I was pretty amazed to see that my DVR had recorded a full two hours and forty minutes worth of Sons of Anarchy last night, as I thought that Kurt Sutter had reached new levels of insanity with his episode times. But it turns out the episode was *only* two hours, with the last portion reserved for a kind of “Talking Sons” segment which seemed to exist for Sutter to explain why so many people died that evening.
Sons of Anarchy killed off three major characters in the overstuffed episode, ones that have been around since the very, very beginning. And all three deaths were uncomfortable in different ways, to the point where the show seems to be struggling to figure out how to properly set up big deaths, or when to avoid them. Obvious spoilers follow.
We’ll start with Juice, who finally met his end in prison, as expected. But the situation was a bit wonky, as the Chinese almost killed him, then recruited him to kill AB’s leader instead. This is kind of stupid given that Juice had to know that killing an AB member like that would not only get him killed a short while later, but completely screw things up for the Sons. So instead he gives the weapon to Marilyn Manson, and allows himself to be killed like Jax intended.
It’s a weird kind of loyalty Juice shows at the end, but there are no Sons around to actually see it, making his character essentially die in shame, never redeemed in the eyes of the club. And given the events of the past two seasons, that’s kind of a shame. Past that, Juice has always been amazing at living through situations where he should easily be dead, so it would have also been a fitting conclusion for him to somehow make it out of that situation alive. His entire plotline this season seemed like a lot of a build-up for what ended up being a muddy conclusion.
Unser’s death was a shock simply because of how unnecessary it was. I suppose the idea was that the old man forever dying of cancer deserved a heroic end defending the woman he loved, but the situation was just presented so awkwardly it bugged me more than anything about the entire rest of the episode. Jax could have easily disarmed Unser and knocked him out instead of shooting him, but more troubling was Gemma’s reaction to both Unser’s defense of her and his death. Gemma is supposed to be “I’ve caused too much pain, just end it” mode, yet she doesn’t at all try to diffuse the situation between Jax and Unser, and if anything escalates it. This is a guy she supposedly cares about a lot, yet she doesn’t even flinch as he and her son are pointing guns at each other. What happened to not wanting anyone else to get hurt? In that moment either her son or Unser could die, and she does literally nothing to stop it. Then Unser does die and she doesn’t even so much as glance at his corpse or shed a tear for him.
I suppose Unser’s death works thematically as he gets a “heroic” way to go out, but I’m not sure he needed to die at all given that situation. Gemma’s reaction, or lack thereof, and her eventual death made everything he did pointless anyway.
Gemma’s death has seemed inevitable all season, which is why I was disappointed that Jax actually killed her as yet again, it’s the expected thing to do. If he hadn’t, Unser’s words and defense of her would have actually meant something, but instead they’re both dead, and Jax has possibly his worst kill yet on his conscience.
“This is who we are,” Gemma says in the moments before her death, and Jax agrees, ultimately putting a bullet in her head. But previously, up until this season, the entire point of Sons of Anarchy was Jax trying to change the course of his club and his life. I’m sad the show seems to have completely given up on that idea, and seems headed toward a very dark, very tragic ending. It didn’t have to be this way.
Sons of Anarchy was at its best when everything seemed impossible and awful, yet then some magic, brilliant plan came together where the Sons came out on top. But now, there’s really no way Jax leaves this series alive, and if he does, he certainly doesn’t deserve to given all the idiotic things he’s done this season. He’s essentially agreed to get his club to vote to kill him, and maybe he does have some plan in mind, but he seems pretty resigned to death, essentially giving Wendy and Nero his kids, and it wouldn’t be in line with his character to run away. There’s a theory that he’ll patch in the Grim Bastards and use them to upset the Mayhem vote, but again, Jax deserves to die. He is completely in the wrong for killing totally innocent people like Jury and Unser. He screwed up the entire California drug/guns scene with his quest for vengeance against allies who didn’t actually wrong him at all, and by proxy he caused the deaths of Colette and Bobby and about 20 wrong place, wrong time prostitutes at Diosa. Sure he was misled by Gemma and Juice, but he’s made an outrageous amount of mistakes and deserves to pay for them.
These aren’t problems with this past episode specifically, but rather the entire arc of the last two seasons. It seems like kind of a cop out for Sons of Anarchy to abandon the central idea of trying to reform the club and Jax and simply killing everyone off for a dark and brooding finale. It’s too late to reverse course now. Juice and Gemma deserved to die. Jax deserves to die. All will probably end up dead, and if Jax doesn’t, it won’t make any sense or feel like a deserved fate for him. Nothing is satisfying thematically, and these deaths are set up in really awkward, expected ways. The final thing that will (probably) take Jax down is him point blank executing another President, who, as it turns out, wasn’t even guilty. Out of everything he’s done, that situation almost seems silly in its concept and execution, as did Gemma killing Tara because no one bothered to tell her Tara wasn’t actually making a deal. It’s all randomness and chance, and these deaths, nor the reasons for them, are well set up anymore.
Sons of Anarchy is not ending well. It may not be Dexter, but it’s making me even more mad given the enormous potential the series had that has completely gone to waste the past few years.
[Photos via FX]
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