This wasn’t a People’s Choice Award. This was no poll. This was more some editorial board at a somewhat pretentious magazine deciding for themselves what the best 100 TV shows of all time were. Rolling Stone took on the task and guess what.

They got it right.

“The Sopranos” was named the best television show ever made. Number one. Top of the heap. Beat out every TV show that ever came before it. In a cleverly written passage Rolling Stone gave their reason for making the David Chase masterpiece the dominant series.

“Chase’s unapologetically dark examination of turn-of-the-century America took a torch to every written and unwritten rule that TV storytelling had been governed by since the days of Gunsmoke. Simplicity and holding the audience’s hand were out, and narrative and moral complexity were in, all the way through a final edit that we still can’t stop—“

HBO Season Premiere Of "The Sopranos"
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One of many things so gripping about “The Sopranos” is they showed the human side of villains in a way that hadn’t been done before. From the very first episode showing ruthless crime boss Tony showing up for a psychotherapy appointment you knew this was unlike anything you’d ever seen.

A vulnerable villain? Impossible.

Except it wasn’t.

The Sopranos TV Still
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One of the many ways in which the show changed television forever was that it was confident enough to take long hiatuses between seasons and trusted the audience to follow them.

Think of how seasons are now dropped all at once on streaming services and you can binge them in one weekend. “The Sopranos” was a show of such quality it showed the industry fans would wait a year or more in between seasons for a solid product. It trusted its audience and respected its intelligence in a way no show had before.

Exploring The Life Of A Modern Day Mob Boss The Exclusive New Series The Sopranos Combin
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It trusted you to catch the little things. If you didn’t it was on you. It trusted you to see characters on more than one level, like an adult sees their parents and not like a little child sees their daddy and mommy as one-dimensional figures.

In the end, it trusted you to get what happened in its final scene, even if it took you fifteen years.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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