#Jackie Aprile

[jbk405]

Tony Soprano and Feech La Manna’s card game

The robbery of the protected card game run by Feech La Manna was part of the background mythology of The Sopranos.  Its details were teased out over the course of four seasons, first introduced by Richie Aprile in season two and with the last info given by Feech himself in season five.

As we can piece together from the disparate stories, when Tony Soprano, Jackie Aprile, and Silvio Dante were young petty criminals -- not yet Made men in the Mafia -- they decided to make their first big score and rob a card game.  The card game was run by Feech La Manna, a capo (Captain) in the DiMeo Crime Family, which made it against the rules for anybody to rob it, but they decided to do it anyway.  Despite being against the rules they did it the ‘right way’: Nobody got hurt and nobody Made was at the game when it got robbed, which meant that vengeance wasn’t required by the Mafia code.  Once Feech figured out who did the robbery, Tony, Jackie, and Silvio were able to pay off the right people (Including Feech himself) to forestall any revenge.  Their skill at the robbery, their bravery to do it even at the risk of angering Feech, and their willingness to pay up afterwards gained them all significant respect in the Mafia and marked them for future greatness.  Indeed, Jackie and Tony both eventually became Bosses, and Silvio became consigliere.

As an aside, when telling his part of the story Ralph Cifaretto claims he was supposed to go and was only absent because he was sick, but personally I think that was a self-aggrandizing lie and he would never have been invited.

This story is often told to show Tony’s natural greatness within the Mafia society -- how even when he was a kid he was smart and brave and everybody knew he was Going Places -- and also to show how poorly the current young generation of criminals fails to live up to his example.  The last is of critical importance with Jackie Aprile Jr., the son of the Jackie Aprile who went with Tony that night.  Despite his father’s own wishes and Tony’s best efforts, Jackie Jr. is determined to become a bigshot mafioso just like his father and resents how Tony and the other leadership belittle and look down on him.

Eager to live up to his father’s legacy after he passed away from cancer, Jackie Jr. decides to replicate the robbery that got his father his start.  He recruits some of his fellow ne'er-do-well young punks and tries to rob a game run by Eugene Pontecorvo, a Made man in the DiMeo (Soprano) family.  But unlike his father, Jackie Jr. fucks everything up.  He and his friends were high on crystal meth so they were twitchy and jumpy.  They hadn’t done any prep work so were surprised to find out that Christopher Moltisanti and Furio Giunta, two very dangerous Made men, were at the game.  Worst of all, during the robbery Jackie lost control and shot the dealer, which sparked a larger gunfight.  His two accomplices were killed, and Furio was injured.

Now Jackie Jr. is a dead man, because robbing Made men, let alone actually shooting one, requires vengeance. Eugene, Chris, and Furio couldn’t give him a pass even if they wanted to, since they would look weak to the rest of the Mafia (Sidenote: In the original The Godfather this is exactly what tells Vito Corleone that he can kill Don Fanucci without fear of reprisals.  Fanucci had been beaten up and robbed by some kids, and then accepted a payoff from their families instead of taking revenge.  Vito knew that if he was actually in the Mafia, like he claimed, then he would have taken revenge no matter what).  Jackie Jr.’s only hope is that Tony gives him a pass, since as Boss his word is final.  But Tony doesn’t want to give Jackie a pass, because despite being the son of his best friend, Jackie Jr. is a little shit who cheated on Tony’s daughter and has been a headache in general for over a year.  So Tony passes the buck to Ralph Cifaretto, who is dating Jackie’s mother, and says that he will go along with whatever Ralph decides.  Despite Ralph saying that he wants to give Jackie a pass, he doesn’t have the fortitude to back that up and make an enemy of so many other members of the Family.  So, at the end of it, he has Jackie Jr. killed and moves on.

Perfect ending to Jackie Jr.’s story, and the perfect parallel to highlight that despite his massive ego he was never comparable to Tony Soprano.....except....

Well, except for the fact that as the series went along, some of the details that were teased out said that Tony, Silvio and Jackie weren’t quite as highly regarded for their stunt as it now seems.  In fact, Feech wasn’t happy to let bygones be bygones, he did want revenge.  Maybe not to go so far as to kill them, but certainly at least rough them up badly, and maybe even oppose their later induction into the Mafia.  And the only thing that stopped him was the fact that these three had big, powerful protection.  Richie Aprile, Jackie’s older brother, was already a Made man.  Tony’s father and uncle, Johnny Soprano and Junior Soprano, were capos themselves.  They had the respect, and the muscle, and most importantly the will to back down Feech.  It wasn’t that the kids did the robbery the Right Way, it was that they had protection to skate on the consequences.  Protection that Jackie Jr. didn’t have.  Ralph Cifaretto only cared about Jackie Jr. because he was screwing his mother, so when push came to shove he caved and let him get whacked.

Now obviously Jackie Jr. did screw up big time -- come on, people died -- but even if he had done it the ‘right way’ after all it still may have turned out badly for him.  Because it turns out the original robbery wasn’t a story of three up-and-coming kids impressing the old timers with their spunk, it was the story of three privileged assholes screwing around and getting bailed out by their family.  Just the same as if they were rich kids who tried the same thing for kicks and their parents got them off with fancy lawyers.

It’s not a testament to them at all, and is only viewed as such now because Tony (And Jackie and Silvio) are too powerful to question.  It may not be that Jackie Jr. was as big a screw-up as he seemed, maybe they’re just comparing him to a fantasy that wasn’t true in the first place.

[stillsopranos]

[fuckyeahsopranos]

'Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings. A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.'

The Iliad

[fuckyeahsopranos]

(via All Due Respect)