David Chase doesn't expect The Sopranos to stand the test of time

Vulture

In a profile by Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz -- who has chronicled The Sopranos since its launch, when he wrote for Tony Soprano's newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger -- Chase acknowledges the monumental nature of his achievement while constantly reminding us — and himself — that monuments crumble. “In the end,” says Chase, “nothing stands the test of time. Not art, not film, not music. TV seems to have a shorter shelf life than some other art forms. Of course The Sopranos will be forgotten, because eventually everything will be, including you and me.” Seitz adds: "Even as David has worked diligently behind the scenes to try to get different sorts of projects into the pipeline, it seems like he has made peace with the fact that The Sopranos was the big one, the first-line-in-the-obituary work, the Citizen Kane of TV, add your own superlatives here, and, inevitably, a hothouse of critical and scholarly analysis (including the book I co-wrote with Alan Sepinwall, The Sopranos Sessions) and a fandom as belligerent as anything surrounding Marvel, DC, or Star Wars....But any expectation that David would have industry carte blanche after the end of The Sopranos disappeared once the streaming revolution came, shifting the media spotlight away from anti-hero-driven stories set in some version of reality and recentering it on unscripted dramas, competition shows, and blockbuster documentary series; epics like Game of Thrones and The Crown, where the sheer hugeness of the production was part of the appeal; and shows that celebrated compassion and kindness, like Parks and Recreation, Schitt’s Creek, and Ted Lasso." As Chase puts it: “I read an article the other day about Ted Lasso. It basically went, ‘Thank you, Ted Lasso, for relieving us of all these scumbags!’ wanted to say, ‘I wasn’t the one making you watch those other shows, the ones with all the scumbags! You did that to yourself!’"