The Sopranos 5x6 | Watch Along

They really give a misleading impression of the Letters of Abelard and Heloise. It's mostly love letters between an elderly abbot and elderly abbess taking stock of their lives. It has almost nothing to with the atrocity that happened in their youth. Genuinely great literature. Pretty much all the literature referenced reference extramarital affairs, with the obvious exception of Lord of the Flies. It seems like they could have come up with a better explanation for Tony B's screwup other than randomly coming across a bag of drug money.

I 100% agree with you guys on AJ, but I still find him annoying xD like I get all that about his character and his upbringing, but I just find his scenes frustrating to watch and I never really enjoy AJ scenes or storylines. If I can make a very weird analogy, it reminds me of the Catelyn chapters in the A Song of Ice and Fire books xD like Catelyn is a fascinating character, very complex and grey, but her chapters are often just depressing and morose which makes them very tedious to read, imo. It's how I feel about AJ plot lines, it's like pulling teeth. I also feel like I get it at this point, you know? I get what they're trying to say with AJ and I feel like they haven't really been able to say anything new in these later seasons. I think they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with AJ because they want to keep it realistic and not suddenly have AJ just be a decent student who works hard and solve his problems out of nowhere, but they also can't really stop caring about him as a character because he's still a kid who lives at home and so he's obviously important to Carmela's and Tony's lives. They can't just sideline him like they did with Meadow after like season 3. But so we just kind of get these repetitive storylines every few episodes about how he's still a lazy, lying screw-up. As to the Carmela storyline, I wish they hadn't given Wegler that line about Carmela "using her pussy" as a "weapon". It made him into more of a sexist and a simple bad guy, easier to dismiss for Carmela and to not actually consider how he's onto something. It's also obviously a simplification, the way he says it is not really how it works for her, Carmela doesn't seem to do this intentionally, but it's like you guys said, she just views every relationship very transactionally. "How could asking someone you're with for help be using them, that's what people do" was very revealing. The relationship with Bob is an interesting beat in her story but like I said, I think it could have been even more powerful if it wasn't for David Chase's often cynical tendency to have no character ever just be actually decent.

These two have such a healthy, mature view of AJ as a character. It's refreshing to see after so many just write him off as an annoying kid.

Tony B. really got a the smallest taste easy money and instantly crashed out