The Sopranos 5x04 Reaction

AJ is a bad kid, period. Its less to do with upbringing (Meadow turned out alright) and more to do with himself. Not sure what the medical term is, but I think he lacks emotional intelligence and empathy for others. Some form of narcissism. The older he gets the clearer its becoming to me.

You both act as if AJ is never responsible for any of his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault. Just because someone was raised poorly doesn’t mean we can excuse them for everything and chalk it up to simply, well he’s a kid and wasn’t raised properly so not his fault.” At some point you have to also take responsibility for your actions. There’s plenty of of people who had it worse than AJ and turned out not to be an asshole.

When Tony says to Carmela: - He loves you, it's just you're his mother, it's different. He views AJ relationship to Carmela as he saw his relationship to Livia. And also he father should be more of a joker who spoils kids that's why he buys all the stuff to Carmela. In this episode then Carmela has enough and don't want to play the villan any more.

Maybe it’s a cultural difference, but of all the “bad things” a 17 year old can get up to, smoking some weed and getting their eyebrows cut it’s pretty low on the list LOL. I’d much rather it be that than hard liquor or heavy drugs. At the end of the day the point it’s not how bad AJ fucked up, it is pretty standard teenage shit imo (apparently not for you and that’s fine, maybe your upbringing and culture were different). The point is how Tony and Carmella deal with AJ’s rebellious phase, and in that we see their character flaws: Tony decides to immediately deal with the problem with violence and agression, followed by letting AJ off the hook moments later but without any guidance in order for him to grow and learn from their mistakes, which further enables his path towards self-destruction. The carrot and the stick, same way he usually conducts business as a mob boss, especially towards Chrissy (basically his second male son). Carmella on the other hand also does what she usually does, avoid the problem and throw it somewhere else because she can’t bear with the guilt of being responsible for his son and feeling she failed as a mother, so she’d rather him become Tony’s problem so Carmella can look the other way. It’s the same way Carmella decides to completely ignore the fact that the lifestyle she loves so much is financed by murder and extortion because she can’t deal with the guilt, so she chooses to actively look the other way. Both their reactions to the problem at hand showcase perfectly how they are as humans. That said, AJ is not a kid anymore and he still needs to be held responsible for the things he does, you can't just put the all of the blame on his parents. Plenty of people had parents way worse than Tony and Carm and they were never that disrespectful.

A nice touch in this episode is that Tony commends Meadow for covering for AJ instead of ratting him out. Meadow keeps omerta.

AJ needs a male role model. Someone he can relate to, someone who'll help him understand his parents, and then himself, but pretty hard to find. Meadow would probably have good advice for him. He also needs some wins - get a good grade, get a job and hold it down, improve at footbal and be rewarded for it.

It always makes me laugh how Joey Peeps comes in drinking from a dainty little cup and saucer when they are whacking Lorraine. Trivia — Lorraine Calluzo was based on a real-life journalist who complained that there wasn't enough action and killing in season 4. That's why Johnny Sack complains "never enough body count for Lorraine!". Then she gets killed off, lol. Also it's funny that Lola didn't seem to realise that AJ's eyebrows were shaved until later, just like Tony.

yeah ol'Leo/Lev Tostoy: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" The only thing I really remember from Anna Karenina is Levin's mowing in the fields with those famers/labours being beautiful

Fun fact: This episode is written by Toni Kalem, AKA Angie Bonpensiero Another fun fact: Feech WAS intended to be a Richie Aprile-like old school mob antagonist for Tony this season, but he had trouble completing his scenes and remembering his lines. Consequently, he was written off. His scene in Junior's kitchen took over a year to film iirc. Just as Livia is based on his own mother, AJ and Tony are both also based on David Chase himself. AJ is basically Tony but small, and this season will explore that even further.

Excellent work on recognizing the literary reference in the episode title. That is indeed where it comes from.

Adults being treated as adults makes sense from a legal/societal standpoint: at a certain point it's necessary for society to function or else no one would step outside of their houses if there aren't adequate consequences for certain behaviors. But it doesn't seem to make as much sense from a moral/psychological standpoint for sympathy to evaporate just because they're an adult now. It's not like when people turn a certain biological age they suddenly get arcane wisdom beamed into their heads. They still have to be fortunate enough to go through the right life situations and grow the right way from them. Also AJ is a sentient being. There's always talk about how he absorbs some of the mean things that were said, but he's also well aware of how much Tony and Carmela insulates him from the mob business. Focusing on purely the negatives of his upbringing feels like a falling into simplistic one to one comparisons again.

I've made the same comment in several previous episodes, but I'll say it again here: AJ never had a chance. With the parents he had, and the culture he was raised in, and the time he was raised in...he never had a chance. I love the way Tony compared Feech to Richie Aprile. Both were older Made men who got out of prison and resented being subordinate to Tony, who they remember as a young kid. Both planned to stage a coup against Tony to take over. And both -- despite their delusions of grandeur -- turned out to be only minor obstacles who were taken out without even a large power struggle. Richie was killed by his fiance in a domestic dispute (after Tony had already given the order to have him killed), and Feech gets set up for a parole violation and gets shipped back to prison. Neither of them even get the dignity of being the Big Bad for the season finale. Tony used the term "a friend of mine" to describe the doctor whose wedding Feech robbed, and later he points out that he SPECIFICALLY used that term. The term "a friend of mine" means that somebody is not a Made man, but they nonetheless are Connected and should be given a base level of respect and courtesy. For Tony, as The Boss, to say that somebody is "a friend of mine" is a way of saying "he may not be in the Mafia, but this guy is off limits". The term "a friend of OURS" specifically means that the person is a Made guy. By the way, David Strathairn, who played AJ's guidance counselor, also played Klaes Ashford in "The Expanse".

Now you know why everyone hated AJ

I absolutely understand AJ's lost and rebellious teenage self and I completely am on the same page as you when you say that Carmela and Tony are a bit late to the party in trying to impose on the kid some hard morals, but I would be lying if I said I know a good solution for this issue. Maybe that's why I currently don't want any kids because truth be told idk how to raise and deal with a human life who's development is so heavily influenced by me. Idk how not to dislike my child if he acts like AJ does with Carmela. Patience can only work for so long before you snap and if you do obviously you're still the one to blame because you are the parent. I think that's why so many viewers dislike AJ. Obviously there's the immediate jerk reaction to his words and actions but also maybe finding similarities to your own embarrassing teenage self. It's such a conundrum because you want him to surpass his circumstances and fate but his character's point is also that he's literally just an average kid. He's not academically gifted like Meadow or has any special talents. He's an average boy which is completely fine overall but unfortunately he is a mob boss' son. Oh AJ

We learn here that Tony B has three kids in total. His eldest from before he went to prison is Kelly, the goth girl we saw a picture of in Tony B’s mother’s house. We can guess she is probably in her early twenties. She is estranged from her dad but still talks to her mum and the twins. As we learned in this episode, Tony A organised for his cousins sperm to be smuggled out of jail to get Nancy pregnant, and that’s where the two boys come from. An interesting theory some viewers have is that we see Kelly in the first episode of the season, where Tony is waiting for Melfi’s group therapy session to end, we see a goth girl speak to Melfi, talking about going on a trip. Tony gives a glance at the girl as she leaves but nothing more.

As deeply flawed as she is, it's impossibe for me to not feel bad for her in this episode. It's almost like the episode is purposely constructed to force you to feel bad for her. Everyone talks about Falco's performance in "Whitecaps," but god, the way she screams "Anthony" at the end sends chills to ny spine every time I watch it.

do you two still feel the same about AJ as you did in previous seasons?

This episode puts into perspective how AJ is really handling the divorce of his parents. Now in his defense he is going through that rebellious face.. we all got one. I bet some yall had done something even worse. Hell when I was a teenager I remember always wearing black all the god damn time lol

Carmela's face when Tony goes POPPERS AND WEIRD SEX always kills me

I was wondering if the girls would recognise Ashford from The Expanse.

i was just watching an episode of six feet under and there's these recurrent scenes of one of the characters appointments with a psychologist and it always makes me want to watch the sopranos... the thumbnail on the other hand. wow, wtf did that kid do? lol