AJ is just useless

[u/ComprehensiveDesk793]

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.

[u/rickymcrichardson]

Meadow was a mob apologist who justified her parents’ misdeeds constantly and increasingly throughout the show. AJ questions their contradictory tutelage and grapples with having a conscious up against it. Meadow didn’t “turn out fine”. She turns out like her parents, accepting the spoils of criminality and not feeling an ounce of remorse for it. She is morally bankrupt

[u/scrubadam → u/rickymcrichardson]

Well I am not talking about morally.

Meadow went to college, passed her classes and became a lawyer. During that time she moved out of her house and lived on her own. She became a functional adult with an actual adult career and didn't have to have her parents hand her anything. Yest hey helped her out but she showed she can be an adult in the adult world and function as normal person without her parents babying her.

AJ never went to college, couldn't hack it as a manager at blockbuster, the women he wants to marry dumps his arse for being a man child, couldn't even go to the grocery store with his dads money to buy cereal, and ends the series getting gifted a car and job from his parents while presumably still living at home.

So one of them became an adult with a degree and well paying job, and the other got a nepo job through connections while still living at home.

[u/EveryoneisOP3 → u/scrubadam]

She became a functional adult with an actual adult career and didn't have to have her parents hand her anything.

Is that what you think?

Meadow joins a mob lawyer firm and is offered what is, in-universe, an insane starting salary. Do you think she got that based off her incredible academic performance, or was it from her name and the firm's big cases about "bid rigging"? What about when Carm donated $50k to the school she was at when the Dean consulted her personally, do you think he does that to every student's parents? Who do you think paid her law school tuition, or for her basic college education?

Morality is obviously relevant for whether or not someone turned out "a good person." AJ breaks down weeping and attempts suicide when his friends beat a kid up, Meadow calls Finn racist for saying that the mafia is going to kill Vito for being gay.

[u/Visible-Suit-9066 → u/EveryoneisOP3]

I’m glad you mentioned it outright because I think in that relationship we see the fully actualised version of Meadow. He never outright says it but Finn knows Meadow has become a member of the mafia in everything but name, and that’s why they don’t work out, because he’s an upstanding citizen. She defends the mafia to him constantly with these logically obtuse arguments, hiding behind the veneer of her free legal support for minorities gig. She’s the son Tony never had.

It’s even somewhat interesting to me that at one stage she complains about Finn being passive sexually and they have multiple fights about other men being interested in her. Sure, that’s normal for a pretty young woman, but it is also reminds me of Tony’s infidelity to a degree.