*spoiler warning*
Christopher Moltisanti is the protege of Tony Soprano on the HBO cable television show The Sopranos. He is an interesting character, because, as television shows are usually set up, it is as though we are supposed to root for him. He’s trying to make it big, he has a lot of (divergent) ambitions, and he struggles with a drug problem. However, the problem with Christopher is that he is a loser. Between his drugs and his murderous streak, he is a person who destroys everything around him.
He starts off the series as an insecure young gangster who is trying to become a “made guy.” In the first season, this is simply laughable. He dresses in track suits and sticks up other gangsters’ trucks, which ultimately gets his partner killed. However, as the series goes on, we see more and more that he becomes “capable” as a gangster, organizing criminal activities on his own.
However, he also becomes more and more of a drug addict as the series goes on, and he becomes increasingly unfocussed. On the one hand, he wants to be a gangster, but he also has bizarre ambitions to be a famous screenplay writer. He relapses on his drug use over and over again, and when he has a car accident with Tony in the car, Tony kills him.
What makes him ultimately a loser is that he manages both to be incompetent and destructive. On more than one occasion, he murders people for little reason, like when he kills his friend J.T. Dolan. He also doesn’t have the capacity to really take over as boss, and when Tony figures this out, Tony actually blames him.
Of course, his worst decision is his decision to help kill his fiancee, Adriana. In the initial episode, it appears that he was wavering on whether or not to go with her to the FBI, but in the next season, we see that the issue wasn’t whether or not to kill her, but just that he couldn’t do it himself. This, of course, costs the audience any sympathy they might have had for Christopher, and we can see him for the destructive loser that he is.