5. CARNIVALE
During the Great Depression, an Oklahoma farm boy and a charismatic minister learn that they are key players in a proxy war being fought between Heaven and Hell.
CARNIVALE was a great show that was cancelled way too soon. The first season was a deliberate and sprawling show that was somehow able to be very slow but also very kinetic. Then the producers were influenced by HBO to pick up the pace of the show and somehow were able to make the show just as good if not better. This was not an easy show to just drop into at the midway point since it featured tons of character and all sorts of back story, it is definitely well worth checking out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvOyP7mNx5k
Favorite Episode: “The Day That Was the Day” (Season 1/Episode 12)
This was the final episode of Season 1 and it saw a lot of the threads from the season coming to a head not the least of which was Ben’s relationship with Management, Lodz’s fate, brother Justin finding out that the worst deed of his mentor Father Norman’s life was when Norman saved Justin’s life as a boy, and Sophie’s mom trying to kill her.
Crustula 
Those are my two favorite HBO shows too! I definitely need to see Rome still. That is one that I missed.
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Rome is great…I recommend it to everyone whenever I find out they haven’t seen it and the best part is that it is only two seasons so you can run through the whole awesome experience without having to take a huge chunk of time out of your life.
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Eastbound and Down is my #1-4 and #6.
Couldn’t agree more on The Sopranos. Everyone kept pointing to the Russian guy that escaped Paulie and Christopher in the Pine Barrens (home of the Jersey Devil!) as a dangling plot that was bound to come back and bite everyone in the ass, but nothing came of it. Instead, we got 2 or 3 seasons where the biggest stories were Johnny Sack’s fat wife and Ralphie killing a horse.
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Looking back on it there were so many unresolved dangling plot threads and just totally dropped potential storylines on the Sopranos. I think a lot of people look at the show with rose colored glasses and recall it as being much better than it actually was.
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