Wannabe

After watching a season on HBO, I have no interest in going back and revisiting individual episodes. However, I'd like to see each season edited into a tight 2 hour story which I could buy on DVD.

I love the Sopranos for what it is, but I think the overall stories could benefit from a quickened and tighter pace. I could care less about the extraneous character development for Dr. Melfi and other lesser characters. Anyone agree?

Red Dog

Let me guess - you were a big fan of Cliff's Notes in high school.

RandyM

You could wait for them to sell it for syndication. Once they take out all the violence, swearing and sex, 2 hours a season should be about right.

GuessWho

I'll bet he hates the extended LOTR too

Wannabe

True.

wendersfan

I don't think so, but I love the show as is enough that I'm probably biased.

Last week in a New York Times interview, David Chase said one of the things he loves to do with the show, and one thing in which it differs from most network TV, is how lots of the episodes have scenes that don't matter in terms of providing information or furthering the plot, they're just there because they are, if that makes sense. This is definitely one of the charms of the show, and one of the things that would be lost first with any significant 'tightening'.

Turd Ferguson

You could do that with a trite piece of shit like "Sex and the City", but the Sopranos is far too rich and well done to render it down from 13 hours to two.

mdc3000

13 hours down to 2... no ****ing way. It wouldn't be nearly the same thing... It would probably be as good as having a stick of dynamite shoved up your ass.... I'll take the full SOPRANOS any day of the week over an abridged version. Glad to see TV's best show back on the air.

MATT

RandyC

Dr. Melfi is not a lesser character but a pivotal part of tjhe series. There is no way you can boil a season down to a 2 hour movie and retain the complexity that makes up Sopranos.

Wannabe

Ya think?

Wannabe

How so? Her scenes with Bogdonavich only flesh out her character, they don't help to drive the story at all. Make no mistake, it's all about Tony.

saoirse

The last season sucked and was full of filler, so you'd be correct on that one, but the previous seasons? no way.

rfduncan

Really? How about when Tony encounters Dr. Kupferberg in the garage at Columbia in Episode 41 "The Weight". An interesting encounter that shows that everything is somehow connected when he mentions it to Melfi during her session.

I can't understand how you enjoy this show if you don't see something like that. Maybe you should just reread the plot synopses on hbo.com. This sentiment of NEEDING short-attention span theater is exactly why the reality-based crap programming is so big these days.

Walter Mitty

this may help you out

Rypro 525

there is no way, they could fit (calling out names) Ralphie's story in season 4 for instance, in only 2 hours. first they have the story, with him making fun of Johnny Sacks wife, then the entire thing with the horse, then, well, everything else.

kurupt

I've got to chime in and agree that this is horrible idea. Sure you could make it cohesive and tell a general story, but it would be wholly ineffective. All of the scenes, both of the plot driving variety and the character fleshing variety, add to the sum total of the artistic brilliance that is The Sopranos.

rfduncan

RandyC

That would give you 4 minutes per paragraph of storyline.

How can you storyboard that in 4 minutes to not seem totally insane? Just quick video bites of stuff happening for two hours?

Wannabe

Revised:

Okay, here's your two-hour movie for season one:

The pressures of work and family life give him anxiety attacks, so Tony Soprano starts seeing a psychiatrist and keeps it to himself.

Giacomo "Jackie" Aprile, acting boss of the family, is deathly ill with cancer - and Tony's about to get into a power struggle with Uncle Junior he doesn't even want.

Tony decides to resolve his issues with Junior. Over lobsters at the Bada Bing, he and the other capos decide that, with Jackie Aprile in a coma and not long for this world, Tony should take over as Boss. But they also agree that Junior should be allowed to think he's running things. After all, it makes the old loffa happy and gives the rest of them a lightning rod to take the hits from the FBI.

Junior Soprano finally became the new Boss of New Jersey and proceeded to drive everybody crazy. Not only did he refuse to honor any deals made during Jackie Aprile's reign, he also didn't let any of his newfound wealth trickle down to the guys below.

So Tony's fellow capos told him they're tired of his uncle "eating alone" and they wanted Tony to do something about it.

Junior decides to put a contract out on Tony.

Junior finally made his move, and when Tony stopped to buy some juice at a newsstand, two young would-be whackers went after him with guns blazing. When the smoke cleared, one of Junior's assassins was dead, and the other was tossed from Tony's Suburban like an empty soda can.

While Tony was in the hospital, the FBI tried to convince him and Carmela that the hit was a sign they should enter the Witness Protection Program. To Tony it wasn't a sign of anything, but it certainly convinced him that he didn't want to die. In fact, he felt a lot better than he had in weeks.

The same can't be said for Junior and Livia. Since the hit on Tony failed, they know he'll be looking for who's responsible.

The FBI brings Tony in to listen to a tape. They've bugged Livia's room at Green Grove; and they let Tony listen to his mother and uncle planning the hit on him. If that weren't bad enough, Tony now knows that Junior and Livia, and the FBI, know he's seeing a psychiatrist.

Then he tells the crew he's seeing a shrink.Their reaction? Silvio feels it's not a bad thing and Paulie admits he saw a shrink himself for a while. As for Christopher, he's not sure what he thinks. But Tony can't be concerned with that right now, he's got Livia and Junior to contend with.

Before Tony can get to him, Junior's arrested by federal agents who offer him immunity if he'll testify that he was never the boss -Tony was. And Livia? She's had a stroke - at least that what Tony's told as he show up at Green Grove. But Tony knows Livia better than anyone, and he can see her poor, stroke-stricken face smiling cruelly at him through her oxygen mask.

At the end of the day the only place Tony can find refuge is with Carmela, Meadow, and Anthony Junior at Artie Bucco's Nuovo Vesuvio Restaurant. As Tony raises a glass to his family a storm rages outside, literally and figuratively.

wendersfan

Wannabe, your movie is all plot, no character development. The reason we care about the show is because we care about the characters. All the main characters, and some of the minor ones, are incredibly nuanced. Without that, Tony and his crew would just be a bunch of thugs with thick accents.

bboisvert

No.

Dr. Melfi and her interactions w/Tony are -- ultimately -- the glue that holds the entire show together. It's the whole frigging point of the program, unless you just want an MTV-style, quick edited sequence of people getting whacked.

What you are proposing is, in my opinion, exactly what is wrong with most big-budget Hollywood films today. They cram the thing wall-to-wall with "money shots" but there is no character development and no reason to give two flying shits about what's going on in the screen.


Your "outline" above includes no emotion. No character.

The most memorable, touching thing for me in Season 1? The ducks. An "extraneous" detail like that (symbolic, nuanced, and layered) is what you seem to dislike about the show.

Jimmy James

At the risk of somebody suggesting I have ADD, I can see where Wannabe is coming from. It sounds like he is looking for a video version of an episode guide that he could use to refresh him on important plot points. The Cliffs Notes comparison is an apt one. I use TV Tome for this when I watch an old show for the first time and want to see where it goes (I am not spoiler averse), and I also use it when I want to review the key plot points before going into a new season when it has been a while since I last saw the show.

I could see a market for this, and I bet somebody will try this out sooner or later. Time will tell...

Wannabe

The plot points I posted are just a slap-dashed attempt to show that with in each series, especially seasons 1 & 2, there is more or less a single arc than could exist as it's own film, like Goodfellas or The Godfather.