Comments on The House Next Door: The Sopranos Mondays: Season 6, Ep. 12, "Kaisha"

I've just re-watched this fabulous episode on my S...

2006-12-18T16:55:00.000-05:00

I've just re-watched this fabulous episode on my Season 6 boxed set DVD and am posting this message on the Seaon 6 Episode 2 blog and for the season-ender.

I am THRILLED to read that Sean Burns also thought he heard Drea de Matteo's voice instead of Edie Falco's voice on the phone when Tony (in Kevin Finnerty form)called home from his hotel room.

The image of the beacon or searchlight outside his window was an unforgettable visual, one that inspires equal amounts of dreaminess, dread and desire on each viewing. The image is echoed a few episodes later when Carmela notices the beacon atop the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

What are these characters searching for? Tony finds his way back to Real Life, but his deathbed words: "Who am I? Where am I going?" permeate Season 6.

But back to the Voice. When I first watched the episode, I could swear it belonged to the dead Adrianna, and I still think so upon re-viewing and listening. But I can't find any verification on various Sopranos' sites. (If someone out there has absolute, insider information, please share it!)

However, if David Chase did in fact substitute de Matteo's voice for Falco's, I'm sure he wants it to remain a tantalizing possibility, a dream-like experience!

It makes sense that the voice Tony hears (and, in the manner of dreams, accepts) belongs to Adrianna rather than to Carmela. This reflects Tony's deepest mixed feelings towards his nephew's dead fiance -- paternal affection, sexual attraction, fury over her talking to the FBI, and finally guilt over having ordered her execution in order to protect himself and Christopher, in that order. (Not to mention lying to Carmela about Ade's whereabouts and doing everything possible to throw her off the scent.)

Note, too, that while in Paris, Carmela herself sees and hears Adrianna in a brief but haunting dream sequence. In her dream, she sees Adrianna walking a small white dog along the Champs Elysee. She is tall and spectacularly dressed (for once!) in French couture, her mane of long, curly hair making her recognizable to the audience even from behind. When she turns, she calls out to Carmela: "Look, I found Cosette!"

Cosette, poor Adrianna's love object and surrogate child, is, as we all know, dead -- unintentionally crushed by a drug-dazed Christopher.

Both the dog and the woman are dead (at Christopher's hand, to some greater or lesser degree), and those closest to Carmela are responsible. In the dream, they are calling out to her, the personification of her own dark, deeply buried suspicions and fears.

I believe this theme (Adrianna's death, Tony's involvement, Carmela's suspicions) will play a pivotal role in the second half of Season Six and, indeed in the finale of the Sopranos.

If so, then Chase is a master of his craft. He has produced a wealth of lyrical images and portents (a year in advance of any dramatic conclusion or resolution). His audience may miss them, at least on a conscious level on first viewing. Buth they contribute both to the richness of Chase's creation and to how we experience and re-experience it.

Guys,Paulie might have had a non-white girlfriend,...

2006-06-11T17:03:00.000-04:00

Guys,

Paulie might have had a non-white girlfriend, but it's Hesh who has a weakness for black girls.

I have watched the season and had my own ?'s and d...

2006-06-10T20:44:00.000-04:00

I have watched the season and had my own ?'s and doubts,but just found Matt's site thanks to DEADWOOD boards.

So many people complain about the plodding along; I think maybe, just MHO, that some of the point this season underlines, is that even the mob s l o w s down sometimes, and their lives get mundane, too. But should we be paying out $$$ for someone to point that out in plotline? Questions beget more questions. ;)

MHO of the Tony/Phil hosp scene: Tony is giving Phil what he considers, good advice. People who go thru life-threatening experiences OFTEN feel exactly the way Tony expressed. (BTW I think he recuperated amazingly fast!...but the timeline DID get a little woozy there.) What one person might take for granted as a given, well, look at the general goofballs they each have working for them!

My money's on the last 8 episodes being killer again. Just MHO. :)

This is about an older episode but thought I would...

2006-06-10T06:31:00.000-04:00

This is about an older episode but thought I would quote it here since it is the last Sopranos thread. I thought it might interest you chaps though. From Dr. Z of SI.com:

...Christopher casually announced that he sold his five cases for $300. Whoooa, Nellie! Hold on there. Pichon Baron is a second classified growth, 1986 is a very fashionable vintage. This 20-year-old wine is drinking beautifully right now ... it's "a point," as the French say. The street value at the wholesale level is around $160 a bottle; in the stores it'll go for $250 or so. Christopher sold it for $5 a bottle and bragged about it. When I started writing wines 35 years ago or so it was more expensive than that. Either Christopher is a whole lot dumber than we've ever figured or someone in the David Chase writing factory didn't do his homework. Shocking!

available here.

All the comments I've read about the VERTIGO music...

2006-06-06T16:52:00.000-04:00

All the comments I've read about the VERTIGO music sampling focus on Christopher's turning Juliana into another Adriana, but the music cue occurs after the therapy scene wherein Tony realizes that all his serious affairs have been with women of a common template -- dark, brainy, with a smell of money about them. As Dr. Melfi says, "What's that about?" This could be another direction for the remaining episodes.

Also, I don't see this episode as badly edited, but rather compressively structured. It's interesting to look back and see which stories the show decided to chronicle in depth, and which ones it chose to compress. In this case, as some have noted, some of the character arcs in this episode are familiar and don't need any more detailing... but I trust David Chase to the extent of his knowing where the pieces need to be on the board in order for him to stage his final coup d'theatre.

I think it's going to be interesting to see if Christopher turns out to be a dead man walking or the last man standing when all is said and done.

A musician friend of mine said once that it's okay...

2006-06-06T15:21:00.000-04:00

A musician friend of mine said once that it's okay to break the rules so long as you break them brilliantly. Many who enjoyed this episode cite as its principal attraction the rejection of conventional narrative choices: no big shootout, not a stunning revelation in sight (at least not one we believe, thinking of AJ here) and an unabashed refusal to cliffhang. Sort of like literary short stories in the late 90's, the episode dared you to complain about the lack of compelling plot.

Yet we will only remember what thrilled us on the screen (even when it is quite subdued), not some vague relief that the writers avoided disasterous choices. If you're going to write a quiet story, you damn well better be profound. If your character movements are slight and understated, they require epic resonance. Barring that, you better blow somebody's brains out. What resonates from this episode? Yes it foreshadows dramatic tension by its absence, but so does my sleeping cat. Eventually you must deliver.

The most compelling moment of the this season for me was the conversation between Tony and Dr. Melfi when she asks what Tony inherited and he responds: "...my mother." That scene was very good writing lifted to greatness by a transcendent actor. With performers like Gandolfini and Falco, the writing doesn't have to be pitch perfect, but for the standard we're pining for it must come close. The innovations must delight and turns from convention must stand on their own merit in that surprising and inevitable way we're hoping to see again.

About Chris's comment re: Paulie's racism: A) Chri...

2006-06-06T14:57:00.000-04:00

About Chris's comment re: Paulie's racism: A) Chris was making up a lame excuse about an imaginary girlfriend, similar to his later, awkward Luther Vandross ad-lib. B) Paulie's dalliances with black women would certainly not stop him from making racist comments. C) Tony saw the larger point - "She would feel it," much like AJ's new girl must feel it on her unwelcome visit to the Soprano home.

It's not the show it was. It's not Deadwood, or The Wire, or even Veronica Mars, but it's still good TV, and I don't get the sense that the person pulling the strings just doesn't give a damn anymore.

I thought it was a great end to a fine season. One...

2006-06-06T14:11:00.000-04:00

I thought it was a great end to a fine season. One thing I've always loved about "The Sopranos" is that the season-enders are not necessarily conventional cliffhangers -- but often with family gatherings that are a lot more complex than they seem on the surface (but then, aren't ALL family gatherings like that?). Remember the season that ended with Uncle Junior singing?

Anyway, I agree that it didn't seem like all that much was happening in "Kaisha" while you were watching it -- but that's part of its genius. Go back and watch what's happening between shots (especially cuts from one scene to another), how they lead you to expect one thing, but then deliver another.

I wrote about this episode (and the first episode of the season) in another context (about some idiot complaining about "product placement" in the serries) at Scanners here:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2006/06/product_placement_the_lives_of.html

EXCERPT: And the final tableau, of the Soprano's suburban palace in all its finery, decorated for Christmas with the family gathered round the hearth, was presented as the most meticulously composed and fragile of images, one we know is phony, impossible to maintain, and destined to be shattered in the final season. It was heartbreaking, breathtaking. Bianca, AJ's new Puerto Rican girlfriend (sporting a bling-y necklace AJ's bought her, mainly to show off to his dad), and her son Hector, join the Soprano clan for a moment of heartwarming, ritualized domestic bliss on Christmas Eve. The last words:

Blanca: You have a gorgeous home.
Carmella: Thank you.... We do.

And with that, the camera receded, "Silent Night" faded into the Stones' "Moonlight Mile" (which had been used brilliantly in the episode's opening minutes -- "With a head full of snow"), and we knew that we were seeing not only a carefully crafted, Christmas-card illusion, but the calm before the storm (i.e., the final eight episodes). All the Sopranos are just another a moonlight mile down the road from home. They sometimes feel "home" is close, but they can never quite get there.
"A gorgeous home." That's what the whole season led up to. (Carmella is literally trying to build a "gorgeous home" -- a spec house -- but she's had a few problems with the building inspectors.) Earlier in the episode, Tony has attempted to reassure a stressed-out Carm: "You raised two gorgeous kids, you gotta husband that loves you, you made us a beautiful home. Doesn't that count for something?" This scene began with a close-up of a packaged Murray's "All-Natural Turkey," intended for Christmas dinner -- and followed scenes involving a human head in a freezer; Tony closing the deal to sell the building housing the family-run Cavulo's Live Poultry to Jamba Juice; Christopher and Kelly, his recently impregnated wife, discussing how to paint/brand the nursery (Kelly: "'Morning Sunshine,' Benjamin Moore. And we can do the border with the Disney characters") in their beautiful new McMansion home, and Christopher telling her: "Remember the penguin movie, how you cried? You sit on an egg for months, one little thing goes wrong, you're left with nothin'"; and Carmella visiting Ade's suicidal mother in the hospital, bearing a bouquet of florist-brand, plastic-wrapped flowers. You may see a few motifs running through here -- birth, death, corpses, brands, the idea of raising children and creating a home... and they're all interwoven.

The editing was odd. One scene, Juliana Margulies ...

2006-06-06T13:39:00.000-04:00

The editing was odd. One scene, Juliana Margulies is sick on the couch coughing her head off, the next she is in a car doing drugs with Christopher. Chris' comment about Paulie's racism was odd because I too recall Paulie having black girlfriends. Also, why was Hugh suddenly at the family gathering when he'd been ignoring Carmela since their fight earlier in the season? The whole episode seemed sloppy to me.

Imaginary conversations aside, one of the things I...

2006-06-06T13:22:00.000-04:00

Imaginary conversations aside, one of the things I find most fascinating about the deconstruction of this episode here is how it echos the simmering outrage that accompanies so many leading edge works/artists/etc. The people who are disappointed by the episode, or this year's series of shows, are infuriated. As if the show's shortcomings -- real or perceived -- amount to a violation.

But to me "The Sopranos," like any product of living, flawed humans, is a fluid thing. Even more than most, because Chase and co. are so intent on pushing the boundaries of TV convention. Remember how enraged some viewers were after the "Pine Barrens" episode when the Russian seemed to vanish into thin air? When Chase appeared at the TV Critics Association meetings a few months later he made it very clear that the corporeal existence of the Russian was beside the point: the character was a wraith of sorts; a device to push Chrisopher and Paulie out into the frozen wasteland of their own fucked up souls. This is not how the tv world of "Law & Order" works, and thank god for that. Freed of the mechanistic demands of reality, "Pine Barrens" was harrowing, hilarious, brilliant, and overflowing with revelations that might not otherwise have been so vivid.

Not every episode could live up to that standard. No serious risk taker is going to bat 1.000. But even if Chase and co. fail it seems to me they do it in the spirit of discovery.

It would have been so much easier to end this arc with a fusillade of gunfire or threats of all-out war. Instead, it went out in much more intriguing, sinister fashion: the Christopher/Tony/Juliana love triangle that, as Adam noted, echoed the Christopher/Adrianna/Tony triangle from last season; another bout of self-destruction from Christopher (which, boring as it may be, is entirely realistic, just ask anyone familiar with the cycles of addiction and recovery); that scary little doorway dance between Tony and Phil's evil little henchman; Carmela's glee at the construction of her sub-standard spec house, coupled with her smug delight about her own "lovely home."

What we're left with are some fat, smug people who are too stupid to know exactly how deadly (and close) their fall is going to be. Which would be intriguing enough if their plight weren't also such a neat encapsulation of the fat, smug, morally lax, gay-bashing, Iraqi civilian-killing home we all inhabit.

Or maybe I'm wrong. But that's why I loved that episode.

Firstly, provocative read by Adam N, as I was driv...

2006-06-06T13:07:12.620-04:00

Firstly, provocative read by Adam N, as I was driving myself nuts figuring out the relevance of Hermann's music during Chris' "latest and greatest" relapse. How clever that they managed to tie Julianna M. not only into Tony's previous sexual history but Chris' as well.

As for the episode at large, man did I hate this one. I've been down on the season pretty much from episode 2 on but it only just dawned on me why. In Goodfellas (which not only is the template for the show but also happens to be my favorite film of the last 20 years) they spend 2 hours building you up like a rockstar, blinding you to the consequences of the lifestyle (because being a gangster is so much fun, right?) only to tear it all down in the final 20 minutes by pushing us through a coke-stained wringer of paranoia, resentment and fear. Very effective as both drama and morality tale. But what "The Sopranos" has done is push our noses in shit for 12 weeks as punishment for immorality I barely remember seeing 2 years ago.

It's an interesting approach to take to the network's most popular show and I almost admire the way the show road that horse all the way to the bitter end, never getting nervous and accidentally including a fun episode along the way, but I can't shake the feeling that this all has more to do with Chase's annoyance with the situation over at HBO (this guy has threatened to walk away more times than Clemens) than of the requirements of the show. You need episodes for syndication? I'll give ya episodes. But seriously, if I wanted my entertainment to serve as taskmaster, whacking me on the nose for past transgressions, I'd be first in line for the new Von Trier.

The show has lost all concept of pacing and momentum and has becomes something I'd never thought possible, which is sloppy (Chris getting his car repossessed on a bright and sunny day, a scene later on the same day Sil and Tony traipsing through a foot of snow, etc...) Also, to hark back to my recent gig, the "Lost"-like flashbacks have become the latest blight on the show. As Sean said earlier, this material used to be gradually integrated into the show over the course of weeks. Now entire dynamics are shoe-horned in between act-breaks. Hard to believe there was a time when I was saddened that this show was ending.

Checking the internet, I see that the departure of...

2006-06-06T12:07:00.000-04:00

Checking the internet, I see that the departure of Green and Burgess (ostensibly to pursue a new HBO project - a rationale that sends chills down the spine of us DEADWOOD addicts and rings hollow in light of their subsequently announced network pilot)came exactly one week after the announcement that the final season was being extended into 20 episodes in two parts. This timeline wouldn't necessarily be inconsistent with the filming of the sixth episode, Green/Burgess's script for which seems to have been thrown out and hastily rewritten - and of course that would match completely with the moment that the show ground to a halt and began treading water.

I can just picture that writers' meeting:

Chase: "Quick, guys, we need to pull 8 new episodes out of our asses and save the rest of this season's plots for next year. That Vito thing we were gonna wrap up in the first ten minutes of this week's episode - Robin and Mitch, you can drag that out over five episodes, right? Throw in some scenes of Christopher doing drugs if you're running short."

Burgess: "Mr. Chase, sir, permission to speak?"

Chase: "Granted, but make it snappy."

Burgess: "I just don't know if we can fill five whole episodes."

Chase: "Goddamnit, people, think outside the box! I don't know . . . hmm . . . give Chris a new pregnant wife . . . Give Paulie cancer . . . send Carm to Paris. . . I'm just thinking out lout here. Brainstorm, people. This is what I'm paying you for. . . . Robin! . . . Mitch! . . . where are you going? Wait, come back! All right, fine. Good riddence. Fuck 'em. Now, Terence - wait . . . don't you get out of that seat! I saw the 50 Cent movie. You know you'll never work outside of television again - you can NOT afford to leave this room. Now whip me up two or three scripts - pad 'em out with flashbacks and retype your old scripts with new words if you have to. See if there's anything in the can we never used that we can splice in. Just have it on my desk by three."

Weiner: "Mr. Chase, sir, oooh, oooh, can I write one? I've got a great Neil Young joke I've spent the past month working on. But I wonder, will Allen be able to work fast enough for these new scripts?"

Chase: "Good point, Matt. [into intercom] Jenna -- fire Allen and get me the guy who did Dude Where's My Car on the horn - I hear he works fast and cheap. And my goddamn coffee's cold again!"

Winter: "Boss, we got a problem. What if Jimmy doesn't live to film next year. Or what if the rest of the cast winds up in jail?"

Chase: "Good point Terry. Slap a happy ending on the mid-season finale. One of those Mr. Belvedere specials where everyone grows and moves forward with their lives and wears berets and shit. That way, we're covered if we can't come back after all."

Winter: "Boss, did you really need the money that badly?"

Chase: "Frankly, I was ready to walk away from the money, tough as it was to do that. But when I got Chris to actually agree to throw DEADWOOD off my fuckin' network before it ruins my HBO legacy once and for all, I couldn't say no. I just wonder how the fuck they're gonna explain that one . . ."

Guess I'm in the minority here -- I thought it was...

2006-06-06T11:34:00.000-04:00

Guess I'm in the minority here -- I thought it was a great episode.

I had no problems with the Christopher an AJ plots, given that the episode took place over a few months.

Phil's tears, especially after his reaction to John at the wedding, were perfect -- almost karmic retribution. Tony's speech was brilliant.

I also dug the Vertigo and Casablanca references, though I'll have to watch the episode again to work out why they were included.

There was an overwhelming sense of artificiality to the episode -- as if we were witnessing a dream -- especially in that final scene, which was more than a bit creepy. The positioning of the characters, and Carmella's final utterance -- I don't buy the whole Norman Rockwell thing. Something is afoot.

I thought that "Kaisha" was borderline-brilliant. ...

2006-06-06T10:57:00.000-04:00

I thought that "Kaisha" was borderline-brilliant. A little ragged in the execution but packed with great moments (A.J.'s girlfriendtotally scoping out the opulent Soprano home; Christopher mocking the "50 Cent" movie, which was of course written by Terence Winter; Tony tenderly improvising at Phil's bedside) and indicative of Chase and co's remarkable patience.
And it was, to my mind, beautifully suggestive of where the show is going.
So,(with thanks to E. Michaels, , with whom I discussed this scenario) try this one on for size:
"Kaisha" is all about Adrianna. Sil's associate kicking the head down the drainpipe and Christopher's "Vertigo"-scored (come on, y'all caught that in the movie theatre scene, didn't you?) dalliance with a tall, curly-haired woman who enables his smack use and lolls around in fancy underwear, an unconcious stab at reclaiming his old relationship, are obvious nods to her character. Which is doubly fascinating when you realize that one of the last things Adrianna did before she died was almost reciprocate Tony's clumsy affections... this new love triangle is an echo of a past near-catastrophe that turned into a genuine tragedy.
With the exception of the stripper beaten to death by Ralphie, Adrianna is the closest thing the series has to a major innocent victim (yeah, she lived high on the hog thanks to Christopher's malfeasance, but everything's relative here) and I think her death is going to end up being the thing that brings everything down. If the FBI finds out what happened to Adrianna -- not so far-fetched when you remember how much time they put into her case -- then it could give them the leverage to convince Tony to flip. (And wouldn't Tony taking a deal rather than being "punished" in the Michael Coreleone sense speak eloquently to the moral rot of the show's universe?) Hence the increasingly regular appearances of the friendly, helpful fed -- they're gauging Tony's newfound receptivity. Now, Tony wouldn't flip because he'd be scared of the legal consequences (a la Johnny Sack) but because Carmela (and by extension, the kids) would never, ever come back once they found out about Adrianna. Carmela is a hypocritical spoiled child, but she likes her righteous indignation and this would send her over the edge (at least until the money ran out).
I think Sil did something sloppy with regards to disposing of Adrianna -- which is suggested in the way he haphazardly killed that low-level New York guy two weeks ago -- and it's going to come back to haunt everyone. (These guys like to think they're experts at covering their tracks, but it's not plausible that the authorities are total incompetents -- hey, maybe Carmela will set the whole thing rolling by hiring that podunk P.I.)
I think that on some level, Tony could be (likely unconsciously)happy living, in the parlance of Goodfellas, as a "shnook" -- unlike Henry Hill, he cares about something larger than himself (his family, the ducks, etc) and while lumbering out of some suburban dump to pick up a newspaper that he pays for would be humiliating, as long as Carmela and the kids were safe (and oblivious as to what he did) he'd be content. And that's what the whole show is about -- Tony's desire to protect his family, and thus find peace. I think Chase is willing to reward Tony's attempts at self-actualization -- maybe he can change, a little, and maybe we should be proud of him. I fully expect that if he flips, he'll literally end up as Kevin Finnerty, who is, as Melfi once termed Tony, a "very conventional man."
But once he's in hiding, he'd only have a few years before some young boss driving his daughter to a college open-house took a detour to garrotte him...

You nailed it, Sean. The boss has no clothes. (W...

2006-06-06T10:07:00.000-04:00

You nailed it, Sean. The boss has no clothes. (What an image.) I'm going to miss your recaps more than I'm going to miss the show!

"What else could explain that Christmas tableau?"I...

2006-06-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

"What else could explain that Christmas tableau?"

If you recall, just as each season used to begin with the Star-Ledger in the driveway, each of the first 3 seasons ended with a family/"family" gathering (blackout at Vesuvio, Meadow's graduation, Jackie Jr.'s post-funeral). I think that the ending of the "season finale that wasn't" was a deliberate throw back to halcyon days of the Soprano clan(s), and a signal that those days are numbered. (The musical choice of the Stones's "Moonlight Mile" to open and close the show also harkened back to the use of "Thru and Thru" at the opening and closing of the season 2 finale.)

"I rarely find an absence of action to be all that disappointing."

To be honest, I found the suspense of the threat of violence more satisfying than any payoff would have been. Especially in the last few years where television writers have been offing characters just to be edgy -- yes, I'm talking to you, "24" -- I've grown tired of using deaths as climax-in-a-box.

I won't, however, defend the Christopher and Juliana subplot, which as has been pointed out, was redundant and uninteresting.

Peter: Think any of this is a purposeful echo of t...

2006-06-06T02:48:13.983-04:00

Peter: Think any of this is a purposeful echo of the ducks-leaving-the-pool moment in the first episode of the first season?

Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, there was so much bird-shit in this ep I started to get actively annoyed. (I really wanted the bear to come back.)

But yes, it seems like everybody I talk to agrees that -- whatever the outcome of this next/current season-- the show's final image has got to be to be those damn ducks coming back to the pool. It's the only logical choice, right?

m.a. peel: everything from the point of Christophe...

2006-06-06T02:41:36.940-04:00

m.a. peel: everything from the point of Christopher and Julianna in the movie house is Chrissy's drug-enduced hallucination. What else could explain that Christmas tableau?

I never thought I'd long to see a show close with a shot of Patrick Duffy in the shower.

Josh & Peter: It's not that I have that much trouble with the content of both the Christopher and A.J. stories (even if I'm so tired of watching Chrissy get stoned I could rip out handfuls of my hair) - it's just that these two big storylines were shoved down our gullets in their entirety all at once, when in previous years the show would have allowed them them develop over time, and perhaps, by doing so, create a little bit of suspense - an ingredient that seems to be off the menu these days.

I just had a long conversation with frequent poster "Greg C", and if I may borrow some of his insights -- I concur that something seriously bad must have happened behind the scenes this season... I hope we hear the whole story someday.

The concision and forward momentum of those phenomenal early episodes seemed to fly out the window right around the time Robin Green & Mitch Burgess quit the show, and all of the sudden a the writing credits grew longer and longer, often ending with the words: "and David Chase."

Meanwhile, the continuity got sloppy and the timeline seriously confused.

And hey, doesn't Paulie always have black girlfriends? How can Chris complain about his "Paulie's racist shit?" and get a sad nod from Tony in return? Do these guys even watch their own show?

I didn't think it was terrible, and in "The Sopran...

2006-06-06T01:28:00.000-04:00

I didn't think it was terrible, and in "The Sopranos"'s case, I rarely find an absence of action to be all that disappointing.

True, A.J.'s metamorphosis seemed a trifle abrupt, but the sense of time in this year's episode has always ebbed and flowed. How many weeks/months passed since the end of the 11th episode to the start of the 12th? At least a month, maybe more. A kid as young and unformed as A.J. can have three life-changing experiences in a month.

I also found the through-line of Christopher and Juliana's relationship a bit confusing, but I didn't think there was anything out of synch about her move from the herbal tea, which was, she noted, a close relative of some opiate or other, and which she planned to ingest in a mega-huge dose of 8 or 12 tea bags per cup...seems she's not quite on the straight-and-narrow, does it?

The FBI agent bit was a brow-raiser...but is that an end unto itself, or part of something else? Who are those Middle Eastern guys he mentioned earlier, who Christopher sold some weapons to a few episodes back? Why did they pop up again (at the Bada Bing) in the same episode that the FBI agent showed up at Satriale's?

I also find Carmela's arc -- veering from simmering moral indignation to blinkered satisfaction, thanks to the go-ahead on her spec house project -- to be fascinating. And perhaps key. Is it possible that she is even less moral than Tony? What defines her appetites, and what (if anything) describes her limits?

Is it possible that this mid-season anti-climax (if you choose to see it like that...and I don't) is merely the first rumbles of the flood to come? I dunno. But I'm way more intrigued than I am disappointed.

ps: Recall Tony's ongoing infatuation with dinosaurs after he emerged from his coma. Then the lingering shots of birds. Dinosaurs evolved into birds. Ducks are birds. Think any of this is a purposeful echo of the ducks-leaving-the-pool moment in the first episode of the first season? I'm just askin'

I think the point about the editing--particularly ...

2006-06-06T01:17:00.000-04:00

I think the point about the editing--particularly the weirdly edited segment in the diner after Tony learns that someone close to him may be in danger--is arguable.

But psychologically, both Chris and Juliana's relationship and AJ's decision to give the straight life a try make perfect sense to me.

Chris and Juliana have their deep-seated unspoken reasons for being involved, and recognized each other from the pork store before they decide to go for coffee after that AA meeting. I found the fits and starts of their relationship or their drug use reasonably true to the way they must have experienced it.

What's left to AJ, really? After the events of this season, he probably realizes he is not cut out for his father's life, and as we could see in those club scenes, riding the family name was bringing him little pleasure. So, he's forced to work, puts some small effort into it, and he's rewarded with a relationship with a pretty girl he can convince himself he's earned on his own merits. It probably won't turn out to be redemption. His life, like Chris's, like everyone's in his family, will always be messy, morally and emotionally, but I don't have any trouble believing it to this point.

No one got whacked, and it wasn't an outstanding show, which is unusual for a season finale, but it's not really quite a season finale anyway, and it had its moments.

Sean--I think the greater commenting pool has been...

2006-06-06T00:58:00.000-04:00

Sean--I think the greater commenting pool has been stunned into apathetic silence by the fina--, by ep. 12. Maybe not the effect Chase was going for.

Maybe it was also that tired, hackneyed technique of the hallucination--everything from the point of Christopher and Julianna in the movie house is Chrissy's drug-enduced hallucination. What else could explain that Christmas tableau? No ? Okay. I did just stumble over from a House board.

I did not despise the episode with the passion that many did. The narrative is in a state of comparative tatters--that is a shame. And yet, Sinatra on the stereo, and the uber-gangster's nobler role of Rick Blaine on the TV--it made me smile. Chase is trying to work something out. His own touchstones are showing. Maybe with the end of his fictional mob--whatever that means in terms of plot-- comes an end to the cultural relevance of those earlier larger-than-life icons, as the generation who cared about them pass away. I feel a Yeats quotation coming on . . .

"Though the story-points were unforgivably rushed,...

2006-06-06T00:20:00.000-04:00

"Though the story-points were unforgivably rushed, 'Kaisha' still somehow felt slow and enervated."

Brilliant, concise and spot on.

To take away just a little bit more from the already much-maligned episode, I found AJ's remark to his father ("I've got a job.") a self-righteous outburst straight out of his sister's playbook. As such, it was yet another retread. He wouldn't have any job if it wasn't for his father.

Also, Tony's speech to Phil in the hospital room seemed sentimental to me; I actually thought it was quite egregiously sentimental. The only saving grace, for me, in the scene were Phil's tears: silent, he could be crying at Tony's speech, but I tend to think he's weeping over the fact that Tony will get to play with his grandkids but he won't get his revenge. His holding Tony's hand notwithstanding, I imagine him in the same position as Tony was, earlier in the season, having to hear about Paulie's chin-up championships.

Really a terrible show. Completely disappointing, ...

2006-06-05T22:53:00.000-04:00

Really a terrible show. Completely disappointing, and the kind of show that makes you wonder about the production difficulties. Did Sigler have to leave for a movie or something? Etc. Terrible.