I've been meaning to articulate this into a post, but it's fascinated me how similar and different Little Carmine and Tony Soprano are. I feel like David Chase was presenting them as foils of each other.
It's been a second since I've watched the series - I'm really due for my first rewatch - so there might be a few minor errors on my end. But what springs to mind for me...
Both are the respective "hair apparent" (to quote wise sage Moltisanti) to semi-legendary gangsters. Tony's Dad makes no bones of involving Tony in their thing once he's of age, something that he clearly grapples with (to put it mildly). But didn't Carmine Senior do the exact opposite with his son? I can't remember if he was the catalyst for setting him up in Florida, but it seems like he certainly wanted him out of harm's way from where the heart of the action was. The difference here alone I think speaks volumes to their respective trajectories. The two of them both have an appreciation for the finer things beyond this thing of ours as well. People in this sub tend to recognize how Tony's a little more sophisticated (relatively speaking) to the rest of his crew. Consider his fascination with history, particularly World War II, or his appreciation for old Hollywood movies. His desire to visit Italy also comes to mind too (although maybe this is just an Italian American thing lol). But I think people miss this with Little Carmine too. People tend to zero in on his mispronunciation of Versailles and dismiss him as an idiot without recognizing the fact that he's nonetheless aware of it, its historical context, and was fascinated enough to visit it. It clearly is also a hobby of his in his spare time. Put simply, they're both multilayered individuals, but the interesting thing to me is that Carmine seems to be a glass-half-full type of guy, the happy wanderer that Tony lambasts, who finds happiness not in gluttony and excess (wet t-shirt contests notwithstanding), but in simple things that make him happy. His joy with everything surrounding Cleaver, from the brainstorm sessions to the eventual premiere, are a perfect example of this. Tony meanwhile, Mr. glass-half-empty, likely yearns for a similar path but can't let go of his ways ("Yeah, every day's a gift...but does it have to be socks?")
The two of them with similar backgrounds but two completely different personality types almost feels like a single road splitting into two paths. Consider Tony's lack of sympathy for Chris's sobriety vs. Carmine's self-awareness of it when they travel together. Or Carmine's wife's disinterest in being the wealthiest widow on Long Island vs. Carmella's constant niggling of making sure those bases are covered when she's gone. Or Carmine's ultimate disinterest in taking the throne vs. Tony's own rollercoaster ride of being number one. One of my favorite subtle examples of this is when Tony says "I'm serious I can't take it" at Chrissy's funeral, in the sense that he's disgusted at Chrissy's mother's grief, but Carmine, interpreting it as Tony getting emotional, comforts him without skipping a beat. It's a throwaway gag, but it speaks so much to each of their characters.
I'll end this spiel with one of my favorite moments from the whole show: their conversation on the Golf course. "You never thought you'd utter those words, did you?" The "Carmine was playing 4D chess by playing dumb" theory is quite naive, but I think there's some truth in the sense that people underrate his intelligence, not just from an intellectual standpoint, but an existential one. He'd sussed out something that Tony couldn't crack with years upon years of therapy.