I thought it could be a little late to blog about the Sopranos finale, but three days later, the chatter is still a deafening roar across office and Internet. People can think whatever they want about whether Tony died - I happen to think that he didn't, at least right there - but I have a major quibble with the standard line on Meadow, voiced in the form of righty agitprop by Josh Trevino on National Review Online:
A.J. was always something of a comedic character, a Tony without the will to power or the physical strength. Daughter Meadow was different: the hope of the family, and, in the early run of the series, the ostensible moral voice when morality was flouted. Yet by the end, she is more profoundly corrupted even than her brother. He simply repeats rhetoric and is bought off with toys; her fall is more profound. Her chosen course in life is predicated on a fundamental lie, and in this, she is more like her father than anyone else. Explaining to him her decision to abandon medical school and enter law, she says, “The state can crush the people — the government, specifically the Federal government. . . . You know what really turned me? Seeing the way Italians are treated. It’s like mom says, and if we can have our rights trampled like that, imagine what it’s like for recent arrivals. . . . If I hadn’t seen you dragged away all those times by the FBI, then I’d probably be a boring suburban doctor.”
Conveniently, Trevino omits the best punchline of the episode - when Tony follows "The state can crush the people" with "New Jersey?" It sets the tone for the whole conversation - Meadow is attempting to placate her father, who isn't too excited about Meadow abandoning her dreams of being a doctor. After all, Tony can't be a big fan of lawyers, in the same way that some people don't like doctors, since you see them when times are bad, they often fix the problem incompletely and they charge an arm and a leg for having done so. Meadow isn't sharing, she's selling. Trevino misses this completely.
Incredibly, she believes her father a victim — perhaps influenced by her mother, Carmela, who long ago wailed at FBI agents visiting Tony in the hospital, “When will you stop persecuting him?” Even Tony Soprano, a man who could rationalize any crime, and justify any action to sate any desire, is reduced to speechlessness at his daughter’s proclamation. Meadow Soprano is a thoroughly ordinary leftist professional, convinced of her crusade to save the downtrodden from the institutions of her own country, and utterly oblivious to the reality before her.
Forget for a minute the description of a $170,000 New York lawyer as a "thoroughly ordinary leftist professional" and get down to the crux of Trevino's misunderstanding. There is no way that Meadow is "convinced of her crusade" to help Italian-Americans. Between her childhood memories of daddy getting led down their winding Essex County driveway in handcuffs and her decision to go to law school, she has learned a lot about how Tony puts food on the table. In one of my favorite episodes, "The Happy Wanderer," Tony collects on a gambling debt from sporting goods store owner and old high school buddy Davey Scantino in the form of Scantino's son's SUV. When Tony turns it into a gift for the then-high school-aged Meadow, she lashes out at him for taking away her boyfriends' car. Meadow knows the score. She may take advantage of the creature comforts that being a mobster's little princess provides, but she doesn't particularly admire the dirty work that goes into it.
So why does she act like she thinks Tony is being persecuted? She plays the Italian-American card like a true pro because she knows what her father wants to hear. I find it hard to imagine any person who was ever financially dependant on their parents who hasn't used one of these lines:
"I need a car so I can stay late at school and work on (some academically worthy project)"
"I want to go to (far-away college) because it's a good school. It has nothing to do with moving away."
"We're all going to go to X's house to study together over the weekend."
...and so on. Call them white lies, call them an unbalanced highlighting of legitimate priorities, call them what you like. Simply put, Meadow was selling her dad on an image and attitude calculated to make him feel good about her decision. It's like when a presidential candidate buys a hardscrabble Texas ranch right before declaring his candidacy so he can have a place to be photographed clearing brush and generally looking like the opposite of the teetotaling, private school-educated New Englander he really is.
Leave a comment