‘The Sopranos’ Hits Way Differently in 2025, and Not for the Reasons You Think

For six seasons between 1999 and 2007, The Sopranos continually upended audience expectations of what a “mob show” could be. Major events often unfolded at a slow, methodical pace, with random happenstances just as likely to claim the life of a character as intentional violence. Over the course of eight years, creator David Chase and his fellow writers dug into the creeping sense of malaise taking over America at the turn of the 21st Century, both before 9/11 and directly after.

These days, with the entire series readily available to anyone with a Max subscription, it’s all too easy to sit down and devour the whole thing in a matter of weeks rather than years. But as it turns out, binge-watching The Sopranos in such a rapid fashion may actually dull the impact of the series’ storytelling. Some shows from before the streaming era benefited from their years-long unfolding, and The Sopranos is one of them.

Some Older Shows are Good for Bingeing, and Some Aren’t

It might seem too obvious to say that The Sopranos wasn’t built for binge-watching, since basically the entirety of its run ended before such a thing was even possible. No shows had their entire seasons released at once in those days, and the storytelling was ge ared towards a one-episode-per-week model, with maybe a special two-part premiere or finale. Despite this, some pre-streaming shows actually benefit from being able to be watched in a more rapid fashion, particularly ones with more propulsive, mystery-driven narratives, where the years-long wait for answers could sometimes prove frustrating

. For one, Lost is a very fun show to binge, when reveals of the island’s many puzzles are just a click away. Lengthy mid-season breaks built anticipation, but also led to a sense of fatigue or a feeling that the showrunners were stringing the audience along.

Of course, The Sopranos’ storytelling aims are vastly different from Lost, and the slower pace of an episodic release suits it better than watching multiple episodes in one sitting. The Sopranos is, among many other things, about the passage of time and the creeping sense that the good times are coming to an end, that the world that’s coming next might not have a place in it for the characters. This subtext becomes text in the sixth season, as the old neighborhood haunts start being sold off to corporate entities and the Italian-American community begins to shift to other cultural demographics. This growing sense of doom was likely much more keenly felt by viewers who were able to watch the series unfold in real time.

Storytelling on The Sopranos often had a cyclical nature, with characters falling back into old patterns without good options to break out of them. In a binge experience, this sometimes has the unintended effect of making the series feel repetitive. Most seasons follow the general structure of a simmering feud between characters leading to a violent resolution, and the show’s deliberate pacing and gradual building of conflict inevitably feel accelerated when consuming the entire season in a few days.

‘The Sopranos’ Character Connections

Watching the series over a period of years also allows for a deeper connection to the characters, which is, of course, true of any show, but especially important in a series like The Sopranos. It’s still possible to develop a relationship with the characters in a binge format, but that relationship is inevitably going to be less deeply felt than one that develops over a longer period of time. The essentially static nature of the characters, who never really break out of their destructive patterns of behavior, becomes a bit frustrating when bingeing, as those patterns become all too obvious.

Chase never really wanted his audience to fully empathize with Tony and the gang, and wanted it to always be clear that these were men whose souls were rotten to the core

. This can lead to a sometimes unintentionally wearying experience when absorbing the series in a condensed timeframe. It likely wouldn’t have been as overt with a slower viewing, where audiences had more time to recalibrate their expectations in between trips to the series’ increasingly cynical world. The Sopranos is often a very difficult watch, where violence can erupt at any moment and no one is immune, but a binge can’t help but dull the impact and make the audience as numb to the violence as the characters.