AJ was a massively hateable kid. Meadow was spoiled and delusional about her Mafia roots, too, but at least she was intelligent and committed to getting educated and succeeding on her own.
Meanwhile AJ was always "dreaming of greatness." With his entry level job at a pizza parlor, AJ would soon own several stores, he told his pretty near-fiancé Blanca(who figured out pretty fast, this was a kid not a man, she was dating.) He assumed he get into Officer's Training School, learn Arabic, be a war hero and get a postwar job "flying helicopters for Trump."
Aside from his delusional side, AJ was a punk -- a tough Mafia boss's son who could only stand by and egg on other, tougher teen boys when THEY beat up their victims.
Aside from his punk side, AJ was a crybaby. How often in the final episodes he reverted to a mewling crybaby was simply disgusting to watch. For Tony Soprano, AJ was really "God's revenge on a tough guy."
Aside from his crybaby side, AJ was an antisocial poseur, who would always berate his parents for their stupidity in matters of world politics and environmentalism -- an interesting critique of people who strike that pose.
Since I've always believed that Tony WAS killed in that restaurant(you don't stage a dramatic scene about "nothing happens"), I figure that AJ eventually got what was coming to him. With the strong Tony gone from his life, AJ would become the Mama's Boy prisoner of Carmela as her world collapsed around her and money disappeared. Meadow could break loose and push on with her career. But there would be no hope for AJ.
PS. Interesting sidenote: AJ sure got the gorgeous girlfriends, usually rich, sometimes with mental problems, always interested in "slumming with a gangster's son."
PPS.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
PPS. You've got to hand it to Robert Iler: no actor or actress in the entire Sopranos run CHANGED so much physically from season to season. Starting the series as a very obese little boy, Iler slimmed down to skeletal and developed a handsome, haunted face that looked much like he could be the son of Tony and Carmela. In addition to getting skinny over the course of the series, Iler kept changing his haircut and facial hair and thus his "outward personality." Near the end, he went from a wispy , girlish longhair period to a short cut with beard almost-a-tough-guy look.
Good work from Iler. You wouldn't have hated AJ so much if Iler had not have been so good.
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TexasJack (12515)
6 years ago
Great breakdown of AJ’s many faults. I agree that Robert Iler did really good work there.
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AngularTurnip (3333)
6 years ago
At least no one here is defending Jamie Lynn Sigler's god-awful work. Why Chase didn't write her out of the show, and spare us her amateurishness, is beyond me.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
At least no one here is defending Jamie Lynn Sigler's god-awful work. Why Chase didn't write her out of the show, and spare us her amateurish work, is beyond me.
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Well, Chase seems to have had a certain amount of loyalty to the entire cast over the run of the series. For instance, he kept most of the main characters alive(and thus working) until the last few episodes of the series.
I gather you don't care too much for the acting of either those playing Meadow or AJ. I'm rather drawn to Robert Iler's work as AJ because he just changed so damn much physically over the series' run, and AJ was rather specifically written to be a pathetic yet enraging character -- Tony's only male son, and doomed not to live up to any of Tony's macho toughness OR brainy military strategy-making. AJ was the kind of kid who simply loses, being born into the Mafia. I feel that Iler captured this pretty darn well.
However: it doesn't look like Iler managed to get many roles after The Sopranos. I assume he has retired from acting.
To the original question way "up-thread," I must admit that I didn't much ever enjoy "detours to Meadow and AJ" from the main Mafia negotiations and hits. But the series felt the need to explore the extent to which a ranking mob boss could even try to integrate a sense of "regular family life" into his operations, and once that storyline began, they never could really drop it, either for Meadow or AJ. They had to have their scenes. They were also windows into Tony(his not-bad aptitude at fathering, his love of Meadow, and lack of physical assaults on AJ, most of the time) and Carmella(raising two major brats, she simply coddled and coddled and coddled them, in alignment with her own delusions about the man who was supporting her family.)
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