The 16 most HBO weddings in HBO history

Here's a toast to the many times the network has turned the happiest day in one's life into depressing, traumatic, bloody, unromantic, and always compelling TV

TV Features Wedding
The 16 most HBO weddings in HBO history
Photos: Succession (David Russsell/HBO),Girls (Screenshot/HBO) Search Party (Jon Pack/ HBO Max) Game of Thrones (Helen Sloan/ HBO), Sex and the City (Screenshot/ HBO) Graphic: The A.V. Club

HBO is known for a lot of things: great programming, relative creative freedom, nudity that arguably veers toward gratuitous. But a lesser-discussed facet of the network’s TV output is that its creators seem to love having weddings that are anywhere from totally depressing to completely disastrous. There are obvious narrative reasons to include a wedding (or two or three) in a TV show. The event is generally a pivotal moment in someone’s life, on par with a birth or a death. (We could do whole lists on HBO’s treatment of those events, too.) It’s also inherently dramatic, which is catnip for writers. So, since it’s officially wedding season, The A.V. Club has put together our favorite, let’s say, unideal nuptials from the network.

previous arrowJohnny Sack getting cuffed on The Sopranos (season 6, part 1; episode 5) next arrow
The Sopranos - Johnny Sack is arrested at his daughter Wedding

is no stranger to fucking up nuptials—[Paulie Walnuts voice] remember that wedding where the luxury cars were lifted? When they broke that kid’s skull?—but this one might be the most heart-wrenching. In “Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request,” an incarcerated Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola) is given a few hours outside prison to attend his daughter’s big day. And it’s glorious. Until it isn’t. As attendees crowd around to wave goodbye to the happy couple, the police arrive, noting that Johnny’s time is up and putting him in cuffs, humiliating him in front of his little girl. Johnny starts crying and is dragged away and then, in classic chaotic Sopranos fashion, his wife Ginny (Denise Borino-Quinn) passes out on the asphalt. Making matters worse, the takeaway from the whole ordeal was, for the mobster guests, that Johnny isn’t a real man and lost their respect, another in a long line of reminders that the men at the heart of this show are garbage. [Tim Lowery]

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