Of last week's episode, Eric at the Blatherist says:
What a great show Rome turned out to be (despite occasional lapses into shock-for-shock's-sake), not as good as my HBO benchmarks - Carnivale and the first season of The Wire, but at least as good as Deadwood and well better than overrated fare like The Sopranos.Like the Simpsons, the Sopranos was great in the beginning, but it got old very fast. I'll still watch it though, because I grew up in Soprano country - it's like going home again.
I wasn't even going to watch Rome when I heard it was yet another retelling of the old Ceasar story. The best work on that story was done centuries ago, why do we keep redoing it? I would rather learn more about later years in Rome - the downfall, the Christians, the Visigoths. But Vorenus, Pullo and the view of everyday, suburban/Roman life makes yet another rehash of et-tu Brutus worthwhile.
Like the Sopranos, most of the characters are tainted in many ways, but in Rome, the violence is consistent with the society that they live in. The Sopranos, not so much - if real-life mobsters whacked each other on such a regular basis, their businesses would be a mess; and when they off someone in view of the ever-busy Pulaski Skyway - are we supposed to believe that no one would see that?
Ignoring the fact that the actor who plays Pullo is totally hot, I think he is the most sympathetic of all the characters; there's a certain honesty about him that comes through, despite his current work as a hired killer. It's an honesty that's completely lacking in Ceasar and especially Marc Antony, who comes across as the bully/football jock that everyone hated in high school. The problem with this is, we should care about them because the plot has to turn around them. That is one advantage that the Sopranos has over Rome - Tony S. is like Pullo after too many servings of ziti - he's bad, but he's honest about it, and you do care what happens to him.