The 25 best episodes of The Sopranos, ranked
To mark the 25th anniversary of the singular HBO show, we're counting down its finest hours
TV Lists The Sopranos
“A wise guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office.” It’s a simple, funny, intriguing enough elevator pitch, and 25 years ago—on January 10, 1999, to be precise—the world got to see just what creator David Chase & Co. could do with it. But what’s striking, a quarter of a century later, is not just that this series ended up changing television. It’s also that, even after the many fantastic shows it influenced, nothing that has come since has managed to hit quite like The Sopranos. It’s steeped in the time it aired but incredibly relevant today. (You could dedicate a college course—and they probably exist—to the series’ examination of wealth disparity, xenophobia, racism, religion, death, family, feminism, art, global politics, urban decay, existentialism, and so on.) It’s genuinely shocking and envelope pushing and creative and meta. Its soundtrack rules. It’s very, very funny. And, of course, it’s anchored by two of the greatest performances of all time—on TV or otherwise—thanks James Gandolfini and Edie Falco. It’s …. a lot, and yet somehow seems to succeed by these weirdly specific metrics that only The Sopranos has. There is, indeed, no other show like it. And there won’t be. Which is all to say: Narrowing down this list to just 25 episodes was incredibly tough. So, please, be nice.
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One thing that stands out to me about The Sopranos is the way conflicts often don’t come to a head. We have certain expectations in a mob show, but on a show that is regularly violent, it’s surprising how often violence is not the inevitable outcome. The “clues” viewers are always on the lookout for don’t necessarily build to a climax. A whole season seemingly builds to a fight between Tony and John Sacrimoni, and then they . . . resolve their disagreement amicably, and then Sacrimoni is arrested and effectively removed as a threat. Mutual resentment builds between Christopher and Paulie, and then they . . . decide to drop it.One big advantage of this approach is that it actually mirrors real life. It also keeps viewers genuinely in the dark about what’s going to happen.
I’ve just run a re-watch of Sopranos and this is such a fantastic observation.If you’ll allow me to expand on your point, one of it’s best characteristics of this is that some of the best anti-climaxes in the show don’t feel like “playing with expectations” for “playing with expectations sake”. Many shows now try and often succeed in following a similar method but very rarely does it still manage to feel like a successful landing of the plot.Sopranos adeptly nailed that feeling of relief with a non-conflict resolution, rather than a moment of “is that it?!”I also find it so impressive how for a show very specifically designed for week-to-week consumption, how well it suits binge consumption. 3/4 hours of tv rolls so effortlessly by on binge viewing.
It’s brilliant, rich, rewarding…and yet I don’t want to watch too much of it at once, not to ration it out, but rather not to start feeling too close to the characters. The last time I watched 4 episodes at a stretch I came away still in awe of the show’s brilliance but actually feeling a little bad—I’d immersed myself too deeply in the worlds of these characters and their toxicity and I needed a break.
Corey Stoll, who played Junior in “The Many Saints of Newark” (which I still haven’t seen), had good advice: he absolutely advocated re-watching it, it definitely holds up…but pace yourself.
That’s interesting and I’m not sure what it says about me that I found myself on this most recent run-through sometimes hitting 4 episodes on a watch and being impressed how much each episode still felt salient but that the narrative still flowed in extension. Not even the jokey-”I must be desensitized” way because I’ve never struggled to see the humanity and the amoral nature of it, I genuinely do find it interesting.I would definitely advocate that of either viewing method, pacing yourself is preferable, and Corey Stoll was one of the “legacy” character’s actors who you could tell genuinely understood the assignment along with Vera Farmiga, not falling into the trap of Billy Magnusson and John Magaro of getting lost under caricature but I just found it impressive having fallen into the trap of getting lost in it, how well it holds up… personally of course.I recommend TMSON by the way, it’s very much not an episode of the Sopranos but in many ways I find that works in its favour, with many commenters on release falling in the trap of saying things like “it’d be lower tier Sopranos for me” when it was meant to condense history into short form, rather than The Sopranos which does the literal opposite. For the most part, it’s not perfect but in isolation it is a great addition to the lore and some of the performances (possibly Ray Liotta’s last great film performance) are fantastic.
You didn’t see Cocaine Bear!?
Fair point well made, he’s a ton of fun in thatHis performance in this as the twin Senior Moltisantis was worthy of best supporting nods in my opinion though.
I really liked it too. So many people shit on it because Tony wasn’t the main character. It was a tangent. So what? Go with the tangent. If reactions hadn’t been so overblown, Chase would have kept making these – like one every two years or so. Corey Stoll, Vera Farmiga, and Jon Bernthal could have been a great core to continually return to. Gandolfini’s kid was fine.
Agree totally.What I will say is that in the aftermath of release I actually felt the choice to open with Michael Imperioli speaking as Chris from beyond the grave and providing exposition gave the wrong impression for what was to come and was a misstep. Chase can’t be blamed for the marketing which leaned heavily on younger Gandolfini but that decision to immediately tie it all to the series proper wasn’t needed imho.So much gold in there though, so it is a shame there likely won’t be a follow up.
I watched Many Saints after re-watching the entire series. I thought it was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I wanted to like it, but I got 90 minutes into it and was still waiting for the story to begin. It falls into the prequel trap of “remember this?” fan service in the worst way. If you watched it on its own, without knowing any of the characters, it’s the most aimless story. As soon as Johnny Boy shoots Livia in the beehive I turned it off.
Naturally you can see from my comments I disagree mostly, as I think it’s a genuinely meditative story that is held back by the “remember when?”* moments. Remove those and I think it’s a slow but ultimately rich part of the lore which is intended to be watched in tandem with the series as a sequel entity. With the call-back and easter eggs it falls into novelty and is on the weaker end of The Sopranos spectrum.*As Tony himself says, “’Remember when’ is the the lowest form of conversation
Maybe I’ll give it another watch someday, without any expectations and less distracted by the heavy-handed easter eggs. But it just felt like such a patchwork quilt of a movie with no focus.
I never really saw those two as major conflicts, so never had much expectation. Dead or in prison is everyone’s fate in “the family”, so Johnny Sack does come to an expected head, in a way. I happen to be re-watching the series and find the main conflicts are kind of repetitive. There’s always someone going off the reservation and messing up business – Uncle Junior/Livia > Richie Aprile > Ralph > Tony B > Phil Leotardo. That’s by design, these characters are horrible people and make no forward progress – Dr Melfi’s task is Sisyphian. Even Carmela lets Tony right back into her life in order to preserve her way of life, despite knowing the horrible costs. Her griping about the poor gardener being “such a mope” always stuck with me as one of the defining lines of the series.
D Girl is a terrible goddamn episode. I said my piece, AV Club!
Favreau is pretty cringe in that episode.
Alicia Witt is unbearable too, though that’s probably true to the character she plays
I’m always bothered by the scene where Christopher whispers to some dude to scare him off. Seems like a moment from a lesser show. Like what the hell did he say to the guy to get that reaction? “I’m a low level mafia member!”
I just assumed that it was a direct threat convincingly articulated.
I always assumed it had to be something like “I’ll blow you if you meet me in the parking lot.” I dunno I don’t imagine a member of a large group of obnoxious drunk people responding that way from a threat from a single dude who may or may no claim to be in the mafia.
I think I would have preferred this list 15+ years ago, when I could still remember all the episodes. I do remember that College would be my #1, and Pine Barrens was great.
The discussion around the ending of the show was not “kind of dumb”. It is what happens when you have the ending of one of the best shows ever with everybody watching, and then at that ending half of the country is concerned that their cable just went out when the show was finishing up. The Sopranos is one of the best show ever, and I know a lot of people think the ending is brilliant. I think the ending is good, but there was absolutely a failure to communicate effectively with the auidience. Which is where all the discussion came from.
[spoilers for the 3 people who haven’t seen it yet]
It was a good ending poorly executed. The argument I’ve heard is that the black frame was Tony’s POV shot but he’s dead, he never heard it coming – nothing but black like they teased earlier in the season. But that means the assassin struck just at the same time as the cut. Had the final shot been Tony’s POV of Meadow entering the diner (perhaps even gasping at the sight of the gunman), it would be far more clear (but we probably wouldn’t still be debating it). Instead it’s the audience’s view of Tony that went to black which also just happens to mimic a technical failure. Then there’s the argument that nothing happened, we leave him in a state of anxiety that would always be present. Either way they had to know how it could be perceived, I kind of think they just wanted everyone talking about the show for the next 15 years.
“It was a good ending poorly executed.”This is what I meant, said better than I said it. Thank you.
Also, I always thought it was a hard sell on Tony getting shot in that scene because the families had both reconciled. So who is shooting Tony in front of his entire family? The last few episodes really leaned in hard to what a selfish narcissistic schmuck Tony is at heart so the ending to me just leaves us with The Sopranos as they are and will always be. We don’t necessarily need to see Tony’s fate in the same way we did Sil and Bobby.
You’re making excuses for dumb people. The vast majority of the complaints about the ending was not about thinking the cable went out.
Not now, but people who were watching live lost their minds that night.https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/cable-companies-were-given-warning-about-abrupt-ending-to-the-sopranos/article17997144/
I quite literally thought my cable went out. In the year leading up to that, I had a loose cable wire which would cause my TV to go black occasionally and I would have to get up and shake the wire to make the picture come back. So naturally when that screen went black at the very end, I was screaming like crazy, “I can’t believe this happened f****** now!”
My cable used to freeze up for a second and then get all pixelated and then go back to normal fairly often back then. Everyone in the room absolutely thought it was a technical error for about thirty seconds.
I’m not a dumb person, but I had no idea what happened in the end and thought I missed something. It very much seemed like a non-ending ending to me.I would say David Chase wasn’t too bright in believing that everyone was going to remember what seemed like a random aside from a previous episode.
The Sopranos Effect is still ruining endings to prestige dramas to this day. Showrunners since have been absolutely terrified of not tying up every possible loose end and completely abandon any sort of ambiguity so as to not piss off audiences like the Sopranos did. FWIW, the final scene is far and away my favorite single scene in TV history and can be unpacked endlessly. I mean, it’s not even particularly hard to decipher: the whole thing represents the impossibility of the family truly escaping the mob life, and that any joy they ever experience could be taken away in an instant. There’s a reason that “Don’t Stop Believin’” ends right before the “Believin’” part when the scene cuts to black. “Don’t stop.” Or rather, he CAN’T stop. Plus there are some other great details like Meadow struggling to find parking as a metaphor for her attempts to distance herself from her family (and ultimate failure to do so after many opportunities). I watched the full series for the first time in 2020 and I still think about that scene on at least a weekly basis.
I watch it all the way through every few years and it’s amazing how my focus changes as my age matches different characters, like originally Meadow was always right and now she seems like one of the most morally bankrupt characters on the show. The parents used to be hypocritical monsters but now that I’m older I see how you have to make compromises to get through life. There are plenty of other multigenerational shows and movies of course but they don’t hit home like this one.
6A and 6B of The Sopranos is the greatest run of episodes in television history.
This is something only a chick with a dick would say. Henry misses you, Chad. Why don’t you love us anymore?
Funny I didn’t see any Kevin Finnerty episodes…“Whitecaps” is probably Edie Falco’s best episode, but it descends into melodrama. “Long Term Parking” still tops it and is way too far down on the list.
This last having In Camelot makes it immediately invalid.
College was the first episode I saw. “This show is supposed to be good,” was what I was reading/hearing for a few weeks. I don’t think HBO prescreened any of it for critics, so everyone came to it at about the same time – 3 or 4 weeks in. If you see the wave cresting, I bet College was the first for lots of people. I certainly said, “Holy shit!” after I saw it. I started taping the show on VCR after that – and checking the schedule for the Wednesday night replay episode – if I screwed up my Sunday night VCR timed recording… or, if as sometimes happened, HBO didn’t start it at 8 on the dot. I think I first heard about the show in reviews on NPR, then articles started popping up in the NYT entertainment section, and Entertainment Weekly. Plus that opening song was an earworm.Wasn’t it like either season two or three, they played an episode up against the Oscars and totally fucked up the Oscars’ ratings for the night (?) The next year HBO kindly let the Oscars have Sunday night to itself.
“Whitecaps” was fine but I wouldn’t put it at number one. |Funhouse” has always been a favorite of mine, Gandolfini’s performance that whole season in regards to Pussy was just mesmerizing, and that episode put the cherry on top. Really all of the “dream” episodes worked just beautifully, probably because they go against the conventions of other TV shows’ “it was all a dream” storylines. On other shows when someone has a dream, it may be bizarre but it follows a constant coherent narrative as the characters go from point A to point B and so on, until the dreamer wakes up embracing the lesson they just learned. Tony’s dreams on the other hand more closely follow mine in that they’re all over the place and make little sense on the surface: an angry mob is chasing him, then suddenly he’s fucking Charmaine and her husband is watching, then he’s sitting on a horse in his living room. Still makes more sense than most of my dreams ever have.