It’s been almost two years since we said goodbye to SAMCRO, and maybe the image of Gemma Teller-Morrow (Katey Sagal) has softened in your mind a little. Okay, probably not, because she was the worst. But either way, let’s take a moment to revisit some of the many moments Gemma attempted to take the definition of “terrible” to a new level.
Obviously, Gemma was a bad mom, bad mother in-law, bad wife, bad grandmother, and about a dozen other titles that start with “bad,” “awful,” or “heinous.” To keep things in perspective, though, we’ll just stick to why you’d never want a Gemma in your family tree — even if you’re in an outlaw motorcycle club.
Obviously, spoilers ahead.
She was an angel of death from the beginning.
Family members are supposed to support each other, but in Gemma’s mind that means telling a struggling family member to kill themselves with a drug overdose. Sons of Anarchy wasted zero time letting us know how much of a monster Gemma truly was, showcasing her wickedness right out of the gate in the pilot episode when she visits Wendy in the hospital. Rather than offer then-drug-addicted Wendy any amount of support, Gemma tells her that she’ll kill her if she attempts to gain custody of her newborn child and offers Wendy drugs to overdose with. That sort of evil is a move a lot of dramas would save for a villainous character two or three seasons down the road, but for Gemma Teller, it was just everyday normal behavior.
She sucks at babysitting.
The only way Gemma would ever get one of those “World’s Best Grandma” shirts was if she had beat-down some other grandmother and robbed her of it. Gemma’s entire grandmother storyline had the makings of creepy Lifetime movie. Grandma hates daughter in-law, grandma develops unhealthy obsession with grandchildren, grandma kills daughter in-law, roll credits. While Jax was reluctant to admit that his mother wasn’t the best person to be looking after his kids, it became glaringly apparent when she nearly killed them in an auto accident after smoking weed and getting behind the wheel.
She’ll string you along forever and ever.
Poor Wayne Unser, the guy ended up in the friend zone so deep that it killed him. Instead of retiring from the police force and kicking back to live out his golden years a thousand miles away from the cesspool of Charming, he spent his time living in a trailer as Gemma’s lap dog. With the death of his Deputy Chief in season three and his wife out of the picture, Gemma was freed up to tighten her grip on Unser and string him along with the hope of a romantic relationship that was never going to happen. Unser might not have been an actual relative of Gemma’s but she pulled his strings just as efficiently as she did Jax’s, and in the end, his association with her cost him his life. Perhaps the most ridiculous part of their entire relationship, though — Unser had known Gemma since she was a little girl. Dude, how much time do you need to figure out a person is bad news?
She’s not exactly marriage material.
I’ll give Gemma this much: She kept a nice home for her and Clay and didn’t have a problem when he needed a night out with the guys to go make an illegal gun sale or whatever. That’s pretty much where her wife superlatives end, though. Over the course of the series, we eventually learned that once she hooked up with Clay, Gemma helped orchestrate the death of her first husband and Original 9 president, John Teller. Given Gemma’s history of knocking off her husbands, it came as little surprise when she pushed for Jax to finally kill Clay — who rightfully had a bullet coming to him — in season six. Had Nero been foolish enough to put a ring on Gemma’s finger, it would likely only have been a matter of time before she put him six feet under, too.
She’s the mother in-law from hell.
A good mother-in-law doesn’t stab their daughter-in-law in the head with a steak fork. The final assault after years of keeping Jax under her thumb and keeping Tara from a real shot at happiness with her family.
Lies, lies, and more lies.
“Gemma knows every truth behind every lie inside every secret. She’s the gatekeeper” – Juice
You’d be hard-pressed to find a single character that Gemma interacted with who wasn’t lied to at some point. Piney, Unser, Nero, Wendy, and of course Jax, everyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in Gemma’s inner circle was merely a pawn for her to play on her own chessboard. While nearly each episode of SOA had Gemma spinning some new web of false truths the biggest lie she ever told was that the things she did were for her family, when in fact, they were all for her own selfish reasons.
The takeaway lesson here: If you suspect there’s a Gemma branch growing on your family tree, saw that sucker off.
