AJ Soprano x Andrew Van de Kamp Cage Match

Watching The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives at the same time

While concurrently watching The Sopranos for the first time and rewatching Desperate Housewives, I was tortured by a single hypothetical thought: if AJ Soprano, son of Tony, and Andrew Van de Kamp, son of Bree, got into a fight, who would win? 

Now you may be saying “???” but just walk with me for a minute, okay?

These two shows overlapped on air for three seasons from 2004-2007; Desperate Housewives is celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall while The Sopranos just celebrated its 25th. According to various fan Reddit threads, AJ and Andrew are only three years apart in age - each a small sampling of the Early Aughts Teenage Boy canon. So I couldn’t help but compare them to each other! They are different but also so, so similar, both in personality and in the roles they play within their families in the show. 

Let’s start with the fact that Tony Soprano and Bree Van De Kamp are much more similar than you might expect at first glance. They are each incredibly dominating personalities in their communities - Bree is Wisteria Lane’s top homemaker, which affords her a level of power that is essentially the suburban housewife equivalent of the mob boss (ok I’m reaching but stay with me here). She is respected, she is feared, her friends are protected and blessed merely by their association with her. 

Bree and Tony are both extremely particular about their homes and family lives, and their households are engaged in constant power struggles over the “right” way to do things. They each value tradition and Doing Things The Way Things Are Supposed To Be Done - you could argue that they’re both primarily driven by this. Something the West Coast WASP and New Jersey Mafia communities have in common (at least, in these shows), is their staunch opposition of going against the grain. They each fit clearly into their roles and feel comfortable within the confines of them. 

Which means they each have very rigid beliefs on the role of the Perfect Son, and neither son is it. Bree and Tony are the main characters of their shows, so AJ and Andrew’s behavior is seen primarily through their perspectives, and the gap between the boys and their parents' expectations of them is constantly on display in each show. Both are completely beyond the understanding of their parents - Andrew and AJ are simply not interested in doing things the way Bree and Tony think they should be done. 

AJ & Andrew are constantly pushing back against the selves their parents are projecting onto them: for AJ it’s the image of silent strength and masculine responsibility his father lives his life by, for Andrew it’s the WASPy heteronormativity his mother embodies. They’re each severely babied by their parents and resent their mothers for it to varying degrees. 

But let’s get back to their hypothetical fight. AJ and Andrew each grow a lot throughout their respective shows, so for the sake of discussion we’ll narrow it down to Season 4 AJ vs Season 1 Andrew, since both seasons aired in 2004. 

Let’s start with the numbers: AJ is three years older than Andrew and he’s coming off of playing football in season 3, so I’m assuming he has the leg up in terms of strength. I can’t find their heights for these specific seasons, but as adults, Andrew has 5 inches of height on AJ so I’m guessing they’re around the same size at this point, plus Andrew was a swimmer so he’s in good shape too. Physically, I’d say they’re pretty evenly matched. 

So it really comes down to skill and ferocity. I don’t think either of these people have been in a serious fight before, but football is probably sort of similar (?) so I’m giving it to AJ on skill. So it’s about ferocity, about the fight and anger each boy has inside them. 

Which means it’s going to Andrew. In the first two seasons, Andrew is a truly sociopathic emotional terrorist who feels no remorse or empathy, and AJ’s hypersensitivity simply isn’t strong enough to compete with that. This fight would never get physical, because Andrew would verbally eviscerate AJ before it even had the chance to. Maybe they’d each get a swing or two in. To Tony’s constant disappointment, AJ Soprano just doesn’t really have any fight in him. 

So Andrew would win the fight, and it would be easy. But the real fight wouldn’t be between Andrew and AJ at all, it would be between Bree and Tony. The strongest similarity between the boys is that neither faces consequences for their actions because their parents will do everything they can to ensure they don’t have to (probably a major theme of the early aughts teenage boy canon overall!). There’s just no way Tony Soprano would let someone like Andrew Van de Kamp have the upper hand over his son. And while I do think Bree would destroy Tony in an argument, ultimately Tony Soprano is Tony Soprano and he will always win. BUT, I think Bree and Andrew Van de Kamp would break his spirit a bit and that’s not nothing! 

Ultimately the AJ Soprano Andrew Van de Kamp cage match would be sort of lame and disappointing, nothing like the true best cage match matchup between the two shows: Lynette Scavo vs. Janice Soprano.