Pretty spot-on assessment but AJ was a spoiled whiny little bitch with no hobbies or interests. Any time something good came into his life (football, puerto rican gf) he’d fuck it all up and wind up in a worse spot than where he started. He probably fucked up the bullshit do-nothing job Tony hooked up for him toward the end of the series.
Of course some of the blame is on Carm & Tony. They should have taken a harder line. But they also raised Meadow who spent a good deal of time deciding on law school or med school so this can’t all be chalked up to bad parenting. AJ was a fat little spazz who jerked off 17 times a day, there’s not a lot to work with there. I don’t even think military school would have helped.

Hard to argue with any of that.
Most skeptical about the cat being Chris, but honestly that whole episode felt like a fever dream and they've done explicit supernatural stuff before (like with Paulie's psychic reading)

>>222344357
>But they also raised Meadow
Lots of bad parents neglect one at the expense of another.

>>222344193
Stop spamming this trash. Nobody cares about your gay fat wop shit

>>222344381
If anything they gave more attention to AJ than Meadow. And once she left for college it was 100% AJ.
I’m not saying they were great or even good parents but they were there, and provided pretty much every opportunity possible for him.

I got one. Tony was whacked by the russians.
There's a scene late where Paulie and Patsy are seen having secret conversations, and the viewer is never given the scoop about what it truly was.

The russian might have died, might not have. That's not the point. The point is that only three people knew the real story, and one was killed, one is presumed dead, leaving Paulie.

Paulie almost got whacked several times by Tony, it was sincerely considered. Paulie knew it on the boat as well.
He also didn't want to take the cursed gig Tony shoved on him in the last episode.

My guess is Paulie spilled the beans at sometime, deliberately or otherwise to Patsy. Patsy also wants Tony dead btw over his brother. Patsy spills the beans and gets Tony whacked, Paulie doesn't have to follow through with the cursed gig, and Tony takes the fall for the dead russian.

>>222344489
>If anything they gave more attention to AJ than Meadow
Sure, but what kind of attention. It also shows that the more they intervened with one, the worse it became for the child. Meadow could've just as easily thrived due to the absence of their poisonous influence.

>>222344357
and all of that was yelling at him. Plenty of times they yell at him to go to his room when they're dealing with their own drama or with meadow.
>>222344489
by that time he was done for, and again all they did was break his balls. You can't really tell your son to be hard working when you make your living by avoiding hard work and he knows it. Meadow was just brighter than usual and seemed to want to distance herself from the mafia, but she got got as well since in the end she becomes a mob lawyer.

>>222344193
>Are normies really coping that hard that their wholesomerino chungus serial murderer didn't live happily ever after?

It's either that or they wanted Tony die in an epic Scarface shoutout. A couple of episodes before the finale, Tony opens a secret stash in his home where we see has heavy weaponry - I think there are even a couple of grenades in there. He takes a big assault rifle from the rack, and at the end of the episode he sits in his hideout with the gun on his lap, ready to blast anyone who comes. No one comes and the weapon is never used. I think some normies felt cheated because the show didn't end with him him standing off against an army of Phil's goons while spouting cool one-liners.

They wanted to see Tony getting blown away in slow-motion, going "noooooooOOOOOOooooooo..." and taking sixty bullets to the chest before finally falling down to the tune of swelling classical music.

>>222344193
people were retarded back then. i rmemeber all the controversy and yeah today people are smarter and know its a great endinf

>>222344193
aj had a literal 10/10 prime teen rich blonde who liked him for him

>>222344497
you mean the Ukranians? possibly but I think most likely Paulie and Patsy flipping to NY and just finishing the glorified crew from jersey which has no reason to exist anymore and consolidating it all under NY. Paulie almost flipped once when he ratted out the joke to Johnny Sacks, and only gave that up when he realized Carmine had no idea who he was. He was always one step away from stabbing Tony in the back. At some point someone points out the fact Tony went over Junior to become boss, so it seems there was always resentment brewing since S1

>>222344362
I've seen the theory that it's Adriana but I think Chris is more likely
>fascinated with his picture
>sunbathes in front of the pork shop like they all used to do
>rat hunter for the mafia/Christopher killed his own wife when he found out she was a rat
Another evidence could be not getting along with Paulie, but being liked by Tony, which was always part of the dynamic and one reason for Paulie's jealously of Chris but that could just be Paulie's being spooked by the supernatural.

>>222344674
>He was always one step away from stabbing Tony in the back
And vice versa, given the boat and hotel scene.
I agree. My point about the slavs was that there is real motive there as well. And only 3 people knew the real story. Chris could've let it slip while high, but Paulie is the better bet. Him and Patsy getting what they want with another crew doing the job to distance themselves, and Paulie is the last person to be in the woods that night alive.

>>222344815
oh I was talking about the hit on the ukranian and the daughter. Yeah I don't remember much about the russian in the woods bit. Couldn't Paulie and Patsy have just pledged allegiance to NY and let them naturally handle it?

>>222344953
>Couldn't Paulie and Patsy have just pledged allegiance to NY and let them naturally handle it?
Sure. There are at least 3 plausible parties that want Tony whacked in Made in America.
I think that's the point of the ambiguity.
His time simply had run out and it was a matter of who was going to get him first.

>>222344734
Solid reasoning. The rat hunter thing is especially funny given the fact he would stare at Paulie and make him nervous.

>>222344734
The cat is just a cat. Why would the fuck God immediately reincarnate Chis as a cat?

>>222344193
>Livia went to heaven
this was all tony's death bed delusion
the ending shows us that true death is nothing but darkness

>>222344193
If you streamed this television program, you already 10000% not qualified to talk about the ending

>>222345147
NTA but I think it's meant to serve as an omen of sorts. Certain cultures believe they are connected to spirits, rather than a 1:1 reincarnation.

>>222345255
The Sopranos is a great show, but man, it attracts some of the most absurd theorycrafting on the internet. Even if I entertain this theory for a moment, I can see a big flaw in it. That other anon said:

>Another evidence could be not getting along with Paulie, but being liked by Tony, which was always part of the dynamic

So Chris the Cat gravitates towards Tony, the man who choked him to death when he was in human form?

>>222345202
The supernatural is real in the show I don't think anybody disputes that. Tony saw Heaven, the ending cuts to black because Catholics believe hell is complete darkness since it's separation from God who is light. In Matthew 22, Heaven is a wedding banquet like the house in the woods, and hell is the outer darkness. Tony had a chance to enter Heaven if only he gave up his briefcase (contains his business and his whole life) but he wouldn't because he's in denial it, his criminal life and sin belong to him. So he goes to hell.

>>222345593
Paulie's spirits also follow him around. As far as I know reincarnation says there's a slight connection to past lives, not literal Chrissy with an internal monologue living as a cat in the bing. Although most of the show focuses on Catholic beliefs toward the end it drifts toward Buddhist and other stuff, with Kevin Finnerty and the monks and the indian saying and whatnot.

I admit it's more a fun thought than a theory but in the least the cat has some real connection with Chris.

>>222345593
I think it's a fair critique. It was also the thing I was most skeptical about in his original response, as I said. But it's clearly meant to convey something 'more' in the room. Whether it was literally Chris' ghost or some sort of bakeneko idk. His overfamiliarity and focus on mundane things like pictures on the wall was meant to provoke unease. It's not normal stray cat behavior. It worked and people are trying to figure out why.

The point of the ambiguous ending is it's ambiguous.
Tony exists in a state of having both been whacked and not been whacked.
The scene gets the intended emotional reaction out of the audience. You feel the tension that something is about to go down. You see the guy go into the bathroom, maybe to recover a gun, in reference to the Godfather.
Either Tony died, or he spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, worrying about being killed.
What more do you need really? The question of what the "canon" sequence of events is only matters if they plan to make more, which they do not.

I'd say Bobby is arguably a "good person". Just fucking stupid. The mafia is just his family. He's emotionally attached to those people, and is able to compartmentalize away all of the actual fucked up things they do.

>>222345894
>Tony exists in a state of having both been whacked and not been whacked.

Fuck you, he got whacked, end of.

>>222345894
just because the camera doesn't show it doesn't mean it's ambiguous. Everything in the scene tells you it happened. It's ova

>>222346218
I don't know if I believe they would actually kill Tony with a Godfather reference.
I think what we're seeing there is almost more Tony's perspective. Where he imagines assassins to be coming from.

It’s a lazy, unsatisfying non-ending and no amount of Reddit circlejerking will ever make it good.

>>222344357
To be fair, Meadow didn't pick law school to make the world a better place. Despite everything that's wrong with AJ, he at least is not going down the same crime bullshit path (seemingly)

>>222345202
>>222345615
contradicted by Chrissy' vision of hell where he saw brendan warning him about 3 o'clock. If it was complete darkness then he wouldn't see anything.

>>222344357
I think AJ is purposefully written in a way that annoys the audience, to reflect how Tony perceives him as an inadequate son, despite the audience and Tony both realising on some level that AJ's character is the result of parent neglect.

>>222346346
Assuming that Tony gets whacked (which he does), I think things must get a lot worse for AJ thereafter. He had a fraught relationship with Tony, but Tony was also his crutch. AJ is going to be pretty fucked without his daddy's connections and safety nets to ease him through life. That's also true of Carmella. Meadow will probably be okay, as the career girl.

>>222346261
>I don't know if I believe they would actually kill Tony with a Godfather reference.
funny I almost think they couldn't not kill tony with a godfather reference. The entire show is in dialogue with the godfather and the fall of the myth of the Italian mob, sort of being an inversion of it. It's only fitting that Tony would live out his favorite scene where he doubtlessly self inserts as Michael, but on the other end of the barrel.

>>222346493
On that note, is there any reason we should assume the rest of the family didn't get whacked with Tony? No one was going to retaliate for that

>>222346543
they're italians, not spics. only spics go after civilians.

>>222346404
yeah I thought about that but I'll still stick to my headcannon. The 3 o'clock predicts tony's death so I choose to believe the irish pub was a joke and the writers thought more seriously about the afterlife when it came to tony.

I like the theory with the last episode being a dream. It feels quite surreal like Tony telling birds to shut up while talking to Junior and Tony teleporting to the seat he was looking at in the last scene

>>222346543
There was no reason to whack his family. Phil got whacked in front of his family, and the hitman shot Phil from the side to make sure there was no collateral. I expect it went the same way with Tone.

Remember that gangsters worry about heat and jail time. If the hitman, instead of just killing Tony, also killed the wife and kids, there would outrage in the press and the police investigation would be larger and more determined. One dead gangster isn't such a big deal, but a family massacre would appal society and demand punishment.

>>222344193
people quickly figured out that Tony got killed.
what was hated was the abrupt black screen and no concrete hints at who did the shooting

>>222346616
>Tony teleporting to the seat he was looking at in the last scene
media illiteracy

>>222344193
Tiny we t to heaven?