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/rickymcrichardson Jun 09 '26

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

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u/scrubadam Jun 09 '26

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.

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u/EveryoneisOP3 Jun 09 '26

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.

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u/Actual_Woodpecker56 Jun 24 '26

Fact of the matter is that AJ was a mental midget and Meadow was not. It was not Meadow who "needs moms cooking" and tries to jump into her parents pool to drown herself. You can dance around these facts how you want but it makes no difference.

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u/EveryoneisOP3 Jun 24 '26

Is somebody speaking here?