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One of the themes that Kurt Sutter's been developing over the last four seasons of Sons of Anarchy is that it's hard to climb out of the ruts that our forebears wore into our lives and hearts. And one of the cleverest ways that Sutter's done this is by basically structuring the show to mirror the wearying, repetitive process of striving for something new and falling short. So every season is basically shaped like this:
-- The characters are struggling with one or more pre-existing situations set up in the last episodes of the prior season.-- One of these situations suddenly escalates owing to a development in the first episode of the season.
-- A SAMCRO bystander is gravely affected by a player in the escalated situation.
-- The remainder of the season shows the club dealing with long-running problems and the new, exclusive-to-the-season foe.
-- The solution to the exclusive-to-the-season conflict sets up the catastrophic event and the victim in the season.
With that in mind: The show starts with Jax channeling his father by writing down his hopes and dreams for Abel and Thomas. He then leads the club on an arms run, right into the Antagoniste Du Season's ambush. Oakland gangster Damon Pope, as it turns out, is super-pissed that any of the Sons are upright and breathing in the wake of his daughter's death, and announces the first prong of his attack against the club by setting his guys on the club and their truck, starting off the season with a big, fiery bang.
Jax deals with the club's longstanding deals -- guns with the Irish, drugs with the CIA -- in a surprisingly competent manner, while Roosevelt comes by the clubhouse and establishes that there's been a wave of home invasions targeting SAMCRO-adjacent people.
Meanwhile, Gemma decides to get over Clay by getting under someone else. Specifically, she gets under Nero, a former gangbanger who now runs an escort outcall service conveniently located on the outskirts of Charming and yet never referenced until now.
After Gemma makes the walk of shame home, she has a sad little conversation with Clay (who is totally milking the lion-in-winter act, by the way) that more or less sets up the idea that Gemma and Clay are going to be spending much of the season screwing with each other. I think we need a forum thread to launch the betting pool on how many episodes it's going to be before these two have angry, arthritic hate sex.
Speaking of Clay, he 'fesses up to the club about killing Piney. Well, he admits that he killed Piney, but his narrative bears no resemblance to what actually happened. Then Clay tearily claims that he lied about it for the club, because he so cared about making sure the Irish deal went through, and tells everyone that Opie did the shooting. (You can imagine the expression on Tig's face here as he realizes that once again, he's murdered an innocent woman because Clay's a lying liar who lies.) Jax and Clay then meet privately and each puts the other on notice: I know you're up to something.
Finally Gemma's day hits bottom when she discovers that Tara -- who may as well get a tattoo reading "Gemma 2.0" -- has performed an end run regarding the kids' daycare and tells Gemma that she has no intention of allowing Gemma alone time with the kids. Gemma's spiral down is going to be long, slow and erratic this season; this is one woman who will not be willing to turn into the biker equivalent of the Queen Mum.
We have a few scenes establishing what a hardass Pope is -- say goodbye to the One-Niners' Laroy, as he's now naught but a bag of bloody pulp, and say goodbye to a few nameless One-Niners who get shot just to make a point about how casually homicidal Pope is.
Then we see that Pope's not that casual about murder at all. He takes it very seriously, and very personally: A cop on his payroll picks up Dawn Traeger -- remember, Margeaux with an X -- and uses her to lure Tig to Oakland. There, the cop and one of Pope's right-hand thugs physically constrain Tig and force him to watch as they douse Dawn with gasoline and set her on fire.
(By the way, Kim Coates knocks it out of the park as a man who, having murdered plenty of other people's daughters, is forced to reckon with all that pain he caused when he watches his baby burn to death because of him. Alas, Kim Coates will never get an Emmy nod for this.)
Worth recalling: Approximately five minutes into the first episode of the first season, a policeman on the SAMCRO payroll opens a metal locker in a just-burned-down stash house and reveals two young women who have been burned to death. (We find out later Tig had been sleeping with them.) That discovery sets off this exchange:
CLAY: (waves his piece) Two in the back of the head, quick and painless.
JAX: It ain't easy being king.
CLAY: You remember that.
Five years on, Jax is SAMCRO's president and more women have burned to death on his watch. One wonders if this season, Jax'll remember that it ain't easy to be king.
Lisa Schmeiser is an Oakland-adjacent reporter and editor. She'll always talk with you about this show on Twitter and she blogs at Penny Wiseacre.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Sons of Anarchy...
If you're just tuning in now because you heard that Charlie Hunnam peels for his art every week, I'm sorry, you're just going to have to settle for Jimmy Smits. And you are probably wondering what's going on with all these clothed people. May I suggest reading this recap of the first two seasons, this recap of the third season, and the following paragraph? The rest of you, skip ahead.
Last season on Sons of Anarchy: The club members who had gone to jail at the end of season three were released to the custody of a musical montage. They quickly figured out that things had changed in their short absence: Tara had already had her baby by Jax Teller; the new sheriff, Roosevelt, had no truck with a town full of racist bikers; Opie had finally decided to make an honest woman of his porn-star girlfriend, and they had the most awesome biker wedding.
Oh, and Clay decided that since he and Gemma hadn't really been keeping up on their 401(k) contributions, he'd finance their retirement by dragging the entire club into running drugs for a Mexican cartel whose idea of employee incentivism was to randomly decapitate people. Jax, naturally, goes for it. He tells Tara that this is because he also wants to retire and leave the biker life behind, but he is afraid to do so unless he is clutching a security blanket woven with several hundred thousand dollar bills.
Of course Tara swallows this fiction, quite possibly because she's addled from the sleep deprivation that attends raising two children under age four while also maintaining a high-flying surgical career and attempting to keep Gemma penned within the boundaries of polite civilization.
(pause for rueful laughter here)
Gemma, however, is going to get the ball rolling on the events that will ultimately turn everyone inside out: she learns that Tara has damning letters that Maureen (John Teller's Emergency Backup Old Lady) sent to Jax, freaks out all over Clay, and he decides that since Tara knows Clay and Gemma killed John Teller, she's got to die. In the course of Clay's quest to kill Tara, he contracts for her killing, but the attempted abduction is botched, leaving Tara with a broken hand. Remember, this is a woman who was a surgeon.
Clay also kills Piney. Opie finds out, goes to kill Clay, misses the shot and Clay lies to everyone else and claims the One-Niners did it out of pique over the drug running. Naturally, this sends Tig out on a mission to avenge his father figure/BFF and Tig manages to kill the daughter of a prominent gangster, because if you want to make sure the wife or girlfriend of a gangster dies by accident, Tig's your guy.
So! Time to introduce three new bikers, courtesy of the fact that the Nomad charter is disbanding for some reason I either cannot recall or was never mentioned. The three guys who will be filling out the table until such time as their usefulness to the story is outlived are Frankie Diamonds, Go-Go and Greg the Peg (so named because of the prosthesis on his left leg.) Clay comes wheezing into the table, all dramatically infirm and totally channeling Piney with his little oxygen canister and air of sullen impotence. Anyway! Nomads voted in with no drama whatsoever, Bobby's return hailed by his brothers and then Jax moves on to his business: "I've asked Bobby to be my VP." Tig asks, "What about Ope?" because I guess nobody at Piney's thing noticed Opie's total bitchface or Jax's suffering air and figured that those two were on the outs. Jax says, "I think Ope's going to have to step away from the club for awhile. Too much damage done to his family." The "BY THIS CLUB" part is tactfully left unspoken. Jax continues, "He's having a hard time not putting that pain on SAMCRO." I like how "putting that pain on" is the new "correctly blaming."
Clay takes that as his cue to speak up. He rests his head in his hands for a moment -- we see that he's still wearing his wedding ring -- and says he's got to confess something: "The Lobo cartel did not kill Piney. I did." Tig looks shocked. Chibs, however, does not. Jax is not even bothering to disguise the "What fresh bullshit will you be shoveling today?" look. Clay spins it out: He and Piney had their beefs, he went up to the cabin to try and work out their differences, they got drunk, firearms came out, they wrestled and an unfortunate gun accident happened. But Clay lied for the good of the club, you see: "I figured if the Irish or the cartel learned there was an internal beef in the club, they'd pull the plug on the deal, so I put it on the Mexicans. I planned on telling everyone as soon as the heat was off." We cut to Jax looking around the table, darkly amused by Clay's tale and his brothers' willingness to buy it. Clay then craftily says, "But Opie found out the truth before I could say anything. He's the one who shot me." Cue the ripples of shock and outrage. Clay continues, "I lied to Jax, told him it was black." Tig is absolutely stunned and he stammers out, "Why'd you lie, man?" Clay pauses and Jax dryly says, "You were protecting Ope." He picks up the story, pointing out that since Clay needed an ambulance, they needed a plausible story. Chibs doesn't look like he's buying this. Clay sorrowfully says, "I don't blame Ope for trying to kill me. I only wish I could explain to him what happened."
We then cut to a brief and intriguing scene where Clay tries to get on his bike and discovers his arthritis is too severe. He can't ride.
Goodman's summoned his cleaner, and lowered him into the storage area. He makes the mistake of turning his back on Tig, who struggles up to a sitting position, and quietly informs Goodman, "You're dead, n*****. You're all dead." Goodman, who clearly thinks there's no call for this sort of bigotry in Obama's post-racial America, strides over all, "You kidding me with this shit?" and goes to kick Tig again, only to discover, far too late, that Tig was expecting him to do that. The bereaved father then kills the accomplice to his daughter's murder with his bare hands, grabs the detective's piece and shoots the cleaner for good measure. And then Tig collapses into wracking sobs.
There's an impromptu strategy conference at the Knowles-Teller kitchen table. Everyone quickly figures out that Pope bought off those witnesses, and he did so in order to get Jax, Tig and Chibs inside the prison system, where presumably they'd all meet the kinds of gruesomely imaginative deaths that would make the former writers of OZ recoil in horror. The boys have to figure a way out of this -- and in a hurry, as there are sheriffs at the clubhouse looking for the three wanted men. Gemma urges the guys to run and she's got just the spot; Tara is opposed. Jax backs his mom's play, to his old lady's disgust, piously bleating that it's the best thing in the long run for the family. Everyone leaves Tara alone to fume in the house. Gemma stops to give Tara an "I won" look, because that's how she rolls.
We go into the episode-ending musical montage. Unser is feeding Gemma's bird now that she's off doing God-knows-what (and whom) in the evenings; he clucks about how he misses Gemma too. The boys head out to their new hideyhole. Rat watches TV on the couch as Tara sits, smokes a joint, and ignores Thomas crying on the baby monitor. (So that's how you ignore the nerve-shredding baby cries -- smoke some really good pot. Why aren't the child care books sharing that?) We see Clay drinking alone and Opie slapping a For Sale sign on his bike, then walking off while his club brothers watch. Then we see Tig sitting on the edge of the still-smoking metal locker, rocking back and forth as his tears flow.
Cut to Damon Pope buying ice cream for a neighborhood full of kids. "Who wants some ice creeeeeeeam!" yells out the man who killed at least two people today, if not more, and although he laughs as he hands out the treats, once the kids scatter, all the life goes out of Pope's face. Revenge hasn't provided him with any closure, it would seem.