Before we get to this week’s rundown of Sons of Anarchy, we have a very cool announcement to make. On the week of the Sons of Anarchy finale, UPROXX is giving away a very cool new T-shirt to 100 people. However, in order to be eligible to receive the shirt, you need to unlock the ALLY badge. Find out how to unlock that badge here; it doesn’t take a lot. Simply participate in a couple of Sons of Anarchy discussion posts by leaving a comment or sharing the post on Facebook or Twitter. The shirt looks totally bad ass, too. Have a look:
Now, let’s get to this week’s Sons of Anarchy:
1. It Was an Unusually Badly Written Episode — Was it just me, or was this week’s Kurt Sutter co-written episode particularly badly written? The dialogue was, at times, cringeworthy: “After my Thomas died, I did the worst thing a mother can do. I made you make up for the love he couldn’t give. I’m sorry, Jax.” Or, “This is bad, Wayne. It’s really bad.” “Yeah, I know, sweetheart.” Sutter has never been incredibly gifted with dialogue, but it was downright painful at times this week. Structurally, this season reminds me of an chart floating around the Internet right now, “Every Episode of The Walking Dead Summed Up,” which can be easily modified and applied to Sons: Great introduction, somebody does something stupid, motorcycle riding, nothing happens, HUGE CLIFFHANGER that compels us to keep watching next week. T
2. Chekhov’s Abel — Foreshadowing THE HUGE CLIFFHANGER: It should’ve been obvious something was going to happen to Abel as soon as we saw this ham-fisted shot of an adorable sleeping child in the first three minutes of the episode (Peter Weller, aka, Robocop, directed last night’s episode). If that wasn’t enough clunky foreshadowing, Gemma also fumbled her seatbelt. No subtlety here, folks.
3. THE HUGE CLIFFHANGER — Sutter seemed to take another cue from Breaking Bad this week by maybe killing off a kid, in this case, Abel. Gemma — who had been given babysitting rights by a softening Tara — drove her SUV off the road while high. As the episode ends, we see Gemma knocked unconscious, the little one crying, and a tree through the side of the SUV where Abel is sitting while Abel bleeding onto his stuff animal. Is he dead? Initially, I thought so (and I was peeved about it because it was more cheap and manipulative than shocking), but the more I thought about it, I don’t think so. The show couldn’t sustain that realistically. It would take Wendy out of the equation (and she’s due back later this season), and there’s no realistic way that Jax wouldn’t disown Gemma. It’s more likely that she will attempt to cover up the accident so that Tara and Jax do not realize that she was high while driving the kids around in the middle of the night. Covering it up will likely mean recruiting Unser, Nero, or more likely Clay, which would give them a secret that ties them together again.
4. The Joel McHale Watch — That was bullsh*t. Complete and total bullsh*t. You don’t bring the brilliant Joel McHale on for that? Sutter could’ve hired any jackass to play a con man that preys on Cougars. McHale got all of three scenes before Nero kicked the crap out of him, presumably ending his run. Lame. Also lame: The stunt man. I wish I could get a better screengrab, but in motion, the stunt-doubling was guffawtastic (Jax’s is not so good, either).
5. Lyla Is Working for Nero — We didn’t get to see much of her, but I’m glad that they found a way to keep Lyla around, even after Opie’s death.
6. Otto Ain’t Gonna Want to Look at Pictures of Us — Simply to remind us that Otto is still in play, Tara and Bobby have a discussion about what might remind Otto of what he loves about the club. Apparently, Tara thinks that getting some of Luanne’s perfume is all it’s going to take to make Otto drop his RICO testimony. It’s not just any perfume, though; it smells like cum and patchouli, the scent of the Gods.
7. You Were a Good Friend, Wayne — The episode’s opening sequence basically caught all the characters up to where the audience has been for weeks: Clay was using the Nomads for the home invasions as a play to get his seat back at the table. However, we did learn that Clay promised the Nomads a piece of the drugs and money if he snatched the Presidency back. Gotta say: The exchange between Unser and Clay was my favorite part of last night’s show. That was a solid piece of acting from both guys.
8. Clay Will Never Get Away With It, Right? — Unser knows that Clay is behind the home invasions. Jax and Elvis know that Clay is behind the home invasions. There’s no way out of this, right? He’s trapped? Actually, this is where I give Sutter the most credit — with some exceptions (OK, A LOT of exceptions), Sutter is pretty good at writing himself out of a corner. Here, both Jax and Unser knew the Nomads were behind the home invasions, so Clay takes the two Nomads out of the picture, using Unser as an unwitting accomplice. It wasn’t neat, but it works. Fun Fact: Greg the Peg is played by Kurt Yaeger, a former BMX bicyclist who lost a leg in a real-life motorcycle accident.
RIP Greg the Peg.
9. “Let the Club Decide Who Lives and Dies” — So, killing two Nomads gets Unser off of Clay’s back, but what about Jax? This is where the OTHER cliffhanger falls: To throw suspicion off of himself, Clay — presumably — sets up an incident where Jax and Chibs are shot at by two men in a van with machine guns. Somehow, they miss, and Clay and Chibs shoot back, killing one, who turns out to be black, which obviously makes him a Niner because all black people are Niners, right? RACISTS. Who got away? Was it Frankie? Did they mean to miss with the machine guns, and if so, why? If Clay is behind it, wouldn’t killing Jax be the easiest way to get his seat back?
Also, Frankie has terrible facial hair.
10. Living On Borrowed Time — The scene between Tara and Clay, where Clay admits he’s living on borrowed time, while Tara comes back with, “You’re already dead to me,” was more for the benefit of the eavesdropping Juice than anything else. That — along with his unwitting involvement with the Nomads — is making Juice question his loyalty to Clay, which seems to be heading somewhere monumental, possibly Clay setting Juice up to take the fall for the Nomads. That would suck, and it would ensure theUproxx Q&A jinx is in full effect (if Juice dies, maybe we can have Maggie Siff for our next Q&A).
Juice looks terrified.
