Six Beatings and a Movie!

S05E07

Editor's note: Your regular recapper is swamped with work from the day job, plus throwing a birthday celebration for a toddler, so mr. sobell has stepped in for the week. Please enjoy

Clay and his three idiots are arguing about their idiotic plot gone awry. The plan was to create pressure on Jax so that Clay would be rightfully restored to his place at the table and the three idiots get to wet their beaks with the Sons' illegal activities. But Clay is fretful that a murder investigation is going to come back to haunt him.

Gemma wakes up after a night of passion with the host of The Soup. After returning from the bathroom to have a good cry about what she did -- she could have had Mankini, goddmanit! -- she returns to the room to find that The Soup host has up and split with all her stuff. They are saving a fortune on Katey Sagal's wardrobe this year, what with all the sheets she goes wrapped around in.

Jax wants Unser to tell him what he knows. Unser uses very small words to explain to Jax that the three idiots are likely responsible and that DNA will be the deciding factor. A lifetime of watching CSI has clued Jax in to the fact that Clay is the idiot puppet master pulling his idiot puppets' strings.

Unser pokes around with two of the idiots -- one of them sporting noticeable wounds that look like they'd come from a struggle with a now-dead cop's wife. His investigation produces a lot of pronounced stares and threats meant to sound affable.

Gemma calls Jimmy Smits for help with her predicament and he tells the motorcycle gang and they show up and Gemma is like, "Oh, Christ, my son," and Jax is all, "When did my mother turn into the town bicycle?" Anyhow she confesses to a one-night stand gone bad, which produces a lot of eye-rolling from Jimmy Smits and moralizing from Jax. But it looks like we're off on a wacky adventure with the Sons or the most violent Soup sketch ever.

Tara's looking up something related to Otto in a plot line I don't care about. She and Clay have a not particularly warm interaction that Juice catches sight of. He seems to be realizing that he's hitched his wagon to wrong aging star.

So the host of The Soup is a con man who makes a habit of loving the ladies and then making off with their stuff. Sadly, he took Gemma's boosted car to a chop shop run by Jimmy Smits' associates. Joel McHale's panicked double-take is every bit as delightful as you might imagine. Car chase! Bike chase! Squealing tires! Look out! Joel's got a gun! He proves to be as accurate a shot as that bit where he shoots the interns. Anyhow, they punch him around a bit, but the presence of witnesses saves him from a beating that Lindsay Lohan would like watch on continuous loop every day for the year. Jax and company resolve to remove all of his walking-around money, and Joel slinks back to the another part of the basic cable spectrum.

One of Clay's idiots warns him about Unser's mounting suspicions. They decide that what this show needs is less Unser.

Tara's brainstorm is to try and give Otto things that remind him of the good times with Samcro. Like I said, I don't care about this. It reeks of mythology.

And now it's time for the talk that every child wants to have with their parent: Why are you being such an embarrassing whore, Mom? I mean Jimmy Smits, I can understand, but the other guy... his show is like on permanent hiatus. Anyhow, it all goes back to Thomas Teller dying and weird family dynamics and why can't we go back to punching Joel McHale?

So Clay shows up at Unser's trailer and Unser spends the entire conversation pointing a rifle in the vicinity of Clay, which does not make for an unawkward encounter. Clay is probably more disturbed by the bulletin board pointing the accusatory finger of accusation in Clay's general direction. Clay dangles the prospect of Unser becoming police chief as a way to buy off Unser; Unser imagines he'll likely be dead of cancer soon enough, which will harm his employment prospects. Clay confirms that it is indeed the Nomads who are responsible. Unser could probably reach that conclusion himself since two of those Nomads just burst in to shoot him. However, Unser has the drop on them, and shoots one, while Clay shoots the other, which pretty much takes care of him being implicated by anything the now dead Nomads might say about his involvement in all of this. Clay wins! Clay always wins! Unser's going to keep Clay out of the mix, but this still figures to not go well for the club. Oh, also there's still one Nomad out there.

The club learns that the Nomads tried to kill Unser and try to make sense of it all -- why they did it, who's calling the shots. It's like watching everyone trying to solve a difficult math problem.

Anyhow, Gemma goes over to comfort Unser, who for some reason apologizes for calling Gemma on her overall awfulness last week. She tells him to think nothing of it.

Tara has a make-nice call with Gemma at Jax's urging. Gemma's going to watch the kids while Jax and Tara have their cabin getaway. That seemed to be resolved rather quickly.

Anyhow, Joel McHale is about to scam another chick at a motel, but Jimmy Smits is there to lay down some L.A. Law on him. Joel is beaten so hard he probably thinks Community got renewed for six seasons and a movie.

Juice puts two and two together to figure that Clay set up the Nomads. Clay convinces him that the Nomads were working for someone else -- certainly not ol' Clay -- and because Juice has already overdrawn on his bank of deductive reasoning he buys it. Jax shows up to confront Clay: He knows that Clay is using the Nomads to undermine his leadership and, more important, that it's backfired. From what I can gather, Clay mumbles a denial, and they're going to find someone named Frankie and get to the bottom of everything and let the club decide who lives and who dies, in Jax's words.

Someone wants to decide before that, apparently. Jax is riding up to the cabin with Chibs when a van pulls up alongside them and lets rip with some automatic weapon fire. They go off the side of the road, and manage to shoot one of their two masked assailants. That it's an African-American behind the mask does not bode well for the Pope-SAMCRO alliance.

While driving the boys home, Gemma runs into her some problems, too -- these are of the self-inflicted variety. Either she's drifting off at the wheel or that doobie she smoked with Unser earlier took effect at an inopportune moment, but whatever the reason, she drifted in front of a semi, and drove off the road, and she's unconscious, and the younger Teller kid is screaming, and the older boy looks to have suffered a mortal injury and boy, am I glad I stayed up late to watch this.

Mr. sobell leaves the biker shows to his wife, who will eventually throw off the shackles of her day job and return to her rightful recapping gig.

-- Mr. Sobell

The episode begins with two bikers riding at night and background music playing a low, insistent beat that makes me fear, for one timeless and horrible moment, that we're about to be subjected to some hipster douchebag cover of "Jukebox Hero," in which case, this recap would end with this sentence: "I QUIT."

Instead, some guy just asks philosophically why, if Jesus has the time to carry people on long shorefront walks, He cannot be bothered to spend time with the singer. While this is going on, Jax and Bobby Elvis ride and look grim, and oh, whatever. (Although I do wonder if we should start the death pool on Bobby Elvis, what with the "Previously..." segment making a point of Tara emphasizing that the club did not betray Otto, a club member did. It's entirely possible that Otto will soon embrace that distinction and make a few conditions for recanting his testimony.)

Meanwhile, across town, Clay is dumping info on the three nomads and the upshot is, he wants them out of town for a few weeks, ostensibly to ride out the whole dead-sheriff's-wife tragedy. Frankie clumsily exposits, "But what about our deal? We get you back at the head of the table, we get a piece of your end." Gogo adds, "Guns, drugs, all of it, man." Greg the Peg says nothing; he looks as if he's reviewing his life choices in chronological order and regretting them all. Clay effectively terminates the deal with, "These break-ins were supposed to put pressure on Jax, not a homicide on me." Gogo attempts to deflect blame by pointing out that they only hit Roosevelt on Clay's orders, but Clay tells Gogo to shut his big wife-shooting mouth.

Gemma comes to and gets an eyeful of a dozing Joel McHale. She runs to the bathroom, presumably to make a vow to never eat another simple carb again since it's doing such good things for Joel McHale's body fat percentage.

We see Tara Having It All, i.e. reading through Otto's medical jacket while Abel sleeps sweetly beside her.

Then we see Unser, who has parked his trailer in some sort of demo lot (possibly part of his old trucking empire?), sitting on the steps of the trailer having a smoke. His ears prick up at the sound of bikes approaching, but it's merely Jax & Bobby and not, say, Clay and The Invaders come to end his investigation. A little exposition transpires -- rising medical costs forced Unser to sell his land, and he now acts as night watchman at his former business in exchange for parking his trailer there -- and then we get to the point of this scene. Jax wants to know everything Unser does about the home invasions.

By Sobell

We go inside the trailer and see that Unser's got himself a police board where he's laying out all the pieces of his investigation. And down in the left-hand corner, he's identified SAMCRO as suspects. This blows Jax's big feely brain, and Unser patiently walks him through the reasoning: The three hits on the club were really not "hits" so much as they were the home invasion version of "love taps." The Roosevelt hit was a mistake. Unser asks Jax the same question Pope did: "Who has something to gain by making the club look weak? Turning the town and the sheriffs against them?" That Jax does not instantly yell, "Oooh, oooh, I know! Clay!" perhaps explains why his academic career did not culminate with a seat to Bobak Ferdowski during the Mars Curiosity touchdown.

Jax does get it eventually, and it only takes Unser a little more effort to lead him to conclude that it's the nomads who are carrying out Clay's wishes. Atta boy! He may be trainable yet. Jax thoughtfully says, "The nomads are staying at Lowell's old place down on Bethel --" Ha! Love a callback to Lowell, i.e. one of Clay's few surprising acts of humanity way back in the day -- and then he asks if Unser could maybe swing by and introduce himself. If I were Unser, I'd start asking for some financial renumeration for all this, maybe get out of a parking lot before the cancer wins.

So! Jax and Bobby conclude that Clay is a lying snaky liar who lies. Quelle surprise!

Meanwhile, Gemma has come out of her bathroom breakdown to discover that Joel McHale has traded the awesome thrill of gnocchi for adrenal jolt of tossing a purse and stealing a giant SUV. Anything to avoid giving in to temptation and blowing a Benjamin at Panera, I guess. Honestly, given how her prior hook-ups have gone (NERO), a little light grant theft auto is getting off easy.

After the credits, we see that Frankie has decided that the smart thing to do is to leave Charming ASAP. Jax strolls over, makes some small talk, and then concurs with Frankie's Get The Hell Out plan. With a small edge in his voice, he says, "It's probably a good time to split. All this heat (with) home invasions and dead wives. Charming's become a very messy place since you guys showed up." Jax finishes with a giant, shit-eating grin and Frankie sort of pales under his protective grease coating. Then Jax twists the knife further by taking off his sunglasses and telling Frankie very earnestly that they need him to stay in touch because SAMCRO needs his valuable input on how to brutalize whomever is behind the home invasions. Frankie's all, "I have email? Try itsallclaysdoing@hotmail.com."

Oh my God, all of Unser's pot use has dulled his faculties and he really did decide it was a good idea to introduce himself to the other two nomads. Or else he's hoping to go out via suicide by biker and tag it to the nomads. Either way, this scene does not presage the start of a long and beautiful friendship.

Having threatened Frankie, Jax turns to the item on his to-do list: Checking out how the decorating at The New Best Little Whorehouse In Charming is going. Well, it's an improvement in that the prevailing aesthetic is less Sleazy Pier One Imports and more Unironically Sordid West Elm, right down to the on-trend teal walls and vaguely George Nelson-style light fixtures. I think Charming's hipster douchebag population -- all two of them -- will feel comfortable here.

Chibs is feeling good about the new place and Tig grins, "I'm so excited." Even Lyla seems much recovered from her bereavement, saying that she's doing okay and "Nero's a good guy." Speaking of the man, he is there to do two things: Obfuscate on Carla's exact whereabouts ("I'm pretty sure she's moved on") and tell Jax that Gemma is up shit creek. AGAIN.

Cue the entire club, plus Nero, rolling up to the no-tell motel. Jax is dismayed that his mom is hanging out at the type of locale that would make lot lizards blanch, and Gemma is dismayed that Nero told the club where she was: "If I wanted them to show up, I would have called them," she hissed. Nero gives her the kind of cheerful grin only two people who nearly had sex at gunpoint can share.

Jax asks his mom what the hell happened, and Gemma vagues, "I crashed her last night and someone stole my caddy." "'Someone,'" says Jax, and it cracks me up that Charlie Hunnam can perfectly pronounce air quotes but still has a hard time with the flat "a" sound Americans make. Jax heads inside, cases the room, and comes out brandishing a bottle of milky white fluid. "Since when do you drink banana vodka?" he asks, and Gemma cringes in shame. As she should, because what is she, a 14 year old girl? I bet the two bottles Jax finds are going to be Southern Comfort and Mountain Dew, and then Gemma's humiliation will be complete.

Nero asks what happened and Gemma shamefacedly says that while she was in the bathroom doing what my toddler daughter calls, "a tinkle-tinkle-tinkle," Joel McHale stole her wallet and her SUV. (I must say that Joel McHale has invented the sweetest scam in history: Not only do you get acquainted with people on an accelerated timetable, you also get in a nap, cash prizes and a car!) Anyway, Gemma has to admit she does not remember Joel McHale's name, quite possibly because her busy few years have left an enormous backlog of E! channels on the TiVo, and Jax shakes his head and asks disgustedly, "Jesus Christ, who are you?" Gemma has no good answer for him.

Gemma whirls away to go compose herself and Jax goes to apologize to Nero for getting sucked into Gemma's drama: "She's a goddamned train wreck." Nero reminds Jax that "she's still your mother. Respect that, ese. She's caught between a husband she hates and a kid she thinks hates her. Women like your mom, Jax -- they don't do too well without a family." And THIS is why Gemma needs a posse of girlfriends and a hobby.

Anyway, because this is Nero's moment to shine, his network of associates have managed to find the chop shop where Gemma's Escalade was taken. And, o fortunate contrivance, Joel McHale is still there! I hope he and Jax have to grapple with one another while shirtless. Oh please, oh please, oh please...

Tara's in Jax's office, looking over old photos of SAMCRO -- so old, in fact, that Otto is still binocular and walking amongst the club -- when Clay comes in. He mumbles an apology, then tries to break through Tara's silent treatment with, "We're going to have to say something to one another sooner or later." "No, we're not," Tara corrects him. Clay continues, "Jax should have killed me. You and I both know I'm living on borrowed time." Tara asks, "Now I'm supposed to feel sorry for you?" Outside the office, Juice skids up short and begins unabashedly eavesdropping. Clay replies, "No, you're supposed to hate me. Like you do." Tara gives him a Gemma-esque look of bored disdain. (Side note: Maggie Siff has done a wonderful job of mirroring Katey Sagal's body language and expressions as she depicts the gradually coarsening Tara.) Tara shrugs, "You're not on borrowed time. To me, you're already dead. Stay away." She stalks out, gives Juice a The hell? look and keeps going.

Juice walks inside and asks, somewhat shaken, "What happened, Clay? What'd you do to her?" Clay says evasively, "Same thing I always do," which, strictly speaking, is not true, because Tara is actually alive, unlike many of the women on this show who had the misfortune to be associated with men Clay wanted dead. ANYWAY. The point to this scene is that Juice has finally realized that a) he backed the wrong alpha dog in the club, and b) once again, a father figure in his life has proved unreliable-to-wholly-gone.

And now we find out from the helpful chaps at the chop shop that Joel McHale is "part of a crew that scams older broads, jacks their shit." Nero nods a head at Jax and indicates that things might get messy. "Don't do it here, eh?" asks the head ... chopper? Chop-shopper? Whatever, he's the spokesman for the crew and all he's asking is that SAMCRO beat down the MILF-bilker elsewhere.

Fortunately, Joel McHale agrees with this plan, as he's just stolen a car and is trying to get away from the Sons. But by the laws governing the SAMCRO universe, car never outruns motorcycle, so it's a matter of minutes before he's apprehended by a convenient arroyo. And then there's some fisticuffs and Joel McHale is $3000 lighter than he used to be, and honestly, this is nowhere near as funny as it should have been. I just deleted a long, comedy-nerd hypothesis for why this was, but honestly, we're all better off not slogging through the grim business of people telling you why something tickles the funnybone. And we are also better off having wrapped up this segment of the "Gemma Teller: The Downward Spiral" chronicles.

At the clubhouse, Greg the Peg pulls up to tell Clay that Unser swung by and totally noticed those gouges on Go-Go's neck and chest. Clay takes this about as well as can be expected, and then has to deal with Greg following up, "Jax rattled Frankie. He and Unser both know we did the break-ins. They're coming after us." Naturally, Frankie and Go-Go would like to deal with this by killing Unser, because why wouldn't that totally calm everything down? Naturally, Clay is on board with this: Because Unser "knows everything," he's got to go, so why don't the nomads all meet Clay at Unser's Airstream in two hours? The four bikers can then pool their resources and figure out how to take down one stoned, cancer-riddled old man then. Oh, wait -- Clay just said, "I'll get there first, make sure all the weapons are out of reach." And we all know that Unser's trailer is filled with nothing but weapons, so either Clay's going to persuade Unser to do a lot of decluttering ASAP or he's setting up the nomads.

Inside, Tara and Bobby are continuing to strategize over the old photos, with Tara saying, "I just want to have something when I see him, some kind of, you know, peace offering." I believe Otto was quite clear on what kind of peace offering he would accept, so unless those photos come with matching kneepads, there's not a damn thing in there that will help Tara. Bobby suggests that the way to Otto's heart is through Luann, and the way to Luann's memorabilia is through Gemma.

So Tara trots across the yard to talk to a bleary, unfocused Gemma about Luann, feeding Gemma a line about how Jax was putting together a care package for Otto and wouldn't it be nice to have some mementoes of the old lady whom the club failed to protect? Gemma's first contribution: "Well, he-he liked to watch her movies. [beat] But I'm guessing they're not going to let you bring a stack of old videotapes in there." "Probably not," Tara concurs wryly. Gemma takes a moment and her face softens as she thinks about Luann, and then Gemma shares a sweet and funny story about how Otto so loved one type of patchouli-based perfume, he wouldn't let Luann wear anything else. Anyway, Tara's now on a mission to track down the perfume that comes in a blue bottle.

Jax and his crew come back. After a filler conversation wherein we establish that yes, Jax and Tara are still going to the cabin this weekend, Jax heads in to talk to his mom. In his clumsy way, he attempts to reassure Gemma that she's not going to be locked out of his family life with Tara and the boys -- thus heeding Nero's words about Gemma's need to have a family life and subtly underscoring that Jax is a fan of father figures telling him how to make sense of the world. Then Jax bluntly asks, "What's going on with you, Mom?" Gemma doesn't really know, so she gropes back to where she thinks her problems began: "After my Thomas died, I did the worst thing a mother can do. I made you make up for the love that he couldn't give me anymore. I'm sorry, Jackson. I'm sorry that I've always been too much." So, really, this goes back to Gemma's childhood, when she had to live with the conspicuous loss of a sibling and learned to associate love with portioning. The point is, Gemma has needs and yet she's ashamed to articulate what they are. It's a tragedy.

Jax is hit by this news, because it turns out that "When he died, I felt so bad. It wasn't because he was dead. It was because I would have you all to myself, and I knew how wrong that was. I love you, Mom, and we're going to get through all this, I promise." Gemma starts sobbing into Jax's shoulder and they hug. So, going by the logic of afterschool specials, this means everything is okay from now on!

Juice drops Clay off at Unser's pad -- note well the guns all over the place -- and Unser reluctantly lets him in. The two men have a fairly edgy conversation revolving around Unser's lack of trust in Clay, then Clay puts down his gun and says, "I've made a lot of mistakes, Wayne. Nobody's seen more of them than you." Unser draws a line between them by saying, "If this is a confession, maybe you should let me turn on a recorder." Clay smirks a bit and says, "I miss Chief Unser. Oswald is going to beat Hale in the election. He's already talking about reinstating Charming P.D. Wouldn't it be nice to see you come out of retirement?" Unser chortles, "That's a noble plan, but I suspect I'll be dead within a year. Is this what you've come to talk about?"

Outside, Juice sees the nomads' car drive by and he picks up his phone. Inside, Clay comes clean: "You were right. These home invasions -- they're an inside job. The nomads." Unser and his shotgun sit down all, "Reeeeeeeeally? Do tell." Clay's phone rings then and Juice tells him the nomads are outside. Then Juicey asks what's going on. Awww! It's so cute how he thinks he'll get answers. Clay nods at Unser and asks if his rifle is loaded. It is. Clay sighs and says, "You were a good friend, Wayne. I'm sorry I wrecked that too --"

By Sobell

And just when you might think that Clay and Unser are about to have a firefight, in burst the nomads, who are promptly blown to Kingdom Come by both men. Unser asks how Clay knew they'd be at the trailer, and instead of saying, "Because I told them to show up," he spins some tale about how he was secretly investigating the nomads and only showed up thanks to his superior deductive prowess. Unser lets Clay know he's not buying it: "These two and the other one -- they ain't the brightest trio in the choir. Someone else had to be calling the shots." Clay protests that, "I wasn't trying to sabotage Jax. If I was, think I would have stopped them from blowing your head off?" "Maybe sentimentality got the best of you," Unser says as he reloads his shotgun. "Ain't my nature," Clay points out. Well, he has Unser there.

Anyway, the new plan is for Tig to escort Tara up, and Jax to "do some shit" before joining her. I have said it before and will say it again: the amount of tasks these bikers knock off in a working day is staggering. Forget the cult of David Allan's Getting Things Done (GTD). I want the SAMCRO guide to Getting Shit Done (GSD).

We zip from the bikers all coddling the boys on the playground in broad daylight to Gemma weaving around Unser's parking lot in the gloaming. She is more stoned than a Sig Ep chapter at a Dave Matthews concert. Tara asks if Gemma can watch the boys, and Gemma fuzzily consents. "I'm trusting you'll be safe with them, Gemma," Tara adds, and behind her, we see Tig swinging Abel on the swing while Phil dandles wee Thomas on his knee and points out what's going on and a giant anvil labeled, "FORESHADOWING" comes whistling down from the sky. Tara clicks off the phone, then looks at it as if wondering to herself, "Is it too late to ask Filthy Phil to watch them?" And the answer is: It is never too late. You should even bring him along should either Teller spawn make it to college; Phil could move an entire dorm room's worth of furniture in one go.

Meanwhile, on the other end, Gemma takes another hit off the joint and at this point, even Afroman is all, "There is such a thing as getting high too often, lady."

It's now dark and -- oh, look, Joel McHale's up to an evening of MILF-bilking. You can tell the lady he's with is supposed to be "older" because she's wearing an outfit straight out of the Coldwater Creek catalog. Anyway, Joel McHale has been waylaid by Nero and his men, all so Nero can beat the bejeesus about him.

Oh, look! Juicey has decided to sign his own death warrant by coming over to Clay's house and confronting him, inasmuch as Juice confronts anyone, with: "You knew Unser was on to the nomads ... did you kill Greg and Go-Go?" Clay promptly lies that the nomads were working for someone else, and Juice about piddles himself in fear. This kind of threat warrants telling the club! Cue motorcycles pulling up outside. Clay quips, "I got a feeling [the club] already knows." Clay then apologizes to Juice with "I'm sorry I dragged you into this." Juice opens the door and Jax gives him a Now I have to deal with YOU? look before Chibs says, "Let's go, Juicey," and drags him off, presumably for deprogramming.

Jax and Clay circle each other. Jax notes idly, "No O2? You must be breathing a little easier?" and it's funny because Clay's breathing more easily on account of having murdered 66.67 percent of his accomplices in the home invasion scheme. Jax then lays it out: "You're using the nomads to undermine my leadership. You're the one behind these home invasions. Now it's backfired." Clay attempts to persuade Jax otherwise, claiming Pope is behind all this. Jax nods, "Then let's find Frankie, get him to tell the truth, and take it to the table. Let SAMCRO decide who lives and who dies." Well, looks like "FIND FRANKIE" is now on top of Clay's to-do list.

By Sobell

Meanwhile, on the other end, Gemma takes another hit off the joint and at this point, even Afroman is all, "There is such a thing as getting high too often, lady."

By Sobell

Back at the clubhouse, Gemma is securing the boys in her SUV while Filthy Phil looks on anxiously, obviously concerned over Gemma's wobbly state, probably aware of how much crap would rain down on his head if he were to say anything. Gemma fumbles for her seatbelt.

We go into the episode-ending musical montage: Tara putting away groceries in the cabin while Tig sits watch outside with a beer and a 9-mm to keep him company. (Because alcohol plus firearms always equals safe!) Clay fondles his marriage certificate and broods. Jax and Chibs are riding home when a van pulls up beside them and conducts a spray-and-pray, driving both men off the road. After the shooter follows them into the wash, Jax and Chibs manage to kill him -- it's an African-American gentleman, which certainly won't do much to help their relationship with Pope.

And Gemma, who is having a really hard time on the road, drives right into the path of a tractor-trailer. The SUV goes rocketing off the road and the last, disturbing shot is of Gemma passed out behind the wheel, a red-faced Thomas crying, and a severely injured Abel bleeding all over the place. Here's hoping week's episode begins with Wendy telling Jax and Tara that finding childcare for their cabin getaways is not going to be a problem anymore.

Lisa Schmeiser really wants that GSD manual. Catch her on the Twitternets or drop her husband a tweet to tell him how much you enjoyed the recaplet.