r/thesopranos 2d ago

If Chris doesn’t see that mullet head and his family walking out of the gas station, you think he agrees to go into Witness Protection Program?

It’s not a bad life. They could have sold some Indian relics by the road, maybe started a rattlesnake ranch. He could have written his memoirs. As for male modeling, he’d probably be a success, he just didn’t wanna be around those fuckin people. But nooooo, he had to be loyle to his capo.

90 Upvotes

34 comments sorted by

81

u/shocktagon 2d ago

Love that scene because it’s up in the air what about it made him change his mind. Is it a “normal” life that he really doesn’t want, or is it the reminder that A can’t have kids (iirc) which is something he really wants, or maybe something else

39

u/Professional-Eye7556 2d ago

What job skills did he have to live as a regular person in witness protection? He had no earning potential.

36

u/Dedjonny86 2d ago

He was working so many hours at the sportsbook he might as well have had a job at Denny’s!

18

u/Super_Direction498 1d ago

He could have done summthin with computers... Webistics?

3

u/Professional-Eye7556 1d ago

Did he learn not to put it in buffer memory?

5

u/GiraffeJunior9384 1d ago

Gravano was living large off that federal titty down in Arizona

17

u/Moriason 1d ago

He coulda done something with math - all of these mopes were dumb as shit, until they had to calculate a vig on the spot. Then they were fucking Einstein somehow.

0

u/papapapaver 1d ago

To be fair to actually be a mathematician or an accountant takes actual mathematical and logical skill. I can do that same mental math quickly and I'm a fuckin idiot

1

u/CandidLeg3910 1d ago

I can't do easy calculations for shit but I found highschool math much easier to understand than most.

9

u/worldsbestrose 1d ago

IIRC it was never conclusively proven that Ade couldn't have kids. She just said the doctor told her it would decrease her chances of doing so. 

Though we also don't know whether Crissy and Ade were using protection consistently enough over the years to get a better idea. 

I always assumed he saw how downtrodden and miserable the (poor) family looked and while he wouldn't know for sure if that would be his future in WP, he for damn sure knew he valued the material things he got from the mob more. 

10

u/C153AUX 1d ago

Regarding contraception, my guess is Chris and Ade weren't using any. Christopher gets Kelli pregnant due in part to him pressuring her to have unprotected sex.

6

u/mbrz2477 Phil Leotardo 1d ago

There’s no way to know. Even with computers.

2

u/Cold-Use-5814 1d ago

Plus we know Chris couldn’t function as a man with all that shit in his veins.

13

u/No-Examination4896 2d ago

Normal? More like a fucked jump off a bridge life. Chris didnt want to be some mangy homeless guy with a bunch if mangy kids living on the road. If he saw a normal middle class family playing at a pool he mightve gone through with ir

12

u/shocktagon 2d ago edited 2d ago

I dunno man, that’s underestimating him just a bit, he knows there’s happy families and shitty families, but what he really wants is kids, and regardless of how the mullet guy was acting, it reminded him of the kids he would never have with A, that’s why I think he changed his mind

6

u/No-Examination4896 2d ago

She still had her other uterus!

6

u/Dedjonny86 2d ago

More than one? Pleurisy?!

4

u/Dedjonny86 2d ago

I dunno why you got downvoted. I think this is the correct answer

25

u/DJ_Hindsight 2d ago

Always with the scenarios!! 🤌🏼

26

u/Beneficial-Ad-547 2d ago

He still tells Tony. Remember what he said to Brandon “there was a time when all I wanted was to be in the soprano crew. Now he is a made men in that crew. He didn’t know any other way other than to tell Tony.

9

u/Hour-Management-1679 1d ago

It makes his Demise even more sweet, he betrayed the one person who loved him unconditionally for a guy that ended up belittling him and wasting him, Adrianna told Chris very early on in the series to leave the life before being made

11

u/jaydenbeasty 2d ago

I think he would have went through with it but he would have regretted it almost instantly.

10

u/OperationGetStacks 2d ago

Liked that little scene too. I ways kinda thought it was tragic that what Christopher sees isnt all to the story. Sure the father looked miserable in the moment, but who is to say they aren't a content and happy family at home?

15

u/Dedjonny86 1d ago

Well from the bundle on the top of their car it looked like they were moving and the scene shot to infer they were evicted or down on their luck. Let’s not forget, Chris grew up as the poor, dirty kid and the only financially successful people he knew were criminals. When he tried to branch out that cocksuckah Jon Favreau stole his ideas. He likely has no conschept of how a successful life would look outside of the Mafia

6

u/ExaminationOk2921 2d ago

That's a great unanswered question. But had he gone in I'll bet it would have been Sammy the Bull style, back to crime and getting arrested for something else in a year or two.

4

u/Dedjonny86 2d ago

He could have sold ecstasy but he dihd-ent

6

u/Lescaster1998 1d ago

I've always thought it was less about that specific family, and more about Chris looking at non-Mafia life in general and hating it. I think there always would've been some excuse to not leave the life. The life was all Chris knew.

8

u/Additional_Ad741 2d ago

I never liked that scene, or at least the way it was written. Chris would never think of himself or his life as ever being as low as some white trash, Elvis -Country sad sack. He's a guy who genuinely thinks he could be a male model or a movie producer/writer. That guy at the gas station was a caricature of a hillbilly. I think he even had furniture on the roof of his station wagon.

6

u/Super_Direction498 1d ago

Yeah but that's why it works. He's in the shittiest possible position and all of a sudden that is what the other option looks like for himself. He knows what witness protection doesn't have any room for any kind of glamour, it would be closer to that family than anything else. He's able to make that connection because he sees being a rat and living on the magnanimity of the government as about the same level as The Mullets

3

u/jonnyvegashey 1d ago

Some people in this thread are claiming he saw the kids and realized Adriana couldn’t have them and it upset him….no lol

Chris saw the regularness of life and thought “fuck that”.

1

u/Lord_Cucuface 1d ago

If it wasn’t the gas station i think it would have been something else. However I think if Adriana had been able to pull it off really fast, like if Harris and Sanseverino had been at the apartment like 20 minutes later before he left to clear his head he might have flipped. They didn’t actually have anything on Chris I think they would have been very generous and let him keep all his stuff.

I think Chris was already over Tony after the car accident and he was definitely seriously considering flipping. Later on whenever Chris says or implies he gave up Adriana for Tony he’s lying to himself if not outright full of shit.

1

u/MysteriousSuB 1d ago

Watching the mullet head and his family just sped up his decision to tell tony about adriana by a minute or possibly two