58. I Know My Rights

“Oh my god, is it a fetus?”

Is Robert Wegler right about Carmela Soprano? I’ve debated this with myself a lot, and I think I’ve settled on an answer: he is, but not in the way that he thinks he is. Carmela is using him, but not for the AJ-centric ends he believes she’s trying to achieve (or at least not only, or even primarily, to those ends), and not in any sort of calculated way. If she were playing him to get something she wants for her child, we’d know it. She’d know it too. The way she interacts with Wegler during their brief affair has nothing in common with the way she intimidates Jeannie Cusamano and her sister to secure a Georgetown recommendation letter for Meadow. Bringing up AJ during pillow talk and right as she’s about to get laid isn’t a chess move; it’s a mortifying consequence of her long-established terrible game. 

Instead, she’s using Wegler to get something she wants for herself — and she doesn’t fully realize that she wants to be the version of herself that he’s attracted to more than she wants the man himself. She’s learned to treat relationships as an endless series of negotiations in which she gives something (or gives something up) in order to receive something in return. That’s the core of her marriage to Tony, and it’s inured her to such brazen iterations of this dynamic that its more subtle manifestations don’t fully register. She doesn’t notice that it’s bled into her relationship with AJ, whom she lets back into her home on the condition that she can have a little emotional intimacy, as a treat. And she’s largely oblivious to the fact that she’s sleeping with Wegler because she sees him as a path to the life she wants — a life that’s more cultured and aesthetically pleasing, a life in which she feels valued and listened to. 

She’s largely oblivious to what she’s doing here, but not entirely. Part of the reason Wegler’s assessment of her is so hurtful is that she never sees it coming, but another factor is that she knows it’s accurate on some level. And it’s not just her post-breakup reaction that exposes that a tiny bit of self-awareness has crept into her decision-making. The way she insists to Fr. Phil “I like him as a person too, of course” — and the fact that she brings Fr. Phil into the situation at all, an obvious bid to make him jealous — gives away that her involvement with Wegler might be motivated more by a desire for validation than a desire for him. 

Wegler is just as guilty of that in his own right, though. As Christopher tells Tony B., “Other people’s definitions of you, sometimes they’re more about making themselves feel better” — and while he says it as a (not particularly subtle) dig at Tony Soprano, it’s a solid read of Wegler as well. He’s as dishonest as he claims Carmela is, and equally willing to tell her what she wants to hear in order to get what he wants. And he’s a fucking fraud. He’s not nearly as urbane or smart as he wants everyone to believe he is —  “It’s a first edition… well, a Modern Library first edition” is an incredible self-own — and he flat-out tells Carmela that her intellectual and cultural inferiority is part of her appeal. He thinks she’ll affirm his feigned superiority, and the moment he realizes she actually has the upper hand in their relationship, he turns on her. 

While “Sentimental Education” is full of complicated, telling interactions between Carm and the men in her life, the final one — her conversation with her father, Hugh — is by far the most illuminating. We’ve never gotten much visibility into Carmela’s childhood or family of origin, but the little hints we get, combined with Edie Falco’s performance, paint a comprehensive portrait of a woman who’s been groomed into dependence and then shamed for it. In many ways, Hugh’s visit is sweet: he helps with home repairs, and tries to reassure his daughter that things will improve. But his idea of things improving hinges on her finding a second husband (a self-serving idea, as “if you had a man around the house, you wouldn’t need me for this.”) And though he expects his daughter to lean on men, it’s only in a material sense; when she expresses a genuine, complicated emotional need, he bounces. She’s been conditioned to depend on men, but she can’t actually rely on any of them.