is once his head and they're going to hold the soprano family hostage for it and tony's got to make a business decision regarding family which he tries not to do and how he eventually decides to take care of it himself all of that just came to a really nice little crescendo in those last couple episodes and just in general that growing conflict between the new jersey mob and the new york city mob i really liked too because it started to introduce what the overall looming threat is going to be by the end of this show and i thought there was a nice balance to where you have some new york city characters that you automatically don't necessarily like because you're always on tony's side to a degree but they are entertaining to watch to where it doesn't feel like you're just wasting so much screen time with people that are eventually going to get shot and then you do kind of understand them to a degree it's not like they're just being dicks they do have legit reasons to be pissed off at tony to be pissed off at the new jersey mob and want a little bit of action to be taken now for all of my issues with season four regarding all of the dramatic focus and the so proper [ __ ] with tony and carmella this season having the resolution to all of that i also really enjoyed because you get all of the fallout from all the drama from season four but you also get those little nuggets of reconciliation by the end of it they're back together which is satisfying but at the same time feels ill-fated in itself because you know all the reasons that they've split up are legit and though they're back in their little honeymoon phase they're gonna slide right back into all of them by the time season six comes around all the stuff with christopher and adriana was really good in this season again christopher was still kind of mixed on him at this point because i started to like him in season three then started to hate him in season four and now he's kind of he's in recovery he's staying in recovery and he's being a little bit less of a whiny [ __ ] and then adriana that whole storyline with her being an fbi informant gets taken to its crescendo here and definitely the most emotional and dramatic death in this entire series so the way that they executed that with that quiet little car ride and everything is in uh her face and in her eyes everything is in dreidemario's performance to where she just slowly realizes what's about to happen and for all of the deaths that you like seeing in mob violence this is the one in this series that's stung and shockingly you get a storyline here involving meadow with this new boyfriend who kind of starts to get integrated into some of the mob business and has to go work to construction and seize veto on his double life and there's a little bit of tension with that the only season that they give some focus to what meadow was doing that i actually enjoyed because the comedy involved with this kid being so pissed your pants scared about what to do with this family while being in love with meadow was really entertaining so this season was great just by far like you can't watch just season five but if there was one season that i could recommend to anybody even if you're not really into the sopranos season five is the one so that's it guys that is my ranking of the soprano seasons let me know down below your thoughts like i said my perspective is definitely going to be different than yours especially if you're a die hard of this so let me know your reasons down below in a respectful way and we'll talk about it why is this season better than this season why do you agree why do you disagree let's talk about it check out my many saints of newark review if you have not as well and be sure to hit that subscribe button because although i know you love mob stuff that's why you're watching this if you love other things as well in the field of tv and movies and maybe video games there's a lot of other stuff in this channel that you're going to enjoy if you enjoyed this video enough that you want to support this channel on a financial level keep the lights on around here but also get exclusive content and exclusive perk for that support please check out my patreon page linked down below and i appreciate your consideration for that thank you guys for watching once again and remember opinions are like [ __ ] but that doesn't mean that you have to be [Music] you

Channel: Cody Leach

Views: 27,213

Keywords: Cody Leach, The Sopranos, The Sopranos Ranking, Ranking The Sopranos, Ranking The Sopranos Seasons, The Sopranos Seasons Ranked, The Sopranos Seasons Ranked Worst to Best, The Sopranos Seasons, Ranking Sopranos, Sopranos Ranking, Ranked Sopranos, Ranked The Sopranos, Sopranos, The Sopranos Ending Explained, The Sopranos Ending, The Sopranos Explained, The Sopranos Review, Sopranos Review, Sopranos Explained, The Many Saints of Newark, The Many Saints of Newark Review

Id: 67hJceHi3DQ

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021