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If you don’t care to read the background of how I got started on a Top 100 Sopranos Scenes Power Ranking, then just make sure you first visit my criteria for what constitutes a Top 100 scene. Through this criteria, and the 100 scenes that best showcase it, I hope you come to recognize The Sopranos’ brilliance exponentially more than you already do.

Still, I’ll provide a TLDR for how I got started on this project. The more I re-watched The Sopranos, I found myself connecting so many dots in my head as to the significance of each scene. I eventually found myself taking notes on my iPhone episode by episode; that’s how much the show’s layered ingenuity stood out to me. Eventually, I felt compelled to write in depth about the best scenes (honestly, probably 85% of scenes are worthy of a 500+ word analysis), resulting in this site.

The Sopranos is much, much more than the greatest show of all time. Whether or not it’s your favorite is up to you to decide, but it is, objectively speaking, the greatest. It is art that transcends subjectivity in this regard. Just read each of the top 100 scenes analyses and ask yourself “is there remotely this much to say about any other television show?”

My love for The Sopranos has nothing to do with taking place in New Jersey, or the fact that the Mafia consistently makes for a highly entertaining fictional premise, or that Bruce Springsteen’s right hand man is also Tony’s right hand man. The Sopranos is the greatest work of art ever put to screen…period. Calling it a masterpiece would be putting it lightly. And, should you read these 100, in-depth analyses that detail what makes this show so rich, I hope you will come to understand this isn’t an overstatement.

I never watched The Sopranos until I was 21. I liked it the first time, but certainly wasn’t as into it the way I am now (firstly, because this show can never be properly appreciated with just one watch and secondly, I was distracting myself by multitasking on my phone like a standard Gen Z baffoon). I re-watched it during covid, and there I began to register the wonders of David Chase’s masterpiece (the key to this should be obvious: when watching a complex show or movie, stay as far away from your smart phone as possible. The Sopranos’ triumph will never, ever be registered if your viewership is poisoned by multitasking).

I kept re-watching the show, and the more I watched, the more and more I uncovered the show’s ingenuity. I came to understand the characters and their intentions, stressors, internal crises, and how they navigate denial and rationalization. I came to understand the writers and their intentions with genius foreshadows and callbacks to support meticulous plot and character development. Eventually, I felt no option but to take notes on my iPhone notes app, where I’d document observations, draw connections between episodes that highlighted the show’s jaw dropping interconnectivity, and make declarations like “this is one of the best scenes in the show.” During this time, Ron Bernard’s Sopranos Autopsy was taking off, a site with a very in depth analysis on all 86 episodes. This, combined with my propensity for power ranking, inspired me to make the power ranking of all power rankings: My Top 100 Sopranos scenes, accompanied by in-depth write ups for each of the 100. This has been a 4 year work in progress (I have sadly fallen victim to George RR Martin-itis), and it has been a blast. Each time I sit down to write, I learn more about the scene, the show, and the human condition, with my fascination always growing. I constantly make connections from the dialogue in question to other episodes, and the wider meaning of the show. And, let’s be clear, the power ranking is minimally arbitrary…I do think the 91st scene is better than the 92nd scene, and the 41st scene is significantly better than the 68th scene. I spent ample time feeling out the rankings and where each scene belongs among the pantheon of top Sopranos scenes. This, of course, begs the question of my criteria for a top scene.

e-mail:

nickdianasopranostop100scenes@gmail.com