AJ and me

(spoilers in this, up to episode 5)

Goddamn, The Sopranos is a good show. This final season especially. Relations between characters are so dense that they synergize perpendicular plot threads. Everything affects everything else, it’s intrinsic plot economy. Long-simmering tensions are boiling over. It's like a several hour long money shot. Not a lot of physical carnage as yet – the body count ranks low among the seasons – but emotionally, it's bruising.

It’s good that the writing isn’t trying to resolve everything. That can't, and shouldn't be attempted, because there's too much to work with. Storylines must be chosen with care. So they're keeping the pace of the show as it's always been, lingering on conversations, capturing moments and detail. My only complaint is that with so many characters and subplots, there's bound to be disappointment in having certain things left out of the final act (although it's too early to say with certainty that any aspect of the show has been abandoned). For example, Meadow was fleshed out to an almost ridiculous degree in the third season. I guess it was more than enough for the writers, because she's barely been touched in the seventh. She’s peripheral.

AJ, on the other hand, has been dealt with extensively. The results have been mind-blowing, for me. AJ changes the most out of the whole cast, season to season, in appearance and psychology. He's the most malleable, not so much by people – attempts to guide him produce unintended results if they produce anything – but by the absurd gestalt of events. He's an everyman character. His mediocrity is relentless. There's no hint or pretense that he's capable of greatness in any way. But the last two seasons have given him more suffering, and more soul. He’s the poster child for arrested development, of course, but who am I to talk? At least he made night manager at the pizzeria – he’s trying. Still clueless, but deserving of empathy, finally. A tragic figure, because of his life thus far, but more because of the implications you sense for his future.

Now that I'm thinking more genetically lately, it seems a pertinent question: How does he take after Tony? On the surface, he doesn’t. But then there’s Tony, crying in Dr. Melfi’s office, that he’s cursed his son with rotten genes. Panic attacks and depression. I like this angle. The personality flowers, or withers, idiosyncratically, but what is passed down is the broken psychodynamic machinery. Tony has said his son takes after Carmela's side – little people. He’s Carmela's son in spirit, but he's got that surly Tony attitude. He's soft and fragile, and a bit of an asshole. To my mind, he's the most real character in the show, and the one I most identify with, sad to say. He’s a believable consequence of a contemporary young man, or an old adolescent, living under the roof of the hard rich (as opposed to the soft rich, the ones that aren't in a mafia), subject to the trappings and temptations of contemporary mob life.

He works construction, goes clubbing in NY, does frat parties, tries to socialize like a normal kid. But because of his connections, the adolescent machismo and hedonism are inextricably tied to his status as Tony Soprano Jr. The already fucked up world of boozing, partying, youth culture is made even more perverse by mixing with the contemporary drug-dealing manifestation of a centuries-old Sicilian criminal cult. AJ has no clue how to use his connections, except to tentatively exploit the baseless, hollow “respect” he has with his malignly ignorant friends. He throws around words he barely understands, like “omertà”, to make conversation with girls at E-fueled afterparties. The “respect” he gets sort of disgusts him, but he's human, and mediocre, and can be tempted. But that way lies madness, and death. Tony Sr. isn’t dumb – he knows AJ would never make it in his world. And yet, in the most recent episode, he unknowingly thrusts his son into the path of destruction.

AJ is moping, heartbroken after being dumped by his Puerto-Rican fiancé, his first love. He doesn’t know quite why – maybe it’s because his family is rich and her family is poor, he thinks. Is this shorthand for his parents’ not-so-subtle racist attitudes, or does he even comprehend that? His parents worry he’s suicidal. He’s been a spoiled brat for quite a while, but now you start to feel for him, or at least I do. A lesser series would milk this sympathy for all it’s worth, by painting him in primary colors: Of course he’s suicidal! But a scene in a shrink office reveals that he’s probably not. His answers to the doctor’s questions are the same ones I would give. He doesn’t think he’s suicidal, but he’s not sure. He doesn’t get the grand operatic treatment. Just the shitty, grinding everyman sadness. He’ll live on, in some pathetic way.

After being callous about AJ’s loss, Tony finally comes close to cheering the kid up with a pep talk: “C’mon, you’re a smart handsome man, and let’s be honest, white, that’s a plus nowadays – go out and get a blowjob.” The racist, sexist rascal, but it made me smile. Sometimes you can’t help loving the bastard. Carmela bursts in just as the boy seems ready to come around, and sends him back into misery with joyless badgering – she doesn’t want him hanging out at a strip club VIP lounge, that’s no solution. Short term, her harangue is disastrous, and sets back AJ’s recovery. But maybe she sees the bleak big picture where Tony doesn’t. Because although he’s right, that getting AJ into the scene of flesh and fun is the way back to happiness – and college – it’s also the way back to a place where the lifestyle contractions will become unbearable. “They’re college kids, they drink, they go to strip clubs, that’s what they do,” Tony says to Carm, dissociating “The Bing” from its mob taint, fooling himself maybe, but no one else.

In reality, the college kids Tony’s pushing AJ to re-connect with instead of moping, do a lot more than drinking and ogling lap dancers. They’ve got a twisted parallel mob going. They’ve made enough money to have earned themselves a niche in the world of Tony’s crew. It’s bizarre and freaky to see Paulie and Silvio’s society emulated in blunt and dumb ways among the fresh-faced frat-boys, people I sadly relate to in shared stupid lingo and cultural reference points (I said I’d never say “sweet!” but I succumbed), play-acting Scarface and Godfather, with real consequences.

It seems like a typical frat party - the worst thing that’ll happen is somebody gets punched out or date-raped. AJ just wants to have fun, get fucked up, and forget his heartbreak. But he’s Tony Soprano Jr, and the crew has use for him. A moment ago, they were doing shots together in the dorm room like college kids who just learned how to drink last year. But now they’ve got bigger things on their mind. They lend each other power, AJ, and the crew, but nobody grasps the true situation. I was trying to image these people as “young men”, but I could only see them as kids – it was surreal – but real. So they’re able to intimidate one of their friends, a dorky-looking preppie, late with his gambling debts. Now there’s a line as sharp as a guillotine separating the ill-fated deadbeat from his college friends. Because they can use him as a stepping stone, to aggrandize themselves. Well, it may not be done with the bloody sophistication of the gangsters they style themselves after. But it’s done. They force the young gambler into AJ’s car and drive him out to the woods, where he’s beaten and tortured with sulfuric acid. AJ watches, shell-shocked. It’s almost more horrific to see his reaction than to watch the act itself. Finally, he takes the only course of action he can – and tries to enjoy the spectacle. Maybe he succeeds. Maybe this is where he parts from his hard-won humanity. Because the only possible way out of misery and disgrace, is sadism.

He comes back from the party to make small talk with his family. More chipper than usual. So where is his head at exactly? One thing you can say – the experience got Blanca off his mind. There is opportunity for multiple interpretations, but the Sopranos always gives you the feeling that there is a profound singular intent - even if you'll only align with it occasionally in your analysis. I agree with Salon, this is a golden age for TV. The medium is surpassing film in its ability to tell stories in depth. Stylistically, it’s intrinsically inferior, but in richness of narrative, the best TV rivals literature.