Category: TV

The Sopranos Debuted 20 Years Ago Today

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This is one of the difficult things I’ve ever written. Not in the eulogy sense – I’m not getting choked up or lost in a trance of nostalgia. It’s just, how do you reflect on the debut of, in the opinion of many, the greatest television show of all time and one of the most impactful occurrences in pop culture history.

20 years ago today the first episode of “The Sopranos” aired. It starred little known actor James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, a physically imposing, violent, scheming, yet emotionally complicated and psychologically, crumbling gangster prince from New Jersey. We followed Tony through his exploits, criminal and (semi-)legal, and daily life, flanked by fellow non-A-listers (at the time) such as Edie Falco, of HBO’s most recent hit at that point “Oz” fame, as Tony’s wife Carmella; The E Street Band Guitarist Steven Van Zandt as Tony’s right-hand man Silvio Dante; and Dominic Chianese, formerly known as Johnny Ola in “The Godfather Pt II”, as Tony’s Uncle and, reluctantly for both sides, mentor Corrado “Junior” Soprano. It should be noted that this cast was largely filled out by Mafia medium veterans such as Tony Sirico (“Gotti”, “Love and Money”), Kathrine Narducci (“A Bronx Tale”), and a crew of actors from “Goodfellas” including Michael Imperioli, Lorraine Bracco, and Frank “Now get your fuckin’ shinebox” Vincent. To go off on a bit of a tangent because I missed this earlier, Sirico of course was also in “Goodfellas”. In the show, he played fan (and my) favorite,  Tony’s soldier, Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri.

Audiences became infatuated with Tony’s gangster life but also, and maybe even more so, his relationships. They were sometimes loving, but mostly violent and almost always manipulative. We came to know Tony’s view of the world and people around him in just pre- to post-9/11 Metro NY not just through observing his bull-in-a-china shop pirouette to power, but also through his sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi(Bracco). Indeed this was one of the most important plots of the show, for those both behind and in front of the fourth wall, if not the genesis for the story being told: How could someone who finds success and fortune via a complete apathy towards the vicious and Machiavellian also need to seek therapy for severe panic attacks and bouts of manic depression? Could it be that just like so many out there, Tony’s flaws and undoing was simply caused by a toxic relationship with his mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand)? To us, particularly at a time when mental health was not as much at the dead front of the public consciousness as it is now, this was as intriguing as it was perplexing. It was a most startling juxtaposition and one that could have only been brought to life by a brooding, smoldering James Gandolfini, who was so invested in his performance of a lifetime that he admitted to being troubled by his character’s frequent callousness and malicious indifference

I think in the end what truly drew us to the show, the plot, and the man himself, as well what not so ironically what brought the Tony to see Dr. Melfi, is how torn he was. Was he a doting albeit expectant father to his daughter and son (Jamie Lynn Sigler, Robert Iler)? Was he a larger-than-life leader to his crew, as well as sometimes mentor to his “nephew”, Christopher Moltisanti (Imperioli)? Did he see himself as a Tony Montana-esque force of nature who would be the king no matter who lost their head? Or, in the end, was he just sick of it all? Of the path he chose for himself and that his father chose before him. Of the monotony and tediousness in the packs of cigarettes and trunks of stereos that came with being a gangster. Of the killing of the aloof and just-post adolescent that sometimes came with the job description. Could he be all of that at once? Could any human being contain that much contradiction? For parts of nine years and over 6 (the sixth being a double) seasons, viewers asked themselves this. Audiences obsessed over this question as if they could put Tony at peace if they could answer it. They became so engrossed in the on goings of these North Jersey gangsters that for an hour at a time, we forgot we weren’t a part of it. Full disclosure: Sopranos came out as I finished elementary school. I saw an episode here and there but then truly binged and digested the show when I was 25. My own anecdote of immersion is that I would save this tantalizing, life-changing show for Sundays, where I would binge 6+ episodes at a time. And what would I order to accompany it? Pasta. My blood is 100% Celtic but for the majority of the day every Sunday for a financial quarter (I missed a day here and there), I was a Pisan in my own mind.

The legacy of the “The Sopranos” is, basically, the absence there of. After David Chase’s tidal wave came and then went in 2007, Mafia shows and movies were put on hold, scrapped altogether, or simply never even considered. The genre was all but a taboo. Why? Because how could you top it? One could argue that, over a decade after it went off the air, the mob genre in Hollywood still hasn’t regained traction in “The Sopranos” shadow. I mean, “The Departed”, easily the most successful gangster movie since, killed off the Italians straight off the bat. I suppose you could make an argument with “Boardwalk Empire”, but that was as much of a period piece and a tale of political corruption than it was about the mob, despite having Mafia characters. The success, popularity, and perfection of “The Sopranos” have simply been, too much for Hollywood to top, at least head on.

After the show went off the air, and even during its final days, there were rumors and whispers, maybe just glorified hopes, of a possible movie. There usually is with shows that become as omnipresent in the day’s pop culture as Sopranos was. Those dreams died with James Gandolfini, who passed away tragically and suddenly of a heart attack in 2013. He was 51 years old. With Gandolfini, who brought Tony Soprano to life as Chase could have only dreamed, went our hopes of ever finding out what happened to Tony after “Don’t Stop Believing” and the final scene ever simply and without warning cut to black. It just wasn’t meant to be. David Chase is, however, now working on a movie prequel called “The Many Saints of Newark”. This will follow the story of Tony’s father and idol, Johnny aka “Johnny Boy”, Soprano as well as Christopher’s father Dickie Moltisanti and a host of other names Tony bemoaned as being from the past hey-day of “this thing of theirs”.

As of yesterday, it was even confirmed a young Tony Soprano would make an appearance.

Don’t fuck this up kid. Salut.

-Joseph “Joey Ballgame” B.

Today is the Eight Year Anniversary of My Appearance on The Jerry Springer Show

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Facebook Memories are a glorious thing sometimes. Eight years ago today I legitimately skipped a final exam in college to go sit in the front row at The Jerry Springer Show.

That is not a punch line. It was either final exam* or an opportunity to see the legend that is Jerry.

I chose Jerry.

The Jerry Springer Show is filmed in Stamford, CT which is less than an hour from where Mattes, Papa Giorgio and I all went to college. So when a friend, without any sort of heads up, came out of the woodworks and said he had tickets to Jerry that day? There was no choice to be made. We were going.

The audience of Jerry Springer is a rare breed of humans that come together to watch  people just beat the hell out of each other before you even have lunch. I actually got to ask one of the questions that aired at the end of the show too, which still haunts me to this day that we don’t have recorded somewhere.

*Luckily, my professor found it hilarious and actually let me take the final at a later date because college is fake life.

The Top 5 Sitcom Christmas Episodes

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So I sat down on Christmas Eve yesterday and got sucked into about four hours of sitcom marathons. Few things are better at this time of year than binge watching all the random sitcom Christmas specials. It’s become a staple for any sitcom worth its weight. So lets break down some of the best Christmas specials from over the years.

 

The Office

S3EP10 – “A Benihana Christmas”

After photoshopping himself onto an old photo of Carol’s family over the ex husband’s head, Carol is creeped out and dumps Michael. Meanwhile the office is split in two as the party planning committee argues so Pam and Angela end up creating two separate office Christmas parties.

 

The Simpsons

S9EP10 – “Miracle on Evergreen Terrace”

The Simpsons love doing holiday specials and this Christmas episode is one of the funniest specials of all-time. Bart drinks a dozen glasses of water so he can wake up early on Christmas before everyone else. He does just that, heads down stairs to play with some new toys except he accidentally burns the Christmas tree down and all the presents underneath it. Naturally he lies about it and the entire town of Springfield takes sympathy on the Simpsons until Bart cracks. Hilarity ensues.

 

 

Seinfeld 

S9EP10 – “The Strike”

While technically not a “Christmas” episode, this is still one of the best Christmas specials as George’s father invents a new holiday all together: Festivus. Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, the Festivus Pole, which is displayed unadorned because tinsel is distracting. People literally buy aluminum poles and put them in their living room as an ironic protest of Christmas and I will laugh every time I see it.

 

Malcolm in the Middle

S3EP7 – “Christmas”

One of the more underrated sitcoms that never seems to get the credit it deserves. All the more relatable to people because of the absolutely chaotic family dynamics.

 

That 70s Show

S6EP7 – “Christmas”

If Billy Bob Thornton is the No. 1 disaster of a Santa Claus then Red Forman is without a doubt 1A. The older I get the more I personally identify with Eric’s curmudgeon of an old man. When a girl asks for a pony, Red tells her ponies die. He also tells another boy who asks for a slinky that he’ll be getting flash cards for a present: “Math. That’s what you’re getting for Christmas.”

What’s your favorite Christmas special? Tweet it at me @The300sBoston and we’ll get the ball rolling on this nostalgia trip.

Breaking Down Bovada’s Odds Of The Last King/Queen Standing On “Game Of Thrones”

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I figured for fans of The 300s who are into gambling, I’d break down for the two of you this list and see if we can decipher our safe plays at this point as well address any oddities.

-First and foremost, I’m surprised there aren’t a couple more Jora/Greyworm/bit character/warrior-types as long shots.

-Jamie Lannister at the bottom seems a bit odd, but if you think about it, when did he ever express a personal craving for power? It just doesn’t seem to be on his list of priorities, a list which currently consists of stabbing people and fucking his twin sister.

-Unless there’s some deep-GOT stuff regarding Bran I don’t know about, I’m perplexed he’s even on this list, let alone this high. I’ve heard the usual conspiracies regarding Westeros’ favorite paraplegic who possibly has used a bit too much ayahuasca, but none of them end with Bran himself being in a position of power, if you winkwink nudgenudge get my drift.

-Cersei being this low is either a sign of people trying to get way too #woke or that they just still don’t understand what a bad bitch she is. I don’t know which but she should be higher.

-How fuckin pissed would people if Gendry won this thing? That said, if you’ve seen my twitter avatar you know I’m #ChrisMilesForever so I am all for Joseph Dempsey’s character picking up the dub.

Onto some picks….

Arya Stark (+900)

This could be another “woke” pick but out of the contenders I guarantee you Arya is among the last few to die, if at all. She just won’t go away.

Tyrion Lannister (+1000)

This feels about right for Tyrion, who despite all his cunning and intelligence, two traits that aren’t without fragility as we saw last season, has consistently been exposed by brute force. Also, he has always just seemed doomed – at least to me. That said, a late run with an army behind him, possibly that of a fallen fellow contender, is not out of the realm (baboom) of possibility.

Sansa Stark (+1300)

Take my motherfucking money. In Sansa, we’ve seen the beginning to end of Cersei Lannister’s own road to sociopathy. She is going to be HARD to take down.

The Night King (+900)

Ya, he’s prolly gonna win.

 

Alfonso Ribeiro from Fresh Prince is Suing Fortnite for Stealing the Carlton Dance

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The Wrap – Alfonso Ribeiro is taking his fancy footwork to the courtroom. Ribeiro, who played Carlton Banks on the sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” has filed lawsuits against the companies behind the video games Fortnite Battle Royale and the NBA 2K games, accusing them of lifting the dance, often referred to as the Carlton Dance, that he popularized on the series.

In a lawsuit filed against Epic Games in federal court in California on Monday, Ribeiro contends, “Through its unauthorized use of Ribeiro’s highly popular signature dance (‘The Dance’ or ‘Dance’) in its smash-hit, violent video game, Fortnite Battle Royale (‘Fortnite’), Epic has unfairly profited from exploiting Ribeiro’s protected creative expression and likeness and celebrity without his consent or authorization.”

According to the suit, Ribeiro created the dance in 1991 and first performed it in the “Fresh Prince” episode “Will’s Christmas Show,” and that more than two decades later, the dance “remains distinctive, immediately recognizable, and inextricably linked to Ribeiro’s identity, celebrity, and likeness.”

I don’t know why this is just becoming an issue now because people have been doing the Carlton dance for over 20 years. We literally call it “the Carlton Dance.”

So I don’t know it just seems like the statute of limitations on this probably passed around the same time Will Smith dropped Armageddon. The Carlton Dance is common law now. Normally I would say Alfonso Ribeiro has a better chance of being cast as the next Batman than winning this lawsuit, but it seems like the nerds behind Fortnite skipped class the day they were teaching intellectual property law.

“The suit says that Epic infringed on Ribeiro’s dance by selling it as an in-game purchase in Fortnite under the name “Fresh,” which players can buy to customize their avatars for use in the game.”

Pretty easy to connect those dots. People forget that Ribeiro was a legitimate bonafide professional dancer:

He just happened to also star in one of the most successful sitcoms of all time on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. So maybe the fact that Will Smith is the biggest movie star in the world while Alfonso is sitting there without a penny to pinch is starting to grind his gears. Monetize that intellectual property, Carlton.

I used to watch a TON of Fresh Prince in college because it was legit on every night at 2 am so it was the go-to. Let us never forget one of the greatest moments in Fresh Prince history when Will got hustled by some pool sharks and Uncle Phil (may he rest in peace) had to break out his 8-ball skills to save the day.

Goddamn, I can’t do long division anymore yet my brain is just filled with movie quotes and pop culture references from 20 years ago.

PS – I have been going down the Fresh Prince IMDB rabbit hole all morning and I cannot believe the timing of this discovery. We just dropped our first blog in The 300s Cinematic Universe Rewind this morning on Iron Man and scrolling through IMDB and what do I find? On the 1990s Iron Man cartoon Uncle Phil voiced the one and only War Machine. Unreal. That will win you a round of trivia at the bar one day guaranteed.

Friday Morning Randomness

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Man do I miss wasting entire Saturdays watching 1990s SNL reruns on Comedy Central. A great way to recap a great decade. Each episode was a nice little time capsule.

Obviously Dana Carvey’s George H. W. Bush impression was legendary, but don’t sleep on Phil Hartman’s Bill Clinton. Darrell Hammond was great on SNL for many years, but I always felt Hartman was a little better at capturing the essence of “Slick Willie.”

Game of Thrones Officially Premieres in April, Now I Can Plan My Rewatch

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First off, every news outlet reporting that Game of Thrones has an “official release date” can kick rocks. Fake News like you read about. April is not a date, April is a month. HBO could have just told me Thrones is returning in Q1 and I’d have the same amount of information.

BUT it is exciting to know that Thrones won’t be getting pushed back to summer, which I was worried about since they’re essentially filming 6 movies. It also needed to premiere before May to be eligible for next years Emmys technically, so I’m sure that was a strong incentive.

Now its time to fire up the annual rewatch. This show has so many characters, storylines, and subtleties that you’re missing a ton if you’re relying on your memory from a single viewing. Hell, if you don’t read the books you’re out of the loop as HBO just punts on details that help clarify a lot of things. I’ve read 1.5 of the books and it’s helped immensely. But rewatching a show of this magnitude is DAUNTING.

7 seasons of Thrones is a goddamn commitment, but I’m ready to take this challenge head on. I’m just trying to avoid what happened last year. I did not allot for enough time to comfortably rewatch all 6 seasons before the premiere so I was watching like 2 episodes a night the week of the season premiere. You don’t know stress until you’re trying to cram like 3,600 minutes of Thrones into a month.

Now for anyone that wants to join me on this journey I did the math (accurately I think?) on just how long this will take. So with Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years coming up most of us will be shutting it down at work anyways, so heres what you’ll need to breeze through every single Game of Thrones episode ahead of the final season.

  • 7 seasons
  • 73 episodes
  • Avg 60 minutes each
  • 4,380 minutes total
  • 4.5 months
  • 138 days until April 1st

Since we don’t know the exact premiere date we’ll just use April 1st as a placeholder to be safe. This breakdown gives you 138 days to burn through 73 episodes, which if you wanted to start today you would need to watch one episode every 1.8 days in order to catch up in time. May it serve you well.

Poor Sean Bean, the Video Game Hitman 2 Now Even Lets You Kill Ned Stark

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Engadget – Movie producers have seemingly gone out of their way to kill Sean Bean in whatever role he plays, so it only makes sense that you could off him in a game, right? IO Interactive certainly thinks so — it has revealed that the first Elusive Target in Hitman 2 is none other than the perpetually ill-fated actor. Bean plays Mark Faba, an ex-MI5 agent who has become a freelance assassin. He’s nicknamed “The Undying” due to his knack for faking his own death, but you’re clearly there to put an end to that streak.

This guy gets axed in *spoiler alert* EVERYTHING. Now he’s even going to get gatted in video game form thanks to Hitman 2. Count me in.

Sean Bean’s got 131 acting credits to his name on IMDB and I would guess he dies in no less than half of those. I’ll also never forget Papa Giorgio just straight up ruining Game of Thrones for me, despite himself, never having watched an episode. Back in 2014 I’m finally diving into Season 1 of Thrones and burning through it when he walks in and says “Oh he’s still alive?” Well the next 5 episodes were just me waiting for the inevitable Sean Bean death scene.

PS – Hitman was an absolute BANGER back in the day on my PS2 in high school, but after about 5 minutes of sneaking around every mission turned into this:

The 300s Made Its Debut on National TV Today

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Sort of. My man @Jimmy2Lips repping The 300s snapback on live TV this morning making his fantasy picks on the Red Zone Channel.

Go give this man a follow on twitter dot com for his dynamite fantasy picks, but more so for his electric sense of style.

Oh yea and buy a hat from our brand new Etsy shop!

Amazon to Offer Fans More Options on Thursday Night Football Stream

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Most viewers who tune into tonight’s Thursday Night Football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the LA Rams will hear the familiar broadcast combo of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on FOX. Amazon Prime, which has streaming rights for TNF this season, will also offer the broadcast combo of Buck and Aikman. However, Amazon Prime will also offer three additional audio options for fans. Those options will include the Andrea Kremer and Hannah Storm broadcast, a Spanish-language broadcast and a United Kingdom broadcast.

This is a great move by Amazon. In addition to hiring the first all-female NFL broadcast duo, Amazon is offering fans more content and more options. It’s also part of a recent trend in sports broadcasting that deemphasizes the role of a typical play-by-play broadcaster.

In an interview with The New York Times, Storm said “if you had to, you would say that I was doing play-by-play and Andrea is doing analysis, but I don’t think that you should be thinking of this in typical terms of the way that a broadcast is done.” This concept should be familiar to Patriots fans, as the Patriots have gone a similar route for their preseason games recently. On television in 2017 and radio in 2018 Dan Roche was technically the play-by-play person, but the focus was more on the conversation about the team rather than the typical play-by-play. The concept has also been used by TNT for some of its NBA coverage on Players Only broadcasts which featured only former players and no traditional play-by-play person.

This style may not be for everyone, but it is fair to at least ask the question, “Why do we still broadcast games the way Vin Scully did them 70 years ago?” Scully may be the best of all time, but with the box score in my hand on my iPhone why do I need a traffic cop on the broadcast to tell me the score every 90 seconds?

I don’t know if Amazon’s announcement will result in a spike of Amazon Prime subscriptions before tonight’s game but, as someone who already subscribes to Amazon Prime, I will definitely check out the Kremer/Storm broadcast tonight. I will also be checking out the United Kingdom broadcast. I can’t wait to see how the Brits describe some bone-crushing hits.