Last night’s second episode of the sixth season of Sons of Anarchy, “One-One-Six,” saw Jax pile on the lies, as he continued to evolve into Clay. Tara dropped two HUGE bombshells, Juice continues to get the worst jobs, Lee Toric flashed some more crazy, and the show added two more to this season’s body count as the consequences to last week’s school shooting continue to grow. Kurt Sutter is showing nice restraint this season, slowly developing the plot, but not so slow that it’s taken any of the excitement out of the series.
Let’s get right into the episode.
Thanks for meeting, Hop — Let’s quickly start with Bobby Munson this week, who is still separated from the rest of SAMCRO, developing relationships with other SAMCRO loners. He needs four to create a Nomad Club. He’s almost there, adding Quinn (who helped him move his fridge last week) and a guy named Hopper, who is played by Steve Howey (who is awesome in Showtime’s Shamless). Bobby is also looking very forlorn, and there’s nothing teddy-bear sadder than the dejected look of Mark Boone Junior, except maybe the dejected look of Mandy Patinkin in Homeland.
“I’m going to rat out my son, give up my club, I’m going to look him in the eye first, tell him why.” — Clay managed to live another day. He has agreed, in principle, to turns state’s evidence for Lee Toric and enter witness protection. However, he won’t sign the agreement until he’s seen both his wife and son. He sees Gemma and lays a huge guilt trip on her, telling her that she was right all along and that he was a terrible bastard over the last six months. “I never loved anybody the way I loved you, Gemma. And I know you feel the same.” Gemma, despite the tears, is having none of it. “You don’t know sh*t about how I feel.”
Toric has not, however, managed to get Jax to visit Clay, so Clay has not officially signed off on his confession. With Toric faking Clay’s signature later in the episode, Toric has perhaps given Clay a reason NOT to turn state’s evidence and to eventually find a way to turn against Toric.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” — No matter, because Lee Toric — who dropped some Shakespeare this week, Sonnet 116 to be exact (which is why the episode’s title is “One-One Six”) — forged Clay’s signature (after a weird ritual where he banged the back of his hands on a table repeatedly). Toric spelled out his motivations, too. Basically, Otto killed his sister to avoid testifying against SAMCRO in the RICO trial, so Toric’s end game is to destroy SAMCRO by resurrecting the RICO charges (using Clay as his witness). He’s also working an angle with the district attorney (CCH Pounder) to tie SAMCRO to the gun the kid used to shoot up the school (resulting in 4 dead kids, and three injured).”
Here’s the thing about Donal Logue’s Lee Toric: He’s almost the most sympathetic character in the series right now. If it weren’t for the weird, inexplicable drug habit, the hand banging, the mirror f**cking, and some of the crazy that’s clearly stirring around his brain pan, I’d be rooting hardest for Toric. I like his motive: “I never gave a sh*t about justice. It was always about retribution for me. Hurting people who hurt people. That’s always been my endgame.”
Plus, after just one scene with C. Thomas Howell’s character, who is in the ATF, I want those two to go off and start their own buddy cop series together. I would watch the sh*t out of that.
One more thing about Toric: He arranged for a date with one of Nero’s escorts, and left his card, basically to alert Jax to the fact that he’s onto the club.
Oh, by the way, Ophelia is Pregnant — Tara’s storyline has gotten very interesting this week. After making bail, she dropped two bombs. First of all, she may be pregnant. Second of all, as she told her attorney, she wants a divorce from Jax. The living will agreement with Wendy is so that, if Tara is imprisoned for the conspiracy charges, Wendy will take custody of Thomas and Abel (and possibly, Tara’s unborn child). She continues to play doting Mom and half-willing wife, although her heart clearly isn’t in it, as evidenced by the really uncomfortable sex scene between Jax and Tara that closed the episode, which was almost as uncomfortably awkward as Otto’s sex scene last week. Two weeks in a row, the fade-to-black scene was Jax having sex. Is this a pattern?
There are some really interesting possibilities here: If Tara goes to prison, can Gemma still gain custody of the children? Will Jax (or someone else) have Tara murdered, if she divorces Jax. Will Jax have Wendy murdered, so that she can’t take custody? Will it ever even get that far? I’ve never been a huge fan of Tara in the past, but her putting her foot down and drawing up her own schemes has me rooting for her.
We Always Find Ways Around the Law — Meanwhile, in the wake of the school shooting, and the possibility that the kid’s gun gets tied back to SAMCRO, Jax is determined to break ties with guns and the Irish. Galen O’Shay isn’t all that pleased, although it seems as though they may go along with it. Jax is going to hand the gun-running to another SAMCRO chapter, but the Irish are going to continue running guns themselves (perhaps, with Clay) in Northern California. Before ending the relationship, however, Galen drops a shipment of K-9 automatic weapons on Jax, but Jax insists on keeping them in storage, MUCH to the dismay of Chibs, who is pissed.
Don’t Matter What the Risk Is, We Don’t Hurt People Like That — The bloodshed this week involved Arcadio (Dave Navarro) and his old lady (Samaire Armstrong), who added two more to the show’s body count. SAMCRO and Nero’s organization tried to secrete Arcadio’s old lady out into a cabin, but she freaked, tried to escape, and Arcadio was killed by his own cousin, Nero, in the process. (It’s good to see that Jax can still flash the nostril flares. They’ve been strangely limited so far this season).
Without Nero’s consent, Jax directed Juice to snuff her out, which he did with a pillow. Poor Juice. He gets the worst jobs. (FUN FACT: Theo Rossi, who plays Juice, is 38 years old, five years older than Charlie Hunnam, and yet Juice still looks like he’s in his 20s).
Nero demanded to know if Jax was behind it, but Jax lied his fool ass off and said he wasn’t. “It had to be the drugs.” It was one of many lies Jax will no doubt tell Nero, up and until the point that Jax eventually has to kill him. This is the slow build toward what seems like an inevitable fate for Nero.
If you’re curious about the final song, it was a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “As Tears Go By” by the Forest Rangers. You can listen to it here.
