Did Kurt Sutter play a lot of RPGs before starting this last season of Sons of Anarchy? I only ask because it seems like the characters get sent off on a half dozen side quests every week. The club acts like crows, constantly distracted by shiny things. Wait – are they crows? Cause that would explain a lot.
So Juice isn’t dead – obviously. Juice, like Gemma, should have died years ago, much the same way that Clay should have died in season four (so naturally he kicked the bucket in season six). Secret Agent Juice is going to get himself locked up so he can kill Lin in prison. Still not crazy about this subplot. Think back to season four: Jax needed every possible scrap of evidence to even think about killing Clay, yet goes to war with Lin on the strength of Gemma’s word. If Jax never finds out the truth about Tara’s murder, I’m gonna take myself to meet Mr. Mayhem.
So this is Sons of Anarchy and the wheels have to keep turning, right? The club is trying to help out the widow of the priest they killed (I’m not even going to bother learning the names of SoA‘s approximately fifty new characters) and blackmail Marks in the process. They want to help the woman detox, and offer to send her and her son up to Gemma’s dad’s house, where Gemma will meet them. Jax sends Happy and Rat Boy to go pick up Gemma, and this is where “Greensleeves” goes completely off the rails.
Happy and Rat Boy – both of whom proclaim to be scared of Gemma – go to pick her up in the most needlessly menacing fashion possible. David Labrava as Happy in particular sets an unnecessarily ominous tone, brooking no argument and all but forcing Gemma into the car. So she thinks she’s going to be murdered, which is an understandable reaction based on the way these fucking morons are acting, and while at her house to get some things, she breaks down holding Thomas, confessing to Tara’s murder. Then the camera pans over, and it turns out Abel heard everything. So in a few weeks, because SoA thinks it’s being a slow burn this season, we’ll get some incredibly poorly-acted scene where Abel tells Wendy “Grandma killed Mommy.” This is such a circuitous way to get here, and it’s disappointing to see everyone act like such a lackwit after SoA‘s brilliant, Shakespearean sixth season.
But we’ve still got a montage to get to! This time it was set to “Greensleeves,” as sung by – who else? – Katey Sagal (also, Greensleeves was the name of a Jewish pimp who acted as a one-off villain. Not really worth mentioning).
August Marks doesn’t show up for Jax’s meeting, but instead sends his head of security, Moses Cartwright, who has a box containing three things: Bobby’s patches, a Tupperware with Bobby’s eye, and an iPad playing a video showing how he lost both. It was a good “holy shit” moment to end the episode on, but on the whole it does little to redeem everything that came before it. If we’re entering the home stretch, Sutter needs to start thinking about what kind of final memories he wants to leave viewers with.
A Few Thoughts
- I’m not entirely sure that Bobby is dead. On one hand, I doubt that he’d be killed off screen; on the other, sending the patches is a pretty clear message
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Gemma freaking out about going to the cabin was almost comical, because we knew that nothing was going to happen to her. Probably not what Kurt Sutter was going for
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