Deadwood v. The Sopranos

[Borodog]

Recently I discovered the HBO series Deadwood on HBO On Demand. Welcome to two years ago. In any event, I watched the first two seasons almost obsessively (ok, my wife would tell you there was nothing "almost" about it). I have come to the conclussion that this series is far superior to The Sopranos.

First let me be clear that I am not hating on The Sopranos (TS from here on); it's a good series and I look forward to the new episodes.

However, I don't think it's really in the same league as Deadwood (DW from here forward) in any way. The character development in DW is simply amazing, the best I have ever seen on screen. The Sweringen character is multi-layered, multi-dimensional, extremely complex. I love the way he has taken to talking to the Indian's severed head, his only friend.

Even the lower-profile players are deeply faceted, like E.B., Dan, etc. In fact, it is hard to say there are many true bit players; there are more major parts than bits, something that does not seem to be true of TS. Probably the "bittest" recurring parts would be characters like Wu and Tolliver's junkie faro dealer.

For completeness, my least favorite character is probably Bullock's partner. He is the flattest of the characters; so flat that after watching 24 episodes I can't recall his first name (I know his last name is Starr).

The dialogue in DW is just spectacular. It's practically Shakespearian in it's meter. After watching the "Trusting the Process" short on the making of the series, I'm amazed with the OCD fashion in which the dialogue is written. As is mentioned in that shot, the ideas are compressed down under tremendous pressure until a diamond of dialogue is produced, with hours being spend producing a couple of pages.

The fact that there is no script for this show is absolutely astounding. The plot grows in an organic fashion, and the episodes are shot scene by scene, with the actors and writers not knowing what is coming next, like life. While I am not impressed with all of the turns (the death of Bullock's son/nephew seemed formulaic and closed more doors on the potential future plot than it opened, and the marriage of the widow Garret to Elsworth seems to offer poor replacements to those aborted potentialities), the overall result is impressive. The Wolcott supblot was a particularly satisfying example of a story arc within the show.

It probably isn't fair to compare TS after 6 seasons to DW after only two. After all, many people claim that TS experienced a steep decline after the first two seasons in particular; myself included. I actually didn't watch the show for a couple of seasons because I found it very frustrating, a lot of tension with little resolution, unsatisfying denouments of subplots. Story arcs that failed to arc. The show failed to hold my attention. Last season and this one have been much improved, and I again look forward to the show, but it remains lackluster in comparison to DW.