For the last few years, Sons of Anarchy has been television’s great contradiction, a show that can’t decide what story it wants to tell. A family sticking together through tremendous tribulations, or one collapsing underneath that wait? A story about a man trying to change his life, or one about a man doomed to repeat the life of his father? Hamlet or a really mindless version of The Shield? Since season five, Sons of Anarchy’s been an inconsistent ride, defined more by its addiction to the diminishing value of shocking moments and blatant misogyny and accepted racism than its ability to tell an exciting beard-and-exhaust-fume drenched version of The Iliad, which the initial two seasons of the show (particularly season two) embodied. Perhaps its strongest season was the much-maligned third, where Jax struggles with his identity as a father (just as his father did, as we learn that season), mixing the violent underworld of motorcycle gangs and heir-kidnapping with the lush landscapes of Ireland and Jax learning the limits of his morality (or, as some might view it, the unlimited potential of having no morality at all).
But since that season, Sons of Anarchy has become a different show, a series of dramatic, often violent twists that has killed off numerous FBI agents, club members, and handfuls of students and gang members of every race and color, as its story expands and contracts on a seasonal basis. Jax faces a huge problem that threatens the foundation of his family, he concocts an increasingly complicated scheme (that, in the case of recent seasons, completely hidden from the audience until the final moments; in season five, it was Clay pulling off-screen shenanigans) to get out of it, though that action inevitably raises the stakes for the next season. Last season, it was killing a bunch of Chinese and Irish gangsters as revenge, passing off the business to Augustus Marks, pissing off the Mayans, the Asians, and the Italians in the process – and of course, agreeing to take a plea deal to save his wife from prison, a last-minute change of morality that fit nothing the character did all season (lest we forget, he had no problem ordering Juice to kill the mother of another child), seemingly existing only to set up the next big problem for him to face, the death of his wife Tara.
I’ve written nearly 400 words without discussing a single moment of “The Black Widower”, but these contradictions are important, because the final season’s premiere embodies all these very problems that bogged down previous seasons, and turned the show into something more akin to a soap opera (with more drugs and cigarette smoking) than a heady biker drama. And “The Black Widower” wastes no time jumping right back into its familiar nonsense, undoing the single catalytic action for Gemma shoving kitchen utensils into Tara’s skull: it takes nine days before Nero and Gemma are back together. Nine days! Lest we forget, Gemma only got drunk and high (which is the reason she went to confront Tara, at least the way the episode was written and filmed) after Nero broke up with her because he needed to re-evaluate things; and by the mid point of tonight’s premiere, they’re back together, even if it’s only in the short-term.
And from there, the problems begin to compound themselves, centered around Gemma’s notion that she’s the one thread holding the family together – but we know this isn’t true, because she killed the most important person to her son, throwing any idea of that “family” crap right out the window (not to mention the husband she had murdered, and the other she basically walked to his death). Gemma’s great plan to hide her murder of Tara is to stash Juice at Wendy’s apartment, talk to Tara’s ghost at the sink, and incite the biggest multi-racial gang war Oakland has ever seen. That’s correct: without Gemma, the poor Asian (whose name we never got, unless I missed something) would still be alive, and peace would still be an option for each and every gang leader involved with Jax’s poisonous organization.
So far, the impending gang war appears to be the big non-Teller story of the season: Jax’s attempts to keep peace are bound to fail, no matter how many swastikas he carves into people, or teeth he rips out for Marilyn Manson to make necklaces out of (because he’s weeeeird, remember?). It doesn’t make for interesting drama, especially when Jax makes it clear he’ll do anything in the name of “survival” and vengeance: like when it came to drugging his ex-wife or murdering mothers, Jax will kill anyone in his way – so it makes the politicking of the long-tumultuous gun-running business less interesting to watch. He’s not a man of his word: he doesn’t do what’s necessary to protect his family or his club at any point, not even considering his options as he would in previous seasons. Question Gemma a little about her BS story regarding what she saw at the Teller home? No, we’ll just take her word for it (though she’s lied to us many times before, even causing short-lasting rifts between us), and murder the first person she points to, without asking a single question. Sure, he’s angry and grieving, but whatever happened to the man’s common sense (same goes for Juice being MIA: wouldn’t he be a little worried about that, knowing Juice was once an ATF snitch?).
The inconsistencies keep adding up and adding up (after dumping Jax and Gemma in last season’s finale, Nero reconciles with both, all while pulling himself further into the gangster life he says he doesn’t lead anymore), and all that’s left are the shocking moments, which at this point, hit my eyes and brain with dull thuds. Jax pulling out a man’s teeth, and burying barbeque tongs into an innocent man’s skull? Yawn. Murdering a bisexual threesome (well, four some) between a bunch of church officials (an event we won’t understand for a bit, methinks)? That’s old news; we’ve seen rampaging Jax before. Many times before, as the show’s endless recycling of familiar story lines begin returning for one more run on the leather-encased merry-go-round, be it Gemma hiding lies, Unser getting kidnapped, Juice being a useless idiot, or Tig talking about raping men, women, and family members on a regular basis. I came into “The Black Widower” hopeful that the show would be able to find itself again in the final run of episodes in this new, post-Tara world; by the time the godawful SoA-flavored rendition of “Bohemian Rhasphody” was finished (after running for what felt like foreeeeeever), I found myself astounded (and more importantly, disappointed) to how little things had changed in the aftermath of the show’s biggest moment, and how little “The Black Widower” was able to make any of that interesting, or meaningful.
Other thoughts/observations:
– welcome to the final season of Sons of Anarchy! I’ll be covering the show week-by-week here at TVOvermind this season – here’s a link to my semi-regular reviews of the show over the past few seasons.
– Why are you doing push-ups naked, Juice? … Wait, don’t answer that question.
– Jax couldn’t even go to his wife’s funeral, a truly sad moment for our protagonist.
– Redwoodie Inc., y’all!
– Hey, there’s Malcolm Jamal-Warner!
– Jax is chain smoking through this entire episode; did anyone else notice that?
– Let’s all make fun of the gangster with no legs! How classy.
[Photovia FX]
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