I watched both and really liked Weeds at the beginning, but it took a really dark turn when the Mexican mobsters got involved.
Weeds just got stupid IMO. I liked it in the beginning, but I couldn’t watch past the 3rd-4th season.
I liked SFU when it was New On Cable. Then I lost HBO and never finished. Tried to get back into it, but it seemed really dated and un-subtle. Same with The Wire.
Ooh I have disagree with you about “The Wire”. I just re-watched it over the summer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some of the technology is a little dated, but the story lines and characters more than make up for it.
I also re-watched “The Sopranos” in the last year and it was also really good.
Coincidentally I’m listening to Podcasts on both shows where the hosts break down each episode:
- “Talking Soprano’s” with Christopher and Bobby Bachlia
- “Way Down the Hole” - It’s a “Ringer” podcast with a couple of their hosts
MtM
Huh, you know I was wondering why “The Wire” didn’t grab me that much when I watched it for the first time this year (I found it good, but not great and didn’t get the hype for the show). It could be that it was just too dated (and yeah, pretty unsubtle a lot of the time).
yeah, I’m not saying it was a bad show. It was very decent, and I get the hype for what it was at that time. It was a relatively complex and nonjudgmental look behind the scenes of the drug trade, street life, politics and policing, the press, labor unions. Wasn’t a lot of that out there before, at least not of that caliber.
The thing is… given that there’s a lot more awareness of those topics nowadays, I found myself very irritated by the endless expository “as you know, Bob” dialog. Yes, in the year 2020, I actually do have a lot of familiarity with the subject matter, please stop explaining street slang and burner phones to me. Takes me out of the story.
I pretty much agree with everything in this post. The acting was very good and there were a lot of good episodes. I watched it to the end, but I didn’t enjoy the last few seasons, and I’m probably one of the rare people who didn’t really like the finale, although I recognize its merits.
One thing about Six Feet Under; it helped me to appreciate the work done by morticians, particularly in the scenes in which Federico explained what he had to do to make the deceased presentable.
I just binged all five seasons of SFU (for the third time, I think) in the last five days, and it really held up. I liked the characters, like Billy and his mom, who were irritating AF but very well portrayed. I wouldn’t mind reinitiating this discussion if anyone is up for it (not so much on Weeds, tho–I watched one season of it and gave up. Blah.) The central conflict, seemed to me this time around, is between Brenda and Nate, who meet in an airport closet to have anonymous sex, and proceed for five years (and marriage to each other, and a kid) to have casual sex with strangers. Not sure how large a social issue this is, or was, or if I’m overstressing its importance in the series.
We watched it for the first time last year. Nate went from being my favorite character to least over the course of the series. There’s a problem when a character doesn’t show growth and it’s the same retread of the same conflicts over and over (I’m looking at you, Supernatural).
looks upthread two posts
I guess I already covered that.
This theme, of self-destructive sex with total strangers, permeates the show–not only do Brenda and Nate wreck their lives through promiscuity, but all the other major characters suffer from having incessant casual sex with horrible people: David and Keith, for example, seem to have the impulse control of rabbits in heat, and even Claire and Ruth persist in “falling in love” with idiots whom they barely know. Strange that I never thought about this as the show’s major concern, but this time it just jumped out at me.
I would recommend both with SFU being the better of the two. As others have said, Weeds went downhill over time, but I did watch the whole thing.
An interesting aside regarding Weeds. Vince Gilligan has said that if he had known about the existence of Weeds he wouldn’t have made Breaking Bad because it wouldn’t have been unique. Of course it turned out that there is no comparison between the two, with breaking bad being far superior and in no way a rehash of Weeds.