Especially when you go beyond the first two seasons, which were focused on Tony's mom trying to have him whacked

There's no ongoing narrative, like a soap opera. And yes, the show plays into the American obsession with mobsters, but it also subverts it as it goes along. It plays into America's fantasies with violence, sex, and power, but then goes a step further by subverting those obsessions, by not neatly paying off storylines or NOT making sure people we don't like get what's coming to them. If it went in that direction, it would have made it a soap opera, which is certainly is not.

To say that The Sopranos is a soap opera is to compare a character like Tony Soprano to J.R. Ewing. And anyone with a brain can see that they're not remotely in the same category of character. And just because it's "safer" for white audiences (which I also don't agree with) than The Wire doesn't make it a soap opera, either. I know we want to point fingers at white folks and get mad at them for not watching this story (at least at first), but cmon.

Soap operas do nothing more than play into American fantasies. Shows like The Sopranos go out of their way to subvert those fantasies, and that's the difference... The Wire announced itself as not being a soap opera (or soap opera-like) from jump.
________________________________________________________________________
Until next time, America.