Sons of Anarchy is everyone’s favorite show right now, and if it isn’t well, you’re watching the wrong channel. The gang is wrapping up their final season, and it’s making us a bit nostalgic about what’s come before. We’ve learned a lot from those rascally Sons over the years, and they’ve taught us more than a few life lessons. Here are a few from season six specifically.
Random Acts of Violence are Random
The season opens with a horrific school shooting, where a troubled young kid goes on a rampage using a gun from the Sons. This is the impetus for all the events of the entire season, as the community is desperately looking for “someone to blame.” In this case, it happens to be the Sons, the biker gang that sold the gun to the other gang that the kid’s dad left out so his kid could get it, but in real life we see this sort of thing happen all the type. Unfortunately in the US, we see these kind of mass acts of violence frequently, and we often point fingers are people or industries that are tangentially related to the situation at best, be they video games or guns or parents who couldn’t have known what was about to happen, or tried to help their kids but couldn’t.
Revenge Can Backfire
In season six, rogue lawman Toric spends a great deal of his time tormenting imprisoned Sons member Otto, who killed his sister in an attempt to disallow his testimony against the Sons. Otto is raped in prison, beaten, abused and his life is made completely miserable. But unluckily for Toric, he spends so much time torturing Otto instead of simply killing him, that it allows Otto to formulate a plan to exact revenge on him. Despite being a shell of a man and constantly abused and nearly blind, Otto ends up killing Toric as his final act.
There’s No Redemption for Some People
Season six was finally when we saw the demise of Clay Morrow, a hated figure on the show that’s been the de facto villain on SOA for years now. Jax fulfills his Shakespearean destiny by killing the man who killed his father and married his mother, becoming “king” in the process. But for a long while, it did seem like Clay was on a path to redemption. Sometimes it was a secret scheme, sometimes he seemed genuinely concerned with getting his life back together and doing what was best for the club. But his death and trickery proves that there’s just no salvation in store for some people.
Friends Can Be Worse Than Enemies
A central conflict in season six involves the Irish turning on the Sons, and sparking a war with the Chinese in the process, which has currently spilled over into season six. The Sons have had a solid relationship with the Irish for years, but when things went sour, there was no worse enemy for them to have because they knew all the ins and outs of the Sons secrets and operations, allowing them to hit them where it hurt the most.
Call Your Mother
In the most shocking, some would say ludicrous twist of season six, the show ends with Gemma killing Tara because she thinks that Tara is going to sell out Jax and the club, making a deal with the feds. As it turns out, Jax was simply going to turn himself in to avoid all that, but no one bothered to call and tell Gemma the news before she went on her murderous rampage. The entire unfortunate scene could have been solved with a simple phone call, but some sons can’t be bothered to call their mothers it seems. Let that be a lesson to you, to call your mom before she goes on a murderous rampage on your behalf. Or before she’s lonely, that works too.
That’s all the lessons we have for today. What else did Sons of Anarchy teach you over the years? What lessons do you think we’ll learn by the end of seasons seven? Right now it’s “don’t make the Chinese mafia mad.” Seems like pretty good life advice for every situation.
[Photos via FX]
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