Day 3: Characters I Relate to- Meadow Soprano and Fraiser Crane
As with the Amy Gardner/Connor post, I have much more to say about the woman of the day. It was hard finding a male character that I identify with. I may identify with specific traits of a given male character but none really feel like me. I suppose that I identify with Frasier Crane the most. Frasier’s genuine good intentions toward his family and friends tempered by his relentless self-centeredness and bombastic arrogance really speak to me.
However, I REALLY identify with Meadow Soprano.
I viscerally “get” Meadow’s genuine good and altruistic intentions toward the world but how those intentions are almost always worn down by the fact that Meadow primarily looks out for herself and secondarily looks out for her family (who coincidentally are Meadow’s most helpful and loyal allies to her own success) and the rest of the world comes out to a distant third.
So many TV characters are presented “morally dramatic”. Morally heinous or some compelling flavor of heinous. Angelic and heroic to differing ends depending on whether the show is a family drama or an epic supernatural drama. Some big dramatic shade of morally grey- but IMO, I usually find pretty black or white in practice. However, there are few Meadows- a pretty OK person with some good ideals and some good independent growth from her crappy values from her childhood but relentlessly self-interested in small day-to-day ways that slowly add up to present a whole character.
Embarrassingly, I also have some of Meadow’s contradictions between her broadly felt feminist ideals and her expectations of Carmela/daddy’s girl loyalty to Tony. But even then, the smallest action is more complicated than it seems. One of my favorite small scenes is where Tony is snitting about Carmela is busy with the spec house and isn’t there to cook breakfast and Meadow joins in and snits that she was hoping for fresh blueberries but APPARENTLY NO ONE WENT SHOPPING. LOL! Abstractly, Meadow would absolutely preach about how women should try to get independent income instead of just being a household slave for their husbands- but it shouldn’t start with *Meadow’s* mother who serves *Meadow*.
That said, a lot of Carmela’s belief that she’s making some independent strong woman stand with the spec house is a delusion. Yeah, Carmela raised the money for the endeavor by looking the other way on Tony’s affairs and continuing to look the other way on his crimes and then when the project went south because she and her father stupidly constructed the whole frame of the house with the wrong wood, Carmela nudged Tony to “lean” on the building inspector and we all know what that means. Meadow’s blue-berry remark is relentless self-interest. It’s supported by the other small details where Meadow held out her coffee cup for Carmela to fill it or dumped laundry in the house instead of doing it at college or just casually accepted Carmela bringing her trays of home cooking at college like it’s her due.
However, Tony, in particular, and Meadow have legit (though wrong!) reasons for believing that Carmela’s spec house is a vanity project financed by Carmela being a doormat homemaker and Carmela isn’t fulfilling her homemaker duties on which her spec house is built. Yet at the end of the day, Carmela’s corruptions aside, Carmela wisely focused on her future by building the house. She did raise some independent cash that could just belong to Carmela and be safe from when the government almost inevitably seizes it when they indict and convict/plea out Tony. Cash that Meadow may need if Daddy Dearest pays his piper for his crimes and can’t serve his Moneybags function for the family. Not to mention, that Carmela has spent YEARS being the perfect homemaker. Carmela already set up a lovely home- she doesn’t need to do ALL of the cooking and shopping and cleaning and entertaining to perfection or run the risk of losing her Italian Martha Stewart crown.
I love that Meadow does nice things with genuinely good intentions- but always with an eye to her bottom line. Yes, she interned at the law center because she wants to spend her free time at the university helping others. However, Meadow visibly got sold on the “It will help you get into grad school” part of the pitch. I’ve volunteered a lot at a lot of different organizations. I’ve never taken a volunteer position without a thought as to putting it on an application or networking or whether there was some social component involved to be with my friends. It’s almost impossible for me to fathom say, the Scooby gang, toiling for hours to save people’s lives and burning up all of their time that they could spend building up their lives and success as teenagers and young adults. Doing physically demanding or intellectually frustrating and near impossible work. Meadow’s strategy of volunteering at fun organizations with an eye to her self-interest speaks a lot more to me as a teenager- yes, to my discredit.
Meadow felt loyalty to Livia as her grandmother and thus, pushed to visit her- but some of it was to collect money-gifts from Livia and to push back against Tony by allying herself with Janice or justifying her driving out of the house on a school night because IT’S FOR FAMILY.
Yet, I do feel a certain pride in identifying with Meadow’s responsibility that stems from Meadow’s rationality and intelligence and loyalty to family. One of the key eps that characterize Meadow is when Meadow throws a huge messy party at Livia’s house which turns it into a pig sty. Meadow successfully manipulated her parents into barely punishing her. In fact, Meadow kind of made a profit by turning her credit card as “punishment” and then, requesting cash for her various needs (school, gas) where Meadow could set her own inflated prices for school needs and MAKE money off her crime much to the oblivion of Tony and Caremla. Meadow is arguably smarter than both of them. Or at least, Tony’s cynicism and streets-wise awesome is generally so tuned to his gang that he misses his family’s betrayals (certainly with Junior and Livia) and certainly doesn’t catch his favorite child’s bullshit. However at the end of the day (after hearing Janice complain about the house’s condition before she moves in), Meadow punished herself by cleaning Livia’s whole house from top to bottom even though she was vomiting from the fumes and Tony caught it and was stunned by someone cleaning up her own damn mess. I really identified with how Meadow ultimately did the right thing not out of some pure goodness and special snowflake martyrdom- but because it hit Meadow that she fucked up and now it unfairly hurts her aunt and she needs to fix that. I'm no angel- but I do think shit through and I'd like to do the right thing by folks when it's feasible. (And cleaning a trashed house is feasible.) It stands in stark contrast to Tony and Carmela reacting to Janice’s admittedly histrionically and offensively worded and sounded complaint with, “So….you have to clean up another mess? Don’t tell us how to raise our kid!”
The quote in my cut exemplifies Meadow’s contradiction where she’s wise to her family’s flaws and crimes and she does have the guts to voice them which no one else does. However, her loyalty to family and her knowledge of where her bread is buttered inhibits her from admitting it in public. Meadow attacks her cousin for insinuating that Tony and Co. hit Jackie Jr. A FEW HOURS after Meadow voiced the same opinion to Carmela in bed. Now, I’m fortunate enough that no one in my family is a criminal and I’ve never had an occasion to be either a big hypocrite or to admit that my dad is a murderer. However, I really get Meadow’s conundrum and how she landed as she did.
However, I REALLY identify with Meadow Soprano.
I viscerally “get” Meadow’s genuine good and altruistic intentions toward the world but how those intentions are almost always worn down by the fact that Meadow primarily looks out for herself and secondarily looks out for her family (who coincidentally are Meadow’s most helpful and loyal allies to her own success) and the rest of the world comes out to a distant third.
So many TV characters are presented “morally dramatic”. Morally heinous or some compelling flavor of heinous. Angelic and heroic to differing ends depending on whether the show is a family drama or an epic supernatural drama. Some big dramatic shade of morally grey- but IMO, I usually find pretty black or white in practice. However, there are few Meadows- a pretty OK person with some good ideals and some good independent growth from her crappy values from her childhood but relentlessly self-interested in small day-to-day ways that slowly add up to present a whole character.
Embarrassingly, I also have some of Meadow’s contradictions between her broadly felt feminist ideals and her expectations of Carmela/daddy’s girl loyalty to Tony. But even then, the smallest action is more complicated than it seems. One of my favorite small scenes is where Tony is snitting about Carmela is busy with the spec house and isn’t there to cook breakfast and Meadow joins in and snits that she was hoping for fresh blueberries but APPARENTLY NO ONE WENT SHOPPING. LOL! Abstractly, Meadow would absolutely preach about how women should try to get independent income instead of just being a household slave for their husbands- but it shouldn’t start with *Meadow’s* mother who serves *Meadow*.
That said, a lot of Carmela’s belief that she’s making some independent strong woman stand with the spec house is a delusion. Yeah, Carmela raised the money for the endeavor by looking the other way on Tony’s affairs and continuing to look the other way on his crimes and then when the project went south because she and her father stupidly constructed the whole frame of the house with the wrong wood, Carmela nudged Tony to “lean” on the building inspector and we all know what that means. Meadow’s blue-berry remark is relentless self-interest. It’s supported by the other small details where Meadow held out her coffee cup for Carmela to fill it or dumped laundry in the house instead of doing it at college or just casually accepted Carmela bringing her trays of home cooking at college like it’s her due.
However, Tony, in particular, and Meadow have legit (though wrong!) reasons for believing that Carmela’s spec house is a vanity project financed by Carmela being a doormat homemaker and Carmela isn’t fulfilling her homemaker duties on which her spec house is built. Yet at the end of the day, Carmela’s corruptions aside, Carmela wisely focused on her future by building the house. She did raise some independent cash that could just belong to Carmela and be safe from when the government almost inevitably seizes it when they indict and convict/plea out Tony. Cash that Meadow may need if Daddy Dearest pays his piper for his crimes and can’t serve his Moneybags function for the family. Not to mention, that Carmela has spent YEARS being the perfect homemaker. Carmela already set up a lovely home- she doesn’t need to do ALL of the cooking and shopping and cleaning and entertaining to perfection or run the risk of losing her Italian Martha Stewart crown.
I love that Meadow does nice things with genuinely good intentions- but always with an eye to her bottom line. Yes, she interned at the law center because she wants to spend her free time at the university helping others. However, Meadow visibly got sold on the “It will help you get into grad school” part of the pitch. I’ve volunteered a lot at a lot of different organizations. I’ve never taken a volunteer position without a thought as to putting it on an application or networking or whether there was some social component involved to be with my friends. It’s almost impossible for me to fathom say, the Scooby gang, toiling for hours to save people’s lives and burning up all of their time that they could spend building up their lives and success as teenagers and young adults. Doing physically demanding or intellectually frustrating and near impossible work. Meadow’s strategy of volunteering at fun organizations with an eye to her self-interest speaks a lot more to me as a teenager- yes, to my discredit.
Meadow felt loyalty to Livia as her grandmother and thus, pushed to visit her- but some of it was to collect money-gifts from Livia and to push back against Tony by allying herself with Janice or justifying her driving out of the house on a school night because IT’S FOR FAMILY.
Yet, I do feel a certain pride in identifying with Meadow’s responsibility that stems from Meadow’s rationality and intelligence and loyalty to family. One of the key eps that characterize Meadow is when Meadow throws a huge messy party at Livia’s house which turns it into a pig sty. Meadow successfully manipulated her parents into barely punishing her. In fact, Meadow kind of made a profit by turning her credit card as “punishment” and then, requesting cash for her various needs (school, gas) where Meadow could set her own inflated prices for school needs and MAKE money off her crime much to the oblivion of Tony and Caremla. Meadow is arguably smarter than both of them. Or at least, Tony’s cynicism and streets-wise awesome is generally so tuned to his gang that he misses his family’s betrayals (certainly with Junior and Livia) and certainly doesn’t catch his favorite child’s bullshit. However at the end of the day (after hearing Janice complain about the house’s condition before she moves in), Meadow punished herself by cleaning Livia’s whole house from top to bottom even though she was vomiting from the fumes and Tony caught it and was stunned by someone cleaning up her own damn mess. I really identified with how Meadow ultimately did the right thing not out of some pure goodness and special snowflake martyrdom- but because it hit Meadow that she fucked up and now it unfairly hurts her aunt and she needs to fix that. I'm no angel- but I do think shit through and I'd like to do the right thing by folks when it's feasible. (And cleaning a trashed house is feasible.) It stands in stark contrast to Tony and Carmela reacting to Janice’s admittedly histrionically and offensively worded and sounded complaint with, “So….you have to clean up another mess? Don’t tell us how to raise our kid!”
The quote in my cut exemplifies Meadow’s contradiction where she’s wise to her family’s flaws and crimes and she does have the guts to voice them which no one else does. However, her loyalty to family and her knowledge of where her bread is buttered inhibits her from admitting it in public. Meadow attacks her cousin for insinuating that Tony and Co. hit Jackie Jr. A FEW HOURS after Meadow voiced the same opinion to Carmela in bed. Now, I’m fortunate enough that no one in my family is a criminal and I’ve never had an occasion to be either a big hypocrite or to admit that my dad is a murderer. However, I really get Meadow’s conundrum and how she landed as she did.