“It’s better than Ozymandias”: James Gandolfini Fans Know Why the Highest-Rated Episode of The Sopranos Absolutely Destroys Breaking Bad


The world of Breaking Bad has never disappointed the fans when it comes to delivering peak television via epic storylines. Gripping, intense, tragic, jarring, and sensational, the series has remained at the apex of television entertainment ever since Netflix adopted it into its streaming model. But The Sopranos left an impression on fans long before Bryan Cranston ever stepped into the ring.

The Sopranos – Drea de Matteo and Michael Imperioli.
The Sopranos – Drea de Matteo and Michael Imperioli [Credit: HBO]

Now, fans find themselves divided between the two giants – The Sopranos and Breaking Bad – in terms of their respective highest-rated episodes – Long Term Parking and Ozymandias. Both these storylines feature a major shocking turning point, forever altering the direction in which the shows were headed.

Breaking Bad Goes Up Against The Sopranos

For the fans of Vince Gilligan’s AMC crime drama, Breaking Bad, nothing encapsulates Heisenberg’s saga so well as the third to last episode of the series – Ozymandias. An epic gun battle in the desert precipitates the downfall of the protagonist, Walter White, whose end seems nearer with each passing minute.

In the episode, Bryan Cranston‘s character becomes increasingly manic and spirals into a grave of his own making. The final three episodes of Breaking Bad deliver an unmatched viewing experience for the audience. The unforgettable plotline of Ozymandias – which has a 10/10 rating on IMDb – stands out as one of the best in terms of emotional intensity, acting, dialogue, and cinematography.

The only television episode that comes close to challenging the unmatched perfectionism of Ozymandias is The Sopranos Season 5 episode, Long Term Parking, which ranks at 9.7/10 on IMDb. The narrative arc of this episode of the HBO series has rightfully been deemed one of the greatest arcs of all time, as The Sopranos stands proudly at the pinnacle of entertainment television.

Long Term Parking Beats Ozymandias By a Mile

The Sopranos features the most heartbreaking death of a character on television.
The Sopranos Season 5 episode Long Term Parking feat. Drea de Matteo [Credit: HBO]

The Sopranos community on Reddit has been in an uproar for years over the impact that Long Term Parking left on pop culture versus the sheer terror of Ozymandias, the highest-rated episode of all time on television. When put into context, the nerve-wracking intensity of Breaking Bad doesn’t come close to the chaotic, dysfunctional life of the New Jersey mob portrayed in Sopranos.

Perhaps that is the reason why Long Term Parking stands out as an episode of the HBO series. While James Gandolfini‘s Tony Soprano & Co. mostly mill about their daily lives sorting out their affairs, betrayals, and power struggles, Breaking Bad takes Mr. Chips and goes on an adventure that giddily turns him into a full-blown Scarface by the end of its five-season arc.

The difference in tone makes Long Term Parking so stark in comparison to Ozymandias. The latter storyline was always going to happen sooner or later to Walter White, given his moral decline in the series. But the Sopranos were never made out to be singularly evil and their status as the mob was in name only… right up until Silvio took Ade on that car ride to the forest.

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The hype of Breaking Bad severely differs from one fan to the next as the AMC crime drama presents itself as one man’s struggle against an unjust world. In that, Ozymandias is the culmination of that struggle and the lengths that Walter White was willing to go to for survival and his family.

Long Term Parking offered no such cushion of morality or justified the moral bankruptcy of its lead character. The execution of Adriana at the hands of her own family was the only way out for the wife of a mobster who dared to dream of a different life for once. The cold and calculated end of her life is what makes Long Term Parking more chilling than Ozymandias in the long run.

Breaking Bad is streaming on Netflix.

The Sopranos is streaming on Max.

This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire

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