The OP is a great question, but I think it’s also ultimately an unfair one. No TV show can accurately depict more than one segment of life out of a huge variety in a country as diverse and large as the United States. King of the Hill is a very realistic depiction … if you’re a white person from a medium-sized town in the South or Midwest. (This is me; my best friend from college IS Hank Hill, just 20 years younger.) The Wire is very realistic … if you’re a lower-middle-class (or lower) person from a big city. The Sopranos is realistic … if you’re from northeastern New Jersey. They all depict something true, but none of them can be said to be definitive, because the subject matter is too vast.
So, my answer to the OP is “All of the above,” and “None of the above.”
I only watched the first two seasons, but I remember thinking “The Wonder Years” was extremely realistic, with people doing dorky, awkward, hurtful, kind, generous things all as a matter of course.
I agree with Lizard. The fact that people are naming shows about the heartland doesn’t mean that’s a “more real” America than where I live. Closest to realistic around here would probably be the Gilmore Girls. (Not very close to real at all though.)
That’s the thing, though…the SOPRANOS? Really? I’ve never been to New Jersey, but I don’t get the impression from the media and just, well, talking to folks, that the average person can relate to being a mafia boss.
Roseanne, and King of the Hill to a slightly lesser extent, seem to portray more things that happen to more people, whether they live in the midwest or not. Bobby loses a girlfriend and gets depressed. Hank deals with putting his dad in a nursing home. Roseanne has a dick for a boss and tries to bargain with him but ends up walking out. Darlene gets her period, or has to have an emergency appendectomy. Becky farts in front of the student council, or waits until her parents leave and gets drunk with a friend for the first time. Dan meets up with a biker buddy from high school who hasn’t changed much, but Dan has.
There are midwest and small-town-specific things, and those are pretty well-done too. Dan beats up Jackie’s abusive boyfriend, rumors fly around town, and he’s buddy-buddy with the cops who come to take him in. Jackie doesn’t want to go to the local hospital because people will talk, so Roseanne drives her to the next town over. There’s a tornado warning and everyone hunkers down in the livingroom (who lives in the midwest and HASN’T had that happen to them?).
When I tune in to King of the Hill or Roseanne, I get the sense that “hey, I might be a little better off than these people, though maybe not by much, but I KNOW them. I recognize this.” When I watch The Sopranos or The West Wing…not so much.
Oh, I think this is one of the greatest strengths about the Sopranos – if we can put the mafia parts aside (ha, really, I do have a point) a lot of details about their daily lives intersect with mainstream American issues. Carmela’s anxiety about Meadow going to a prestigious college and then med school, Tony’s two minds about the franchises coming into the neighborhood - he doesn’t like the change but he likes the economics, Tony’s and then Paulie’s mother going into assisted living facilities and all the social drama there, Uncle Jun’s requiring more and more attention as he gets older and less mentally capable and the drama it causes – not the mafia drama, but the day to day stuff where the family gets frustrated when they make the effort to help out and still Junior is cranky and demanding.
It’s not a TV show but I think it’s one of the best examples of what the typical American family is like even though it’s near 30 years old:
Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr’s family in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Speilberg captured the working class American family perfectly I thought. Trashed house. Screaming kids. Haphazard wife. Nothing in that home was shiny and new. It felt very, very real.
Mafia parts aside, it does represent upper middle class life in New Jersey to an extent.
For living in Manhattan, I would try to find a show between Seinfeld, Friends and Sex and the City. Not everyone in Manhattan is a publicist or PR rep dating investment bankers or lawyers, however you rarely see the cast from Seinfeld or Friends doing what 90% of Manhattanites do - drinking.
*Sopranos. * Not “mob life” obviously, but my own filter sees (a lot of) America as a group of consumers who think they can “happy themselves” by seeing shrinks, taking meds, and buying more shit while rotting from within. Tony pines for simpler times while being the engine that is destroying that lifestyle.
And, The Wire. Not just Baltimore, but I think that urban life in general has an incredibly complex interplay between social class, politics, media, law enforcement, education. . .and nothing has ever come close to The Wire in terms of the intelligence of the discourse on those subjects.
I’m on board with The Sopranos. My own family seems like it could hardly be more unlike the Sopranos, but their *interactions * are amazingly realistic. I particulary remember when AJ got kicked out of school and had to start at a new one. Tony asked him how we was doing so far, and AJ said witheringly, “We’ve only *been * in school for three days. We haven’t *had * any tests. You’re only revealing your own ignorance by *asking * that question.” (Well, it was pretty close to that, I didn’t look up the line.) And my mom and dad and I all looked at each other in amazement, then looked at my younger sister. (The family that watches violent mafia shows together stays together.) Because that was *exactly * the sort of thing that my sister would have said.
That’s just an example. You get the idea.
Other than that, I vote for The Simpsons. Which is completely unrealistic, but still manages to convey American culture with clarity.
I’ll vote for thr Drew Carey Show. The cast are all ordinary looking people who spend most of their time at work. The jobs are pretty typical; middle managment, janitor, delivery man, secretary etc. Their lifestyles seem reasonable for their income levels. Drew’s character is pretty everyman; a good natured, beer loving, fat guy who works in retail management.
The Sopranos is so boring to me, because it’s like going to my inlaws’ house in Jersey. While I love to hear my actual (by marriage) Cousin Frankie tell stories about the time he spent driving a cab in Vegas and hanging out with Sinatra, I don’t particularly want to watch a television show starring prettier versions of my five aunt-in-laws arguing over the gravy (and by gravy, of course, I mean the red stuff you put on pasta) for 8 hours while shouting at The Boys to take their squabbles outside.
I admit, I’ve only seen about 3 half episodes, so I’m not a Sopranos expert, but the sets (do you really need marble and leather in every room?), the costumes, the dialog…I’m pretty sure Aunt Theresa is a consultant for the show! It’s all spot on.
For my upbringing (Midwestern “Middle” Class - really Lower, but everyone thinks they’re in the middle, right?), *Roseanne *is it. Pitch perfect.
Fly Away Home (which shows America in a real “warts and all” mode) Northern Exposure (for a timeless smalltown) Homicide: Life on the Streets (which runs the gamut of social classes in a very unflinching way) The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which spotlighted a very optimistic, pivotal time of rapid change)
