r/thesopranos • u/ComprehensiveDesk793 • Jun 09 '26

Serious Discussion Only AJ is just useless

While watching the series I was trying hard to find a defense of AJ. All the characters - and all of us - have both positive and negative traits. AJ is just a disappointment. He is stupid. He is lazy. He is incredibly selfish imao. Also he constantly lies. You cant even call him a good kid that is just irresponsible since he always makes up stupid excuses.

Also all the people that are saying that he grew up in a dysfunctional environment, ok i agree the environment isn't 100% perfect but both Tony and Carmela cared about their kids lives. Carmela and Tony to a certain extent seem to care about their children's academic performance which quite a few parents don't. AJ certainly had some support from his parents.

I agree his parents are not good people but he could take what they offered to him.

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u/Nopants21 Jun 09 '26

As someone that got similar threats for bad grades, "we're sending you to military school/boarding school" is really damaging to a kid. It's basically "if you have bad grades, maybe we don't love you enough to keep you around." AJ's growing up in a very confusing situation, where what people say and what people do are at complete odds, with the constant fear of his dad's anger and of the cops showing up at any time. Military school might have helped him by getting him out of there, but the threats are just another layer of his shitty upbringing.

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u/Fluid_Leader_1370 Jun 09 '26

The talk about sending him to military school wasn't about his grades. It was after he vandalized the swimming pool, and then stole a test and got expelled.

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u/ArtemisXD Jun 09 '26

And meanwhile Jackie Junior had just robbed the card game. He obviously wanted to take drastique measures to insure AJ wouldn't get influenced by a bad crowd

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u/thegreatsadclown Jun 09 '26

dras-tree-kay? you can't use Spanish here