Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
For whatever reason, I could not get into Mad Men. I tried twice, got through Season 3 on both attempts, and I just...lost interest.
I felt similar about Deadwood which many people have said to be in the same quality ballpark as The Sopranos. For Deadwood I watched seasons 1 and 2, and while I thought it was good, it also wasn't compelling enough for me to continue.
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are both outstanding, but don't have nearly the rewatchability of The Sopranos and The Wire. True Detective season 1 is also a considerable force, and I would rank it alongside with any individual season of The Sopranos.
Switching gears, have you read either of David Simon's books? Both Homicide and The Corner are two of the best nonfiction books I've ever read. I highly recommend both of them (in that order).
Mad Men hits its stride in Seasons 3 and 4. I implore you, try again.
Agree about David Simon's books. George Pelecanos (who has a bunch of writing credits from The Wire) has a whole D.C. quartet which really feel like The Wire set 1 hour south on I-95. Supreme Tier beach books.
David Simon is an interesting person to me in how he, unfortunately, followed the bad path of the mainstream / Hollywood adjacent Liberal. The Wire is amazing in large part because there are no clean answers. With maybe one or two exceptions, every character and every institution (the police, the schools, the labor unions, hell, the criminals) are shown to be complex systems wherein individual interest, political pressure, and system wide breakdowns conspire to make The Right Thing hard to do. I always loved that Simon's writing and direction did this when it's a lot easier for show runners to pick easy "good guy vs bad guy" narratives.
But, if you watch We Own This City, which is a "spiritual successor" to The Wire, it seems to have pretty clear cashed in for "Cops-R-Bad" tropes. Paired with some of Simon's personal comments on a variety of issues, you can tell where he lines up today.
Sad, but, all in the game though, right?
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