['Sons of Anarchy' - 'To Be, Act 1']The shocking ending of last week's 'Sons of Anarchy' episode made me wonder if tonight's hour would be dominated by Clay Morrow; even in absentia, the club president casts a huge shadow.
For the most part, however, this week's gripping hour belonged to two of the people Clay has hurt most -- Tara and Jax. The scenes that featured those two characters talking to each other or to Gemma were flat-out fantastic, and once again demonstrate that the show's secret weapon isn't its crackling action but its top-flight cast. Katey Sagal was terrific this week, as always, but in 'To Be, Act 1,' Charlie Hunnam and Maggie Siff's performances gave me chills.
Many storylines are reaching the boiling point right now, but this terrific hour wisely focused tightly on the couple who have the most reason to despise everything that Clay and Gemma stand for. What made the hour tragic was the fact that Jax and Tara stand on the brink of becoming Clay and Gemma.
And they know it.
Think about it: As Clay did decades ago, Jax is planning the cold-blooded murder of a Sons of Anarchy president. As Gemma did back in the day, Tara is conspiring with her old man to make that happen. And as she did way back when, Gemma has given herself plausible deniability regarding the murder -- which she was, of course, instrumental in bringing about.
Once Jax and Tara had decided to kill Clay, they had doomed looks in their eyes; Tara looked especially damned, as if her soul was already dead. She's crossed over now; she's no better than any of them -- the people she's held herself above for all these years. Now she's a murderer too, or about to become one.She asked Jax and Gemma to tell her that they loved her, but it was the old Tara who wanted to hear those words one last last time. The new Tara knows that she deserves nothing but condemnation for sinking into the muck of the Sons' twisted morality. She doesn't care if she lives or dies now -- if she gets to raise her sons, that'll be more than she no doubt feels she deserves. Given her fatalistic attitude, it's plausible to wonder whether she'll be dead before the season is done, while Clay, who has committed far worse crimes, has never stopped fighting to remain among the living. His arrogance may be his fatal flaw, but it's kept him alive.
But Clay was on the sidelines this hour, and Gemma wasn't about to let this chance to take him out of the picture for good slip past her. Tara was a few steps ahead of her there. A couple of my favorite moments of the hour were the looks Gemma gave Tara when the doctor revealed she knew Gemma would never give Clay the letters and when Tara produced the syringe and told Jax how to murder his stepfather. Gemma was dumbfounded; the look on her face said, "By God, this b*tch is smarter than me."
Oh, so much smarter. Smart enough to know that Gemma had removed the letters that implicated her in John Teller's death, smart enough to know that Gemma's machinations to put her son on the Iron Throne -- sorry, at the head of the SAMCRO table -- wouldn't work. Tara knows Jax is even more determined to get his family out of Charming for good, now that he sees how the club has poisoned two generations of families (let's not forget how SAMCRO has wrecked Opie's clan).
Gemma's been there through every dirty deal, she's stood by (or engineered) every betrayal. It's hard not to see her as the root cause of everything that's gone wrong, then and now. It's hard not to think that both Clay and Gemma need to die for their many sins, but maybe it's too late for that. After all, if Jax and Tara succeed in killing Clay, what's the point of trying to change their lives? What's the point of leaving? Once they damn themselves by playing this deadly game, they'll bring the poison of Charming with them wherever they go. The rot will be inside them.Still, Gemma wasn't completely out of tricks, and the most surprising thing she could have done was to come clean about everything. Well, not everything -- she's still Gemma, so her tale featured judicious editing -- and I get that she didn't have much choice, but still, what a welcome twist the confession storyline was. It was a relief to finally have all those dark secrets out in the open, for me as an audience member, and even if Gemma still had an agenda, you could see her almost visibly lighten at being able to speak openly about the past.
There was even a bit of hope on her face; sure, she was inflicting massive pain on Jax, but maybe this gambit would get him to see things her way. Despite all evidence to the contrary, maybe Jax would stay. Gemma can never see that her machinations always come back to bite her in the ass and that her inability to change her ways will doom her. Her blind spot is a mile wide, especially when it comes to her remaining son, but then, Jax and Tara are the ones cursed with self-knowledge, not Gemma and Clay.
Katey Sagal was wonderfully Shakespearean in her scene with Charlie Hunnam, but Jax's quietly furious reaction to Gemma's revelations was nothing short of amazing. Already he has a critically ill president, the cartel, the Irish, an ex and AWOL club members to deal with -- now this? Hunnam did a great job of portraying a man who's not simply enraged but also almost unable to process this new information, which rewrites his entire family history on perhaps the most dangerous day of his life. As was the case with season 2's 'Balm,' 'Sons of Anarchy's' best episode to date, Hunnam owned the screen with Jax's pain and almost silent reactions.
Siff was on fire as well, especially in the final Jax-Tara-Gemma scene. She showed us a Tara who was both newly confident and abjectly resigned. She and Jax may -- emphasis on may -- get out of all this some day, but if the plan to kill Clay works, it'll be at the cost of her soul. Like passengers in a speeding vehicle, Jax and Tara can only watch the approaching crash and wait for the pain. They do appear doomed to repeat history, no matter what escape strategy they attempt.Everything about the episode was concentrated -- it was as if 'Sons of Anarchy' cooked up one dish instead of four or five, and that main course was more intensely flavorful as a result. But there are other questions and developments worth noting: Why did Romeo tell Jax not to worry about the authorities catching wind of their dealings? There are a few possibilities: Romeo could be one of Potter's snitches; Potter could be on the take and purposefully shielding the cartel (he's always said he's mainly after the Irish); or Romeo could be setting SAMCRO up to take a fall. He may well have decided that the club is a liability and what he told Jax may be part of a plan to shut down the Galindo-SOA connection.
In any event, I can't wait to see what happens next. I had one quibble (see below), but in the main, this was a terrific set-up for the season finale. But the stakes are high. In my opinion, the future of the show (and my future interest in it) could hinge on how that hour resolves the journeys of Jax, Clay, Gemma and Tara.I do know one thing: Unlike most Shakespearean tragedies, the season won't end with almost everyone dead. This is television, so the damned often have to live with their mistakes for years on end.
A few final notes:
* I'm not one to rant and rave (that often) about awards and who's been robbed, etc., but, now that Katey Sagal has her Golden Globe, Maggie Siff and Charlie Hunnam need to get their much-deserved share of awards nominations. They've been phenomenal this season.
* This week in Silly Contrivances (you knew this was coming, right? Every rose has its thorn, etc.): So, based on extremely sketchy information, Tig murders the girlfriend of a rival gang leader? And by the way, despite the fact that there were dozens of people in and around that cafe, he just happens to kill only one person -- the Niner's old lady? That's about as believable as Jax killing the Niner driver by shooting backward as he rode his bike down the shoulder of a highway. You know, I'm not hating on the action sequence -- I enjoy these crazy riding scenes as much as the next person. But I wish the show would just have a title card that said, "Road Action Scene Now!" rather than come up with not-quite-believable reasons for those action scenes to exist. I know Tig felt bad about being disloya l to Clay, but his reaction was out of all proportion to the reality of the situation and what he actually knew.* Nice to see Sonny Barger as Lenny again.
* "He has to die. Like, a LOT." Oh Happy. You make me very happy!
* "He's mine." Dayum. Tara may be damned, but I love that woman.
* "Yeah, just what I need, another promise." Preach, Opie. So many great lines tonight.
* I completely agree with badass 'SOA' fan Kayteadee, who tweeted "There have to be high-stakes deaths this season. Have. To. Be." Damn right. After all this, it ain't right if Phil buys the farm and that's that (and to be clear, I have nothing against Phil or his cereal jones.)
* 'Sons of Anarchy's' first official soundtrack, which features songs from all four seasons, came out last week; for details on the album, look here.
* Please don't refer to anything that happens in the previews for the next episode in comments. Thanks!
'Sons of Anarchy' airs 10PM ET Tuesdays on FX.
Follow @MoRyan on Twitter.
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Gemma's great strength is that she knows how to play with people's emotions and when to push all the right buttons. She understands how to play her emotions into a situation, unlike Tara, who is a girl that lets her emotions control her. She has played into Gemma's plans every time. I usually don’t get to watch the shows on TV all that much due to my hectic work schedule, so I usually stream them to my iPhone to watch it on the long ride to and from work on the light rail. I get my streaming capabilities by using Sling technology through where I work, and DISH Network. Also my prediction is the cliff hanger won’t be the feds busting in on the cartel/irish meeting, but that Jax does kill Clay. Can’t wait to see if I’m right.
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