I guess Kurt Sutter has been pulling a bait and switch on us for the entirety of Sons of Anarchy‘s mostly lackluster seventh season. Between “Suits of Woe,” and last week’s “Faith and Despondency,” it seems like he actually has an end in mind for all this madness. “Suits of Woe” was a talky, largely expository episode, but it worked very well because all the emotional beats rang true, the performances were top notch, and Sutter (and director Peter Weller) wisely decided to dial back on the bloodshed. In fact, there was only one death tonight, which is a low figure considering the fact that at this point Sutter has trained us to expect the Aryans to drop an A-bomb on Marks’ crew or some shit like that.
Obviously tonight had to deal with the fallout of last week’s bombshell, wherein Abel (the worst actor on the planet, and quite possibly legitimately mentally challenged) told Jax that Gemma killed Tara. Fittingly enough, “Suits of Woe” consisted of one revelation after another. First Wendy tells Jax that Gemma was helping Juice. Okay, why was Gemma helping Juice hide from the club? Jax puts this together pretty quickly, but it doesn’t come off as fake; for all of Jax’s faults, he’s never been stupid. In fact, this is a great episode for Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, and Theo Rossi, the last of whom finally gets some good material.
Juice has spent SoA‘s final season either stuck in Wendy’s apartment, or stuck in prison, and as a result, Rossi, one of the show’s best actors, has gotten jack shit to do, because Juice has completely lacked agency. To be fair, he’s still acting under the club’s orders while in prison, which is why he kills Henry Lin – but not before finding out that Jury wasn’t the rat, it was Charlie Barosky. Juice is clearly losing it, and this execution scene shows that in a big way. He stabs Lin again and again, showing zero emotion. When he has a face-to-face with Jax, he’s even further gone. Juice tells Jax everything – Gemma killed Tara, he killed Roosevelt, and together they came up with the story about the Chinese.
But for one promising – and menacing – development with Jax, which we’ll get to, “Suits of Woe” was really Gemma’s hour, even though, frustratingly, she survived until the credits, just adding credence to my cynical theory that Gemma will outlive everyone because Kurt Sutter is determined to get his wife an Emmy.
Gemma is acting like Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2 – she wants everyone to know her secret. Well, just Nero I guess, but name me another website that is going to compare Gemma Teller to Peter Parker. Fuck you! Anyway, it’s great that SoA finally addressed the elephant in the room. The recent string of episodes have been so strong that I kind of wish Sons had gotten a shorter, eight-episode final season, like Boardwalk Empire did, because it would have forced Sutter to trim a lot of the fat. This season has been far form perfect, but if this week and last week are any indication, the show may be able to stick the landing.
A Few Thoughts
- Gemma and Chucky’s goodbye scene was actually pretty sweet. “You’re my best friend, Gemma.” “I accept that.”
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Apparently the forum didn’t like Jax’s explanation for killing Jury. If they find out that Jury wasn’t even the rat, Jax could face a “mayhem vote.” How great of an ending would that be, Jax killed by his own club?
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Jimmy Smits was fantastic in the scene where Jax told him the truth about Gemma. What a great decision on Weller’s part to shoot the whole conversation from Nero’s point of view. We heard almost nothing Jax said, but we saw Nero’s face crumble and his whole world break apart. Gerat reactionary acting from Smits
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Jax can be a total caricature at times, but it’s episodes like this that remind me that I’ll really miss seeing Charlie Hunnam on my TV
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