Just tonight I watched the Valentine’s Day episode again, with Krusty’s special and Ralph Wiggum developing a crush on Lisa and the Presidents’ Day pageant at the end; the moment when Ralph’s heart breaks in two in freeze-frame on the VCR, the moment where Krusty chastises his younger self, the final shot of the kids on the swing with “Monster Mash” reprising—that’s great. It’s peak.
Alan Sepinwall: And then… there were three: Tony Soprano versus Homer Simpson versus the city of Baltimore.
We haven’t talked at all about The Wire yet. The argument for that as the greatest show in TV history is pretty easy. It’s got grandeur (five years of its fictionalized Baltimore feels just as densely populated as twenty-five-plus years of Springfield, and with far more complex and well-rounded characters), it’s got thematic ambition, it’s more tightly plotted than The Sopranos while still feeling as emotionally devastating, and though there are issues with that final season, they’re no worse than some of the aforementioned Sopranos bumps, let alone some of the weaker latter-day Simpsons years.
So tell me why we shouldn’t just call it a day and go with McNulty and company.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Because of “peak.” The Sopranos at its peak was greater than The Wire at its peak, and even if you accept that their peaks were equally great, though different, The Sopranos just had more of them—and they were often more surprising, more daring, more unusual. The frame was just bigger and there was more in the picture aesthetically.
David Simon’s show was, as he himself has joked in season 5, Dickensian—the way it showed all levels of society was tough but also compassionate and filled with details that only reporters, or reporters at heart, could provide. And the notion of stacking new narrative structures atop established ones was new, and challenging. By the time we got to the end we were looking at a layer cake, with the cops and drug dealers on the bottom and then all these levels of other institutions stacked on top of that.
But The Sopranos had a sense of the characters’ interiors—not just through Tony’s dreams but also in the way the show was photographed and edited. It was more modern, at times postmodern, even as it delivered traditional storytelling satisfactions; there was a sense in which it was contemplating our relationship to the show even as it was telling the story.
And, Alan, I’ve said this to you before, but if all things were equal, and you could look at The Wire and The Sopranos and say, “They are equally good in every area in which one could compare them,” I would have to give it to The Sopranos just for the ending. When I had to choose between The Sopranos and The Wire in the Vulture drama derby a few years ago, I went back and forth up until the last possible second. I even went with The Sopranos, then changed my mind and chose The Wire, but the thumbnail on the page still said the winner was The Sopranos, which was funny! But as I thought about that ending again, I began to wish I’d stuck with The Sopranos.
Alan Sepinwall: We’re going to get yelled at for a lot of things in this book, but I imagine picking The Sopranos as number one specifically because of the ending will be the thing we get yelled at about most. (And that’s leaving aside that neither of us is a “Tony dies” truther.)
I would counter that while we didn’t get to know the interior life of anyone on The Wire nearly as well as we got to know Tony’s, we got to know everyone else in Baltimore far better than all but a handful of other people in North Jersey. There were different designs for each show. I don’t think we should be so quick to dismiss the achievement of creating a fictional world where you could follow any individual character home and it would be fascinating. You just can’t say that about a large swath of Sopranos country. What The Wire may have lacked in aesthetic daring, I think it compensated in breadth and depth.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Fair enough.
Still, I do feel that The Wire represents the absolute best of things that have been done before—setting aside the not-at-all-trivial matter of that stacked structure, which was really something. Whereas The Sopranos always felt forward-looking, even as it built its story around a familiar core, that of the mob narrative à la The Godfather or Scorsese’s movies. The fascination with moral relativity, the juxtaposition of extreme violence and complex psychology with almost sitcom-like comedy—this was all new, or at least a new spin, and it was unsettling for many. The Sopranos pushed the entire medium forward in a way that I don’t think The Wire ever did, as much as I love it. And I don’t just mean the antihero aspects—which is what some inferior shows latched on to. The Sopranos kept innovating and surprising all the way up to its final seconds, confounding whatever you thought you knew about it.
And here again we get into the Cheers-versus-Simpsons conundrum: If I devalue a more aesthetically conservative kind of storytelling, am I giving too many bonus points for stuff that’s swaggering or being gimmicky?
Alan Sepinwall: And I adore The Sopranos and would have no regrets if it winds up as our winner, or simply ranked ahead of The Wire. I just want to be sure we aren’t overvaluing the swagger.
That stacked structure of The Wire is nothing to sneeze at. While David Simon likes to refer to The Wire as a novel for television, I really think it’s the apex of what TV as a medium allows in terms of serialization. Other shows had told long-form story arcs before (the first Sopranos season is magnificent in that regard) but never to this extent, with this many story elements set up and paid off not only within each season, but across five different seasons.
Just look at what they did with Bubbles, and how sixty-odd hours of television were all in service of making the audience weep at the simple, familiar image of a man jogging up the steps to enjoy a family dinner. That’s swagger, just of a different sort.
And having said all that, I still feel like we need to take a long, hard look at putting The Simpsons ahead of both.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Are you saying The Wire should be elevated over The Sopranos in this final five ranking?
If so, I think I need a little more convincing.
Let me give you a film example to explain where I’m coming from. If I had to choose which classic ’70s drama is altogether greater, The Godfather or All That Jazz, I would ultimately go with All That Jazz, because The Godfather represents the apotheosis of classical Hollywood studio narrative, a summation after which little of significance can be added, whereas All That Jazz to me does all of that, too, in its way, but it also brings in traditions of abstract or experimental cinema, the “trip” film, European auteur cinema like 8½ and Hiroshima Mon Amour, and at the same time it’s looking beyond the moment that it was in. That film was the future, and it still is. So I’m an All That Jazz man.
See what I mean? The Wire isn’t lacking for love here; at worst it could end up the fifth-greatest show in the history of American TV, but I still have to put Chase’s everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink comedy drama over Simon’s The Wire, a nineteenth-century novel set in twenty-first-century Baltimore.
Alan Sepinwall: Okay, I am tempted to hide the keys to your TV critic mobile after that All That Jazz/Godfather decision. And not just because I’d probably argue for The Godfather Part II.
But we’re obviously down to a very specific slice of personal preference now. And I would say that it’s not necessarily fair to dock The Wire, or The Godfather, for being a summation of the previous traditions of Western TV or cinema without also bringing in other influences. (And besides, there’s at least as much of the blues in The Wire as there is jazz in Tremé.) The Sopranos means an enormous amount to me as a critic, above and beyond our professional attachments to it as the two TV writers from Tony’s hometown paper.
But this is close.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Okay, then, let’s assume that The Wire and The Sopranos are tied, whatever place they end up in. We will have to break that tie at some point, but for now we have to concern ourselves only with certain positioning questions, namely, (1) Are The Sopranos and The Wire greater shows than Cheers and Breaking Bad? (2) Are The Wire and The Sop
ranos greater than The Simpsons?
Alan Sepinwall: (1) Yes. I think we’re pretty clear on that. (2) I am not at all sure that the two HBO dramas are better than The Simpsons, whether or not we are considering all the seasons as opposed to the first dozen or so.
Matt Zoller Seitz: To quote Pulp Fiction, that’s a bold statement.
Alan Sepinwall: It’s about as apples to oranges as you can get, but The Simpsons is just as brilliant and savage a commentary on modern America as The Sopranos and The Wire. It’s gone everywhere and done everything you could possibly want or expect a comedy to do (and then done many things beyond that), and it was at its peak for longer (in years and episodes) than the dramas.
Also, given how relatively quickly we were able to dismiss Cheers versus the struggle we’re having splitting the HBO baby, there’s a wider gulf between it and the next-best comedy than there is between whichever drama we pick and the next-best drama.
Why should it not be seriously considered here?
Matt Zoller Seitz: The only answer I can give to that is that while The Simpsons is a comedy, and a great one, The Wire and The Sopranos are simultaneously dramas and comedies. The Simpsons has heart, and sometimes “heart,” and it creates main characters who are believable as can be, considering the ludicrous situations they find themselves in, but this is not the same as saying that the show contains drama in the sense that The Sopranos and The Wire do. In fact, I think you could make a stronger case for Cheers as a sitcom that contains real drama, more so than The Simpsons. So to me, what we’re doing when we talk about elevating The Simpsons over The Wire or The Sopranos is making a statement that, in effect, The Simpsons comedy was so hilarious, so surprising, so innovative, so well-crafted, that its achievement outshines these other two shows, The Sopranos and The Wire, which contain both comedy and drama, and arguably do them both equally well. (And you could tack Cheers on there as well if you were so inclined, even though it’s a comedy that contains dramatic elements rather than the reverse.)
Alan Sepinwall: First, I think the argument can be made about the comedic achievement of The Simpsons. But I also think you are selling the character moments of The Simpsons, particularly in the early years, short. Lisa’s heartbreak in the episode with Dustin Hoffman as her substitute teacher is every bit as powerful as the funniest moment on The Wire or The Sopranos is hilarious.
Maybe it didn’t go there as often as those shows went to the comic well (or that Cheers, in its early years, went to dramatic moments), but there’s an awful lot of dramatic meat to the Simpson marriage, and to the relationships between each parent and child over those early years.
Matt Zoller Seitz: I don’t know if I can follow you there. That moment with Lisa is great, but it’s not as profoundly sorrowful or moving as countless other moments on The Wire or The Sopranos, where you feel like your heart has been ripped from your chest.
I know that probably sounds like I’m prizing drama over comedy, but I’m really not. I’m just trying to express this feeling that the drama on The Simpsons was mostly parenthetical to the comedy, whereas the comedy on The Wire and The Sopranos was not parenthetical to the drama; they were often equal in any given episode.
And that’s all in service of building a case for The Simpsons’ being great as a comedy, but those other shows’ being great as comedies but also great as dramas, which to me is a bit like being equally great at piano and cello, or basketball and swimming. It’s really, really hard, and if we’re going for “greatness” here, we have to consider that.
Alan Sepinwall: No, I think you’re missing my point. I’m saying that the most dramatic Simpsons moment is equivalent to the funniest Sopranos or Wire moment.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Okay, that’s a horse of a different color. Elaborate.
Alan Sepinwall: You were making the argument that The Sopranos and The Wire should be considered ahead of it because they were not only devastating and ambitious as drama but incredibly funny when they wanted to be comic. And my counter is that the Mr. Bergstrom moment is as effective as drama as, say, Omar getting the better of Maury Levy in court is as comedy.
And if you would agree to that, then we are considering whether the comic achievements of The Simpsons—and its distance from what we are calling the second-best comedy—are enough to elevate it over the dramatic achievements of either HBO drama.
Does that make sense?
Matt Zoller Seitz: I can’t quite accept that the most dramatic Simpsons moment is equivalent to the funniest Sopranos or Wire moment. If I were to just pick, off the top of my head and rather arbitrarily, the funniest moments from The Sopranos and The Wire—Paulie Walnuts explaining that he can do the time in purgatory standing on his head, and the McNulty and Bunk scene where they’re searching an apartment and every word of dialogue is “fuck”—then I would say those funny moments are greater, as comedy, than the Mr. Bergstrom moment is great as drama.
You could possibly convince me that The Simpsons is greater than those other shows on the basis of formal daring and comedic invention alone, Alan, but that’s a different tack than the one you were taking.
Alan Sepinwall: And I can do that. You just baited me with the suggestion that The Sopranos and The Wire should get extra credit for being funny. Which they are.
Matt Zoller Seitz: I wouldn’t say “extra credit,” just credit. I do think both those shows are among the greatest comedies TV has given us, and that if they contained no dramatic situations to speak of, they might still make this book.
Alan Sepinwall: But just imagine The Simpsons as a melancholy comedy in the vein of BoJack Horseman or Enlightened, and that wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny. I think Mr. Bergstrom, Bart crying over being stupid, and some of the dicier moments in the Homer-Marge marriage might also get it onto the list.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Okay, you’re swinging me around to your point of view. I can imagine that very easily.
Alan Sepinwall: Just look at the sweep of what The Simpsons was able to do, and the way a show that was originally a vaguely grounded animated family comedy was able to do things like “Marge vs. the Monorail” or “Deep Space Homer” or “Homer Badman” and have them all feel like part of the same universe. It shouldn’t be surprising how elastic the reality on an animated series can be, but it took the various people running this show over the years to truly understand that and exploit it to its fullest.
So you can’t only have Lisa reading Mr. Bergstrom’s note, but have her singing a Woody Guthrie–style protest song as the power plant goes on strike, and go to the future to see her be president, and have her meet the creator of Malibu Stacy. Or have Homer essentially turn into Stanley Kowalski one week and befriend God the next.
It’s a show that can be anything, and has been. If you want to talk both innovation and influence, it’s hard to top. And we’ve barely even scratched the surface of how damn funny it is.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Where are you going with this? Are you about to mount an argument for The Simpsons as greater than The Wire or The Sopranos? As the greatest American TV series of all time?
Alan Sepinwall: Yes. You can argue for any of these three for best exploiting everything it’s possible to do on television, but I think The Simpsons has ultimately done more things, and done them spectacularly well, even if you try to allow for its having a vastly longer life span than the other two.
Matt Zoller Seitz: Well, that last part is a stumbling block, admittedly, though maybe less so for me than for others. The Simpsons was great, I mean really great, for at best half of its run, probably a third if you want to be strict—though I’d argue that seasons 11 through 14 contained more gems than paste, but I’m probably a bit more forgiving there. But as you’ve said, if you think of this in terms of a hypothetical contest pitting one athlete against another from a different time period, you can forgive a player for staying in past his or her peak. When I was old enough to really appreciate Muhammad Ali, he was fighting people like Leon Spinks and Ken Norton, and it was
kind of pathetic, but that can’t take away from the fact that for the space of about ten years, he was the greatest fighter the sport had ever seen.
But if we agree on that, and I think we do, then you’ve still got the comedy-versus-drama issue in a very specific respect: The Wire and The Sopranos hit lower notes, deeper notes, and were just generally more harrowing and powerful at their darkest than The Simpsons ever was, or was ever inclined to be—although I think you could argue that the Frank Grimes episode was as disturbing in its way, for what it said about human nature, as the grimmest and most wrenchingly tragic episodes of The Wire or The Sopranos.
This is of course a big leap: to say that what The Simpsons was doing at its peak is different from, but equal to, what these other two great series achieved—much of which cannot be achieved in a format like that of The Simpsons.
Alan Sepinwall: Sure, but every comparison we are making here—even between two adult HBO dramas like The Wire and The Sopranos—is to some degree an impossible one. Are you arguing that drama is inherently better (or more important) than comedy, and thus the greatest drama of all time simply has to be ahead of the greatest comedy of all time? Do we really want to say that, for instance, Tony listening to the FBI tapes revealing that his mother plotted his murder is fundamentally more valuable than Homer figuring out how to gain weight so he can go on disability?
Okay, when I write it out like that, I can see the argument for drama’s inherent superiority. But then I think of Homer wearing a muumuu and a fat guy hat, and I’m not so sure anymore.
Matt Zoller Seitz: I don’t think comedy is inherently inferior to drama, and our final list reflects that we’re both opposed to that way of thinking.
But I must admit that as we wrestle our way through the top three I am discovering that the conditioning is more powerful than I imagined.
There is something in me that rebels at placing The Simpsons above The Sopranos, and it’s because moments like, say, Dr. Melfi’s rape or the shot of Tony in the stable with Pie-O-My or cradling his son by the edge of the swimming pool keep popping into my head and saying, “Has The Simpsons ever affected you as profoundly as these images did?” Same thing with all the stuff with the kids in season 4 of The Wire, or Ziggy’s arc in season 2, or the second half of the series finale where you see an entire community coming full-circle, one set of people replacing another in roles that are doomed to replicate old patterns rather than reforming. That’s all stuff The Simpsons can’t equal.
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