Episode Report Card Sobell: B | 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Guns, Gemma and Deals
By Sobell | Season 3 | Episode 5 | Aired on 10.05.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So! Gemma survived her arrhythmia, much to the inconvenience of everyone who now has to explain why they didn't come clean about the whole Abel-kidnapping thing. After Gemma tears a few strips off Jax and Tara's backs, she informs them that Abel's in Belfast. Jax and Clay decide to talk to Maureen to confirm this, and after they do, they decide to go to Belfast.
(It may be messy when they get there: Trinny's stuck her nose in the whole thing courtesy of fielding Jax's first call, she tipped off McGee, who happens to be Maureen's old man, and now McGee's flipping out over the repercussions.)
Gemma made a deal with Stahl to turn herself in, telling Clay she did it because, "I'm too old to run." Stahl has the bad grace to show up in the hospital room and tell Gemma the deal is off the table because Gemma did not, technically, turn herself in, on account of being all unconscious in the hospital. The deal might be back on the table if Gemma can get Tara to talk about the Irish. So Gemma has a rather pointed conversation with Tara -- something along the lines of "And why didn't you throw yourself in front of the gun to save my grandson?" -- which is where we find out that Tara knows nothing about the Irish and she's six weeks pregnant. (How she's not passing out from exhaustion is God's private mystery -- or the writers' room's. Whichever.) Then Stahl comes back to gleefully tell Gemma the deal's off the table. An angry Jax tracks Stahl to her house and offers her a deal: He'll hand-deliver Jimmy O and his Real IRA contacts, along with a sworn statement about the gun-running, in exchange for "my mother, my son and my club." And as a good faith gesture, he hands over Luke (Jimmy O's number two) and some illegal weaponry. Stahl is an amoral moron, but even she can see that this is a deal which will put her back on the ATF fast track.
Also going on this week: The non-Teller SAMCRO guys are tasked with raising money for the Canadian road trip, and they decide to do so by unloading the drugs they took off the hill people during last week's adventures in gun play. Juice screws it up with a moment of bad judgment and gets jumped by the Mayan puppet club, who take his cut. At least Tig and Chucky (!) managed to find out that indeed, the Mayans are manufacturing heroin and shipping it off to Stockton regularly.
Exchange of the week: There really wasn't one. But on the bright side, nobody's off on a fool's errand to Canada anymore.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Gemma Teller lives! And she still has on her flawless eye makeup. Truly, she's setting the benchmark for invalids everywhere. She's in a bed at St. How Does The Tiny Charming Taxpayer Base Swing This Hospital?, and she slowly comes to and looks over at Clay. In what is my favorite shot of the episode, he's sitting bedside, wearing his cut and a pair of reading glasses and intently plowing through the local paper's A-section.
"Hey, baby," she says, and Clay looks over with a big, gentle smile before wishing her good morning. Then he comes over and kisses her hand, careful not to disturb the IV port taped to it. Awwww! These two kill me. (By the way, Gemma's other hand is cuffed to the hospital bed.) Gemma asks if she had a heart attack. Nope, just bad arrhythmia which, in Clay's words, "knocked you on your ass." He asks if she's stopped taking her meds. (And oh my God, if my text editor does not stop auto-correcting "meds" to "meeds," I am going to hunt down whomever was responsible for porting over the typo-to-dictionary macro and do things that will require their next year's meeds to pay for their meds.) Gemma says, "They make my face swell. Can't get into my boots." Clay replies, "Fashion before health -- that's my girl." He knows he can't bust her non-swollen chops too badly, as he's the one who refuses cortisone shots from all but her. Anyway, Gemma's health will be fine in a few days. Her temper has already recovered: "Where's Jax? I want some answers!"
Jax is busy pouring enough sugar in his coffee to fuel the inevitable moment where he has to escape Gemma by vibrating through a wall. The rest of the SAMCRO boys are all in the waiting room with him. Given how much time this MC spends at this hospital, they should just throw a chunk of money at the administration and get their own dedicated waiting room. Chuckie's coffee service and Crow-Eaters optional, of course. Bobby Elvis mutters that they need to talk, and SAMCRO takes over the chapel. The deal is this: Bobby Elvis needs to confirm the tracker with Serge. Jax is okay with this: "Pull the trigger, send the ten grand. I'm making sure my mom's okay, then I'm heading north." Opie and Chibs say they're coming too. Bobby Elvis is touched by this fraternal display, but all the leather-clad biker hugs in the world aren't going to underwrite this little road trip. They need cash. Tig immediately suggests selling the drugs they got off the hill people last week, and Juice estimates that "steroids and Adderall we can dump on the street, the rest of it's that HIV shit. It's got to be peddled to the clinics." He's tasked with going to someone named Lumpy to unload the steroids, then calling "the Chicken Man" to dispatch the Adderall.
Tara interrupts the meeting to let everyone know Gemma's awake and she'd like to see Jax. "Tell her we love her," Opie says as Jax rolls out the door. Jax heads into Gemma's room and beams, "Hey, Mom," but one look at her face and he realizes he's in a world of trouble. Tara sidles out the door and Gemma snaps, "This is on you too, doc!" so Tara slinks back inside. Once she closes the door, Gemma gives them all a gorgon-like stare and demands, "What happened? The truth. All of it." Jax instantly cracks: "When Cameron killed Sack, he took Abel. The Feds weren't doing shit, so we hired a bounty hunter, got this a few days ago. [shows her the picture of Cammy holding Abel at the depot in Vancouver] He's somewhere up in Vancouver. We were just trying to protect you, Mom."
Gemma's not buying it. Everyone just sits silently, waiting for her next outburst, but she decides to shelve the venomous barbs in favor of advancing the plot: "[Abel's] not in Vancouver. The call I got last night that triggered all this? Was from Maureen Ashby." Only Clay gets why this is significant; he has to explain to the young'uns that she's McGee's old lady, and therefore connected to SAMBEL. Gemma says Abel's in Belfast, and Jax insists, "Can't be. Jimmy and O'Neill saw Cameron get scooped up as soon as he hit Belfast. He didn't have Abel with him." Oh, Jax, so sweetly naive about Jimmy O's capacity for lying. Gemma says, "Somebody's full of shit!" and her heart monitors go nuts. Clay tells her to take it easy, and Gemma shouts, "I'll take it easy as soon as I know where my grandson is!" You have to admire how she's using a bum ticker to her strategic advantage. I'm also grateful she refers to Abel as her "grandson" and not her "grandbaby," because the latter word sets my teeth on edge. It's just so naff.
Jax and Clay confab in the hall. Jax's first instinct is to call McGee, but Clay points out, "If O'Neill lied to you, it means the Belfast charter could be in bed with Jimmy." Jax reacts to this news like a kindergartner learning there's no Santa Claus: "McGee's first nine!" The idea of him lying is unfathomable. Clay, however, fathoms it. He suggests raising Maureen on the phone again. And then, conveniently enough, he's summoned back to Gemma's bedside.
Cut to Gemma saying, "If Jax goes to Belfast, stones get unturned. Bound to happen, I guess." Look, it's not like Trinny's a female ringer for Jax, and it's not like Jax is a lightning-quick intellect; it'll take him at least six episodes to realize that his old man nearly abandoned Gemma for her Celtic doppelganger. Anyway, Clay is less concerned with Jax's delicate sensibilities and more concerned with what in the hamlet Gemma's been thinking. She reluctantly admits, "I called Stahl. Made a deal. [Clay winces in pain.] Told her I'd sign off on her bullshit story, she takes death off the table, I get weekly visitations." Clay is squeezing back tears. Gemma tells him she was supposed to turn herself in that morning. Then, choking up a bit as well, she says, "I'm sorry, baby. I'm too old to run." The two of them bracket opposite ends of the hospital bed, both trying not to cry.
Meanwhile, Jax and a few of the SAMCRO guys have sauntered into the bar that serves as the field office for the Real IRA, Northern California Division. Jax tells Jimmy O's second in command, Luke, that he's got word that Cameron was running around Belfast with a baby. Luke blithely suggests that Cameron routinely went on overseas walkabouts with infants, just none of them Jax's particular infant. Jax and Chibs are not buying this bucket of blarney, and Jax tells Luke to pass on a message to Jimmy O: "If I find out he's been lying about my son, I'm going to track him down, I'm going to beat the truth out of him, then I'm going to let Chibs cut him from ear to ear." Luke patronizingly chortles, "There's no need to get theatrical, boys. We know that's not going to happen." Someone needs to get Luke the season one DVD of this series, so he can see that SAMCRO is not a collection of amusing AARP-eligible bikers, but a group of people who have no problem using blowtorches on former friends. Then maybe Luke will take the threat more seriously. On the way out the door, we see a pile of AKs and Opie grunts something about the safehouse being gone, so they're stashing the guns here.