Television Review: Kaisha (The Sopranos, S6X12, 2006)

Kaisha (S06E12)

Airdate: June 4th 2006

Written by: David Chase, Terence Winter & Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Alan Taylor

Running Time: 59 minutes

For devotees of long-form television, few frustrations rival the anticlimax of a once-brilliant series stumbling toward its conclusion, its creator fumbling the narrative baton. By Season 6 of The Sopranos, this anxiety had crystallised among fans. David Chase, the show’s auteur, initially envisioned the fifth season as its endpoint, only to be coaxed into extending the saga. Yet, as production unfolded, Chase deemed a single concluding season insufficient, cleaving Season 6 into two parts, aired a year apart. The twelfth episode, Kaisha, thus became an ersatz finale—a narrative pause rather than a crescendo. While compelling in isolation, the episode epitomises the structural awkwardness of a story straining to outlast its natural lifespan, caught between resolution and prolongation.

Kaisha opens with a dedication to James Patterson, the director behind every prior season finale, who died in 2005. The gesture feels elegiac, a meta-commentary on the show’s own mortality. Set during Christmas (despite airing in spring), the episode leverages the holiday’s inherent nostalgia—familial gatherings, wistful reflections—to mimic closure. Twinkling lights and saccharine carols contrast with the rot festering beneath the Sopranos’ veneer, yet the festive trappings cannot mask the strain of a narrative treading water.

The episode’s mob plotline hinges on the escalating war between the DiMeo and Lupertazzi families. A diplomatic sit-down, brokered by the chronically inept Little Carmine, collapses when his careless remark inflames tensions. Even the FBI’s Agent Harris, typically a foil, warns Tony of imminent hits—a surreal nod to their symbiotic relationship. The crisis is abruptly deferred by Phil Leotardo’s heart attack, a deus ex machina as contrived as it is convenient. Tony’s hospital visit to Phil, wherein he shares his own near-death epiphany (“I didn’t want to come back to that place”), teeters on maudlin. Alan Taylor’s direction lingers on Phil’s tear-streaked face, suggesting vulnerability, yet seasoned viewers know this détente is fleeting. Chase’s script, co-written with Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner, gestures toward redemption but undercuts it with irony: Tony’s “enlightenment” is merely tactical, another manipulation in a life of performative contrition.

Domestic strife mirrors the familial feud. Carmela’s nagging curiosity about Adriana’s disappearance—a ghost haunting the series—is silenced not by truth, but by Tony strong-arming a building inspector to greenlight her spec house. Her complicity in this quid pro quo underscores the marriage’s transactional core. Meanwhile, Tony’s thwarted lust for Julianna Skiff metastasizes into self-destruction via Christopher. Their affair, rekindled in narcotics Anonymous meetings, descends into mutual relapse. Chris’s fabrication of a black girlfriend named “Kaisha”—a feeble ruse to obscure his addiction—echoes Tony’s own duplicity, a generational cycle of deceit. The relationship’s dissolution, soundtracked by Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo score during a fantasy sequence, aims for Hitchcockian grandeur but lands as pretentious navel-gazing.

In a rare uptick, A.J. (Robert Iler) evolves from insufferable man-child to something approximating adulthood. His menial construction job introduces him to Bianca Delgado (played by Dania Ramirez), a Dominican single mother a decade his senior. Their relationship, initially a rebellion against his parents’ bigotry, becomes a crucible for growth. Tony’s begrudging tolerance—contrasted with Carmela’s muted discomfort—hints at progress, yet the show undercuts this at the Christmas party. Bianca’s presence, though celebrated, feels less like acceptance than tokenism, a Band-Aid on the family’s ingrained prejudices. A.J.’s arc, while redemptive, rings hollow; Chase has conditioned viewers to expect regression, not renewal.

Amid the gloom, Little Carmine again emerges as an unlikely voice of reason. His malapropism-laden plea for peace accidentally distils the episode’s theme: the futility of half-measures in a world beyond redemption. It’s a masterstroke of tragicomedy, highlighting the character’s latent wisdom beneath the buffoonery. Yet, like all potential resolutions in Kaisha, it’s swiftly undermined by the plot’s inertia.

Kaisha’s fatal flaw lies in its liminality. As a season finale, it lacks the cathartic heft of predecessors like Whitecaps or Funhouse. Chris and Julianna’s arc reeks of melodramatic contrivance, while Phil’s tearful truce feels unearned. The episode’s brighter moments—A.J.’s maturity, Tony’s fleeting introspection—are shadowed by the knowledge that Chase’s storytelling ethos thrives on subversion. Fans, by now fluent in his narrative sadism, recognise these “positive” developments as setup for impending collapse. The real finale, yet to come, looms like a guillotine.

Kaisha encapsulates The Sopranos’ late-stage paradox: a series too brilliant to falter, yet too entrenched in its rhythms to escape them. Chase’s genius lies in his refusal to pander, but here, that integrity becomes a straitjacket. The episode, though rich in tension and texture, cannot transcend its role as an intermission. It is, in the end, a placeholder—a haunting reminder that in Tony’s world, as in life, closure is a myth peddled to soothe the inevitable chaos ahead.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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