Make a prediction about Sons of Anarchy not, lest ye feel like having those predictions get thrown into a tub of piss and vinegar. The one thing I love most of all about this show, is that despite its more obvious targets for negative criticism, it is constantly blowing my mind in terms of shock value, and how quickly it will chew a plotline up and spit it out. You want burned bridges? We got those, as well as burned breezeways, covered paths, and railways.
The episode is called “Wolfsangel,” or “Nazi hooks” as the boys call them, in reference to the brutal carving that Wayne suffers at the beginning of the episode. It was revenge for Clay killing that “peckerwood shotcaller” in prison last week to save himself from the black community. I spent the first part of the episode with a sneer on my face, just dreading another season filled with white supremacists. After the cold hard camaraderie of Ethan Zobelle (Adam Arkin) and AJ Weston (Henry Rollins) from season 2, I’d seen all the Aryans I needed to see on this show. Though it was fun (I guess) to see Darby’s (Mitch Pileggi) racist ass again, I really thought that SAMCRO was going to go to war with Eddie the head honcho at the neo-Nazi farmhouse. And I guess they did go to war with them, but it was shortlived, seeing as how all of them died. So that’s one threat swept under a dirty rug.
Last week, I went on and on about how much of a psychopath Lee Toric “U.S. Marshals retired” is, and what that might mean for the club. Turns out it doesn’t mean jack shit. Toric’s back is against a wall that he himself erected, and so he is doing whatever he feels is necessary to take SAMCRO down. Watching him smile his smarm-on-eleven smile when Nero gets taken in for questioning just made me want him to die almost as badly as I’ve ever wanted any TV character to die.
So imagine my surprise when later in the episode, as Toric is trying to use Clay and Otto against each other, Toric gets shivved in the side with the blade that Clay slipped Otto. And not only do we get to see him stabbed several times, but Sutter & Co. actually let Otto slice Toric’s throat wide open. That’s a pretty huge death for a character on this show, and one that probably had some fans wincing while other hooted and hollered like I did.
He definitely got what was coming to him, but I wonder if it came too soon. I have to wonder if the writers just ran out of ways for Toric to come at the club from this angle, or if CCH Pounder’s District Attorney is going to possibly step up and become the hardass that we’ve all been waiting for. I wondered why they were wasting such a solid guest star by sticking her behind a desk with only legal eagle dialogue. But her standing over Toric’s body bad makes me think that she might decide to take his plight as her own, though probably with less dead hookers in her wake.
So it looks like the real real real threat for SAMCRO this season will be Gaalan and the Irish. He didn’t like one word that Jax had to say about backing out of the gun deal. In fact, he disliked two of the words, “Hands off,” enough to use them literally during an attack. Sadly, Filthy Phil and V-Lin were both killed…and then butchered. Their hands were left on their jackets, while the rest of their body parts were just haphazardly tossed into the corner of the warehouse. It was one of the most surreal images I’ve ever seen on this show, and was definitely more frightening than many things that Toric has done. Gaalan represents both a one-man monster and an entire army of potentially similar monsters.
So if everything goes according to plan, all of the IRA will be dead by the end of next week’s episode, and an underground motorcycle gang of Mole Men will rise up as a huge obstacle, and then they’ll be destroyed the week after that.
As far as in-house threats are concerned, it was good to see Chibs finally call Jax out on his totalitarian rule of the club. Do you guys remember how many times part of an episode’s dramatic moments relied on a table vote? That’s such a rarity now that Jax is pres. Granted, there’s barely anyone left to vote, but still. And the only reason Tig is alive is because August and his crew are giving Clay protection, and Jax makes a deal with him. It isn’t obvious whether Tig knows that Jax gives him up or not, but it’s going to come out at some point, and it won’t be as pretty as Tig’s hair.
Stuff That Fell Off The Back Of The Bike
Otto is finally dead! Lee Toric is dead! Filthy Phil is dead! V-Lin, well, that’s okay! Tig is still alive!
“And we get to deal with the payback while he’s spooning Mandingo?” I think the writers of this show peruse racial slur websites.
Robert Patrick! He’d better come back next week, so that RoboCop and T-1000 can be in a scene together.
It’s great having Roosevelt’s authority back on the show. The whole time he was becoming wary of Toric, I was thinking that his attempts to nail Toric would become a parallel storyline, but that’s off the table. We’ll see how that goes.
“Dead hooker.” “Hate that.”
So Tara and Wendy are definitely working together to get custody of the kids taken away from Jax. Where does the pregnancy fit into this? And why did Wendy go to Gemma with that lie last week? Was it to get a gun with Gemma’s prints on it? It’s the storyline I’m least interested in, but it’s keeping me guessing. And I can’t wait to see Gemma’s wrath wreak havoc on the other two women’s lives.
“Why don’t you take a vote? I’ll proxy Phil. He says yes. “
Now that spinoffs are all the rage, this show definitely needs one where Tig and Rat live a life of their own as a pretend father and son. That’s an amazing prospect. Tig using the name “Al Whiteman” with the bigots and actually using his daughter’s murder as a character detail was a gut punch of a moment.
“We earn big and hate deep.”
“Wow. I didn’t even see that coming.” There are a lot of great last lines in TV and cinema history, and this ranks up there with the most fitting. What a weird guy.
“Your sister’s blood tasted as good as her pussy.” Grody.
After getting Breaking Bad taken away from me last Sunday, I have the whole “Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for the good of those around me,” character argument fresh in my head, and Jax just isn’t as layered a character as Walter White, and I don’t believe Jax’s words for a single second, ever, even when I know he’s telling the truth. So I wonder when he’s going to wise up.
