Hands up all of you who shouted "Holy @#%&!" several times during the episode. Now, tell me how you pronounce "@#%&" because I'm never quite sure if it's a long # or a short one.
HOW SWEET IT IS: SAMCRO's moved right into downtown Charming, much to the chagrin of the few pedestrians in Charming and Mayor Hale the Lesser, who exposits that he's about to get bounced from office because of the delays to the Charming Heights development. These delays are linked to Pope Industries' slowdown in the wake of Damon Pope's death. And thus Jax is smacked in the face with yet another dilemma of his own making, what with his pet mayor and legit business sideline threatened by his club's murder of Damon Pope.
NINA: The Irish presence is greatly reduced this week. The club lets Connor go with a message: Tell Galen that the Sons are okay with his plan to use Clay as his distribution point, but when that inevitably fails, they'll be waiting with August Marks as their backup plan. Connor is all, "I look forward to delivering that message shortly before a bunch of short-tempered racists kill me for saying a word."
Also, the club catches us all up in case anyone has spent the first half of this season in a mescaline haze or something. Jax: "As far as the Irish go, the peace is real. We're going to cut Connor loose today, make sure everything moves forward with Clay. Bobby can walk us through our sad financials. " Bobby lays it out: the guys are in serious straits. Naturally, this is when Montez, West and Quinn all patch into the charter and Rat finally gets patched in as a full member.
DA STANDS FOR 'DESPARATE ATTORNEY': Displeased by the tsunami of negative press castigating her for not finding a scapegoat in the school shooting, Patterson goes ahead and charges Nero with Erin's murder. (You will recall that Roosevelt pointed out that the physical evidence nails her special investigator Toric for it.) She tells Nero that if he can get Jax to testify that he sold Nero the gun that ended up in young Matthew Jennings' hands, he can walk away. Privately, she frets to Roosevelt that nobody's going to crack and she needs somebody "outside the family circle." A lightbulb goes off over Roosevelt's head: The Best Little Craftsman Whorehouse in Stockton and Barofsky. He and Patterson take a trip to the bakery and she ably threatens Barofsky. Since Barofsky dislikes Jax anyway, he's not exactly disinclined to go along with the DA.
MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS: So the reason Venus is in town is because she's got family problems: Her whackjob mother Alice has custody of Joey (first introduced as Venus's nephew) and Nero fuh-reaks out when he hears this, then charges Gemma with getting Joey away from Alice. Tasking God's Righteous Mother with rescuing a child is like feeding sirloin to a Doberman, so of course Gemma's all over it. And by "all over it," I mean "tells Jax to handle it."
Jax balks, but when Venus tells a story of her mother using her to launch a lucrative child pornography franchise, the grizzled bikers all rally to the cause. A family brawl later – of course Venus can handle a shotgun like a Robert Rodriguez wet dream – and a car chase (because what is this show without one car chase per week?), and we have learned that Joey is actually the result of Venus's last hurrah as Vincent. The crew enlists Barofsky to find Joey and Alice, and that's how they end up at a child porn studio. I confess: the set-up with cameras aimed at the crib gave me actual nightmares, which is something nothing else on this show has managed to do.
When Alice finally comes in, she delivers a monologue about how awful Venus is as a parent/father to a roomful of biker dudes with varying daddy issues. When she gets to the line about how Joey will kill himself because of the life his father forced him into, that's when Jax is all, "That's enough, inner monologue I am trying to ignore through rigorous journaling" and kills her.
Barofsky thanks Jax for helping wipe this scum out of his port, and they all plan to destroy the computers which contain all the footage of abused children, rather than drop them at law enforcement so as to help the good guys track down the sick filth that buy this stuff. But as the saying goes, perfect is the enemy of good. Alice is dead and Barofsky is hunting down her accomplices, so that's one less manufacturer. Let's focus on that.
Venus admits that she's not ready to tell Joey that he's her son, because she's not ready to lose him yet. Jax calls Venus a hell of a father, and by the end of the episode, Tig has managed to move from a place of raw animal longing for Venus and into something slightly more evolved, holding her while she watches Joey board a bus to Seattle.
WHO'S THE FIERCE MOTHER NOW? Tara's manipulations – which we've seen in dribs and drabs all season – finally begin to unfold. She draws a pint of her own blood (with Margaret's help), draws up a will where Gemma is explicitly barred from raising her boys and confidently asserts that Jax will sign it, then gets Unser to help her get a restraining order.
After those pieces are in place, Tara sends Wendy to play her role with Gemma. So Wendy rushes off to Teller Morrow and tells Gemma that Tara's making Margaret the guardian of the children and planning to divorce Jax. Gemma, predictably, decides she can stop this by virtue of showing up and yelling at people, so she goes to the hospital and physically assaults Margaret in front of Unser, then goes after Tara in Tara's office.
Tara does a little screaming and a little slapping, but it's not enough to goad Gemma. The older woman snarls, "You're lucky you're pregnant," and THAT is when Tara pulls a move worthy of a soap opera, slams her stomach into the table, thus puncturing the bag of blood in her dress, then claims Gemma attacked her. As Gemma's led away, Tara weeps that she wants her husband.
I will not lie, when that all went down, I was like, HOLY CATS TARA JUST OUT-GEMMA'D GEMMA. THIS IS GOING TO GO SO BAD SO FAST. Yet apparently it does not, because when Jax shows up with Bobby and Chibs in tow and Tara's weeping about how Gemma kicked her in the stomach, everyone's all, "Yeah, that sounds about right." Which … these people have all met Gemma, right? They know that babies are her kryptonite. Except for when she's holding guns to their wee heads, but maybe she's just racist against Hibernians? ANYWAY, Tara has just effectively destroyed Gemma's reputation with Margaret as her willing handmaiden. Wendy and Unser appear slightly more conflicted about their roles.
A few more weepy scenes from Tara – along with the strategic sobbing to Jax that "I lost our baby girl," which is just insanely manipulative, even by Gemma standards -- and Jax is signing whatever paperwork Tara and Lowen put in front of him.
The quote of the week: "She's going to box us out of seeing our boys!" – Wendy deftly punching all of Gemma's buttons all at once. Using my funhouse-mirror theory of this season, it's striking how the queen of manipulating mamas (see the pilot) has become so easy to maneuver.
Lisa Schmeiser is an Oakland-adjacent reporter, editor and blogger. She regularly tweets here, blathers about comics here, and posts the oddball personal piece of writing here.
If we learn anything from the opening montage in this episode, let it be this: Never doubt what a group of committed bikers can do to turn an abandoned sweet shoppe into a den suitable for SAMCRO business. It is kind of a mystery to me why these guys would want to go with prostitution and porn for their businesses when they can run a moving service, and thus their customers can be screwed in an entirely legal fashion.
Also, we see Tara hugging Wendy outside the day care at the hospital. The two women cling to one another and I wish for the umpteenth time that they'd just run off together and build a sane new life up in Oregon.
We see that Patterson's getting roasted in the local press for her perceived inaction on the shooting, and we should all be grateful that this is only a series of newspapers we're looking at and not, say, the Internet comments because that would be a parade of idiocy-fueled conspiracy theories.
And for a final montage note: Gemma watches the crew moving things out of the bombed-out clubhouse (including the miraculously unscathed table -- I guess none of the firefighters were spiteful enough to try and blast it with enough water to warp it for life), and she retreats to her office to think about how she's losing her nerve line into the club and her man behind bars. What does she have left beyond her grudge match with Tara over the boys?
Then we head out of the opening montage to see Jax in front of the sweet shoppe, handing over three months' rent to the mayor, who does not look too excited to have the Sons spearheading downtown's new revitalization. He needs to turn that frown upside down once he realizes how much more lively chamber of commerce meetings are about to get.
The mayor exposits, "The whole town is spooked, Jax. There's a council meeting week, there… folks will be talking about how to get rid of the MC." "Well, it's a good thing the mayor has veto power," Bobby says laconically. Hale the Lesser says, "Yeah, for a minute. Shit went down with Charming Heights. I'm done after this term. It means you've got three months to buy some good will."
Jax is aware of that. He's now made aware that Charming Heights is in danger of stalling out because Pope Industries is taking its sweet time in backing the project. And why might they be taking their sweet time? Because when your CEO is murdered, people tend to use the change in leadership to reevaluate business deals and long-term company plans, and someone in that organization is not looking at a proposal and saying, "An opportunity to tie up my money with a development deal soaked in SAMCRO? Where do I sign?" The upshot of this conversation: When Jax let Tig shoot Pope, Jax ended up shooting his club in the foot.
As for Mrs. Jax, she's drawing a pint of her own blood in the office. Unless Tara's updating her Match.com profile ("Wanted: Vampire for romantic moonlight picnic, murder of my husband. I've packed snacks"), this is both creepy and unsettling. Margaret, however, doesn't think so. She's handed over some forms to Tara and asks about the other woman's general state of mind. Tara -- who is wearing a tan poplin sheath that manages to be professional while causing any and all adherents of the Color Me Beautiful theory to stroke out at an obvious Winter wearing Autumn colors -- says she's a little rattled by having to move everything up to accommodate the new trial timetable. Margaret warmly says, "It's okay." Tara reaches out to take Margaret's hand and says, "Thank you. I know I've put a lot on you. Things I've had no right to ask." Margaret clasps Tara's hand and says, "We've been through a lot together, Tara. I know you. I've been where you are. I thought a lot about this last night, and I can imagine how extreme it must feel to you. But you have to stay focused on the big picture." Tara nods, "Dire circumstances require desperate measures." Margaret gives a bracing nod: "Yes, they do."
SIDEBAR: Although this show is always positioned as being about Jax and Clay and their father/son issues, that's not a fair or complete assessment. Tara's mother issues have been an ongoing theme. It's been evident for several seasons that Gemma and Margaret have been subtly fighting to become that mother figure Tara so obviously needs. The key difference between the two, however, is that Gemma puts on and takes off the identity of loving nurturer as it suits her own ambitions, while Margaret quietly became the person Tara came to rely upon because the big picture was "give this woman the support and guidance that will make her great."
(Also, my theory on why Tara and Jax are so into each other on a fundamental level is because each of them has similar parental issues with bereavement and abandonment. They get each other's damage. In fact, being around someone whose damage is similar to your own goes a long way toward making you feel nice and normal. So why wouldn't you want to be around someone who made you feel better about yourself?)
ANYWAY. It's time for church in the new space. Bobby looks at the table and says happily, "Home is where the reaper is," and Jax comes over to hug him. Oh, now Bobby is Jax's favorite person.
While SAMCRO assembles, Nero and his attorney are meeting with Tyne Patterson, who is letting him know: "I'm willing to trade your murder for five others. I want Jax Teller and the Sons of Anarchy. Testify that the MC sold you the KG-9 that wound up in the hands of Matthew Jennings, and you'll walk away back to your legitimate business. And more importantly, your son. This will be my one and only offer. You have 24 hours." Now, if I were Nero, I'd be preparing my "It's not you, it's me and the full might of the legal system breathing down my neck" speech, because Gemma may be a force of nature in bed, but that's not going to do anyone any good in prison. But Nero looks like he's just fuming at his own general helplessness.
Back in church, Jax makes the first order of business voting in the new patches. But, Jax says, "Before I do that, I think it's only fair they know exactly where the club is at. As far as the Irish go, it looks like the peace is real. I'm going to cut Connor loose today, make sure everything moves forward with Clay. Bobby can walk us through our sad financials." How sad are they? Very sad. So sad. Sadder than a Sondheim musical about the regrets of late middle age. Jax adds, "Colette and her girls are a little spooked by Nero's bullshit arrest, so the Diosa expansion in Stockton's on hold until I can convince her otherwise." If Jax is half-smart, he'll write his arguments in edible ink on his abs. And if this show is a quarter-smart they'll show it. Anyway, Quinn (who will be replacing Filthy Phil in the "Club members who can also be used to block out the sun" category), Montez and West (adding much-needed depth to the "long-haired biker cliché" bench) are all okay with joining the brokety-broke-ass-broke SAMCRO, and they're hugged in, because this charter is more squeezy than a group of teenagers at a One Direction concert.
Jax then puts forth a second order of business: bringing Rat in as a full member of the club. Jax gushes, "He's smart, loyal, fearless, he works like a dog and unlike most of you gossip whores, he knows when to shut up." And THIS was when I decided that Rat is very likely working undercover for some law enforcement agency. He's always seemed a little too smart and collected when reacting in the insane, violent situations that have bedeviled the club since Jax and company were released from prison, and his timing in hanging around the club seems shady.
But I'm only a viewer and these bikers all think Rat is swell, so everyone votes to make George Skogstrom a full patch. Then they send Tig to mess with his head. Rat flies into the meeting room appearing rattled. Everyone is stone-faced and Jax orders Rat to sit down. "At…at the table?" Rat asks, looking at everyone's faces. "No, on my dick!" Tig barks, and then adds, "Yeah, at the table!" Rat sits down, looking at Jax, and the president orders him to take off the cut. Chibs looms until Rat has placed it on the table. Jax then stone-faces, "I need you to cut off that prospect rocker." Rat opens his knife to begin cutting and Chibs says, with a note of gruff affection, "Hey. Replace it with this, young brother." Let the celebration commence!
Now, let us bask in how well August wears authority! He's meeting up with Jax at the barn and Jax introduces him to VP Chibs and "Bobby Munson, my consigliere." I wonder who taught Jax that word or notion, even? (Also, someone please tell me I'm not the only person who ever read The Godfather and identified with Tom Hagen? No? I'll just… resume recapping.) Anyway, August correctly notes, "I guess the Irish Kings aren't as racially open-minded as the MC," and Chibs uncomfortably says, "Aye. Something like that." I hope he's thinking of everything Juice went through when Roosevelt and Lincoln were putting pressure on him. Jax promises he's working on the problem and shows Connor, explaining, "I'm tired of 'blood for blood.'" August chuckles, "You're learning something," and Bobby adds approvingly, "Yes, he is." Then Jax goes to deal with Connor. He says, "Tell Gaalan I'm honoring his demands. We'll run the guns with Clay. But we all know that plan's a risk. If it falls through, I want the Kings to know that Marks is still willing to distribute." Connor agrees to "pass it along." Anyway, Juice and Happy are going to drive Connor personally, and since Connor's being escorted by two regulars, he's likely to at least make to Ireland alive. (Ten bucks says Gaalan kills him when he lands.) Anyway, this scene is either meant to show us Jax's maturing leadership or to convey that Tig is still very much a marked man.
Nero and Gemma are visiting jail. She's fishing for his legal strategy and he's being charming, but evasive. When Nero kisses her hand, he gets a whiff of a new perfume and Gemma says that it's Venus. The light chatter about Venus becomes charged with anxiety when Gemma mentions that Venus is having problems because her mom has custody of her nephew. Nero says urgently, "Gemma, you gotta get that kid away from Alice. She's bad; she's going to hurt that boy. Seriously, ask Jax to help Venus. Will do that for me? Please, please?" Well, THAT is pretty much the Gemma equivalent of the Bat-Signal, so we're looking at our plot of the week right there.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Patterson are having a check-in. She knows her play with Nero is about to evaporate -- the Gemma factor complicated things, as it so often does. "I need someone from outside the family circle," Patterson fumes. Roosevelt flashes back to his foray into Stockton and brings up Barofsky. Patterson -- who knows him from back in the day, apparently -- thoughtfully muses that there may be an MC connection. Well, epidemiologically speaking through Colette, there already is.
When the club gets back from the bar, who should be sitting at the sweet shoppe counter like a latter-day Lana Turner but the lovely Venus. When Tig sees her, he stops in his tracks; you can almost see the cartoon hearts forming in his eyes. He says wildly, "Maybe he's here for the banana split?" Jax, who seems to prefer his women a tad more on the cisgender side, instantly senses trouble. As Tig whispers, "Hi, baby" to the waving Venus, Jax's suspicions are confirmed when Gemma comes out. He bites out, "Why?"
Gemma breaks out the transitive property of family -- "Venus is like family to Nero and he's family to me" -- and overrides all of Jax's eminently reasonable concerns about how it behooves the club to keep a low profile. So he agrees to hear Venus out on account of Nero being inside owing to the club's nasty habit of selling guns without a rigorous prequalification process.
So Venus is now telling her story: She has a 15 year old nephew Joey -- "He's a sensitive thing" -- who has recently become orphaned and "fallen into the very precarious care of my mother, Alice. She, unfortunately, was documented as of kin." Gemma adds, "Nero says she's really bad news." Venus says softly, "Oh, Alice is a 24-hour network of bad news. Abuse abounds within the walls of that house." Bobby asks, "What kind of abuse," and there's a long, terrible moment of silence before Venus hedges, "The kind that never leaves you. I was, um, ten years old when my inclinations began to dominate my gender direction. And my mother, Alice, she would, um, get me drunk and, um, and loving try to, uh, straighten me out. Um. I… her husband at the time began filming the experiment and, uh, that's when it all began. I was, uh, before long, having more sex than my hooker mama. [weak laugh] And in turn helped her launch an um, very, very, um, lucrative child pornography service. Needless to say, young Vincent Noone did not want to host many slumber parties when he was a child."
I feel like now is a fine time to point out that if you ever suspect that a child is being exploited in this way -- or if you run across evidence of this happening -- your first call should be to Innocence Lost, where the FBI, Department of Justice and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children are pooling their efforts to rescue sex trafficking victims and prosecute perpetrators. The number is 1-800-CALL-FBI.
Anyway, everyone is appalled and angry at what Venus went through, and she lays out the stakes for this week's solved-in-one-episode plotline: Alice is currently married to a man who is more muscle than brain, and he's got a few friends in the same category. "Miss Alice has the uncanny ability of attracting consorts who are equal parts dim and dangerous," she says. So in order to get Joey out of Alice's house before he's starring in a new line of videos, Venus will need backup.
You can tell the club's already committed to this when Chibs asks, "So, darlin', what should we do with your nephew once we get him out?" Venus has some good friends in Seattle who can take care of Joey until he emancipates in a few months. She just needs him out. Jax sighs and says, "I guess I'm just a sucker for a pretty face."
Speaking of the pretty faces that Jax is a sucker for, Tara's reviewing some legal paperwork that Lowen drafted for her. This particular document denies Gemma any kind of custody or unsupervised visitation, and Lowen adds, "If the parents deem a grandparent unfit, they can petition for their exclusion from the child's upbringing." Tara signs so fast, the paper's practically smoking. Lowen points out that the document needs both parents to sign, and Tara tersely affirms that she'll have Jax signing it of his own free will.
Her legal session ends when Unser comes by and Tara picks up her giant bag -- lovely cognac leather, perfectly coordinated with her sheath and very much a middle class mom bag. Tara's dressing to distance herself from the club today, so now I'm wondering how much of her wardrobe was Old Lady Drag meant to lull everyone into complacency? Anyway, the well-dressed Tara and Unser head down to visit the boys in daycare, and she asks casually, "Are you still friends with that city clerk in Lodi? I need to get a restraining order?" Unser stares after her suspiciously, perhaps wondering exactly how badly his offer to help the boys is going to hurt Gemma.
Hey, it's Barofsky! Amusingly, the twee contents of his bakery shelves have been replaced by canned goods. I'm guessing someone went on a Doomsday Preppers viewing binge. He's feeding black-and-white cookies to Patterson and Roosevelt, in an unsubtle use of cookies as a metaphor for race relations. There's some chitchat about how safe the neighborhood is and Patterson turns to Roosevelt to say, "Charlie supplements his retirement funds by acting as a bit of a… regulator." "I am a river to my people," Charlie says with a soupçon of cheerful impunity. Roosevelt asks, "Do those people include Jax Teller and Nero Padilla?" The look on Charlie's face suggests that they don't have to, if it will make his life more convenient. He asks what the law wants. Roosevelt says, "Padilla was arrested yesterday for the murder of one of his girls." "And I know Teller's crew supplied the KG-9 that was used at the Aquino shooting," Patterson adds. "Then why are you talking to me?" Barofsky demands. "Come on, Charlie. You might have been dirty, but you were a very smart cop. There's no direct line to the MC. I need leverage." I love how this shot is framed: We see it from Patterson's seated perspective, and Barofsky is standing there looming over them both, a vaulted ceiling behind him only amplifying the impression of vaguely corrupt authority.
Patterson then brings up Diosa Del Sur (the proper name for the Best Little Craftsman Whorehouse in Stockton) and draws the line between Nero, Jax and Barofsky. "I'm aware. That don't mean I'm involved," lies Barofsky. When ordered to become involved, he resists and Patterson presses, "You'll have no problem finding dirt. And if you don't, I'm going to spend my ever-dwindling resources inconveniencing every last one of your retirement funds." She sweeps out. Roosevelt smiles sheepishly, takes the cookies and scrams. After they go, Barofsky kicks some furniture. I would think he'd be thrilled to hand Jax over to the authorities on account of his life becoming more complicated the minute the club crossed his path. (OH, IS THERE A THEME HERE?)
We pull up at Mama Alice's suburban house of horrors and the bikers all order Venus to stay back. She breaks into a nervous sweat and Gemma pats off the perspiration. "You're a very kind person, Gemma," Venus says, proving that for all her other gifts, "being able to correctly read people" is not among them. Then she joins the bikers.
Dumb and Dangerous #1 opens the door and tries to close it, but Tig pushes it back open and says, in an almost-bored tone, "No, no, no, Fabio. The lady wants a word." "We're here for Joey," Venus quavers, then marches in. Nobody should be surprised that Joey's drinking a beer with Alice -- as played by Adrienne Barbeau and her timeless cheekbones -- and playing MMPORGs. When Alice comes out, she and Venus lock eyes and a current of pure loathing connects them.
"Oh, Lord Jesus, are we really going to play this game, Vincent?" she says, and I am reminded anew of the saying, "Of course your mother can push your buttons. Who do you think installed them?" Then it gets ugly: Venus tries to get Joey to come with her ("Please, sweetheart, this is not a safe place for you") while Alice goes straight for the insults ("Don't listen to the mutation, Joey. It'll fill your head with lies.") Anyway, when Venus calls herself Aunt Venus, Alice draws herself up and hisses in a manner that would make American Horror Story-era Jessica Lange fall to her knees in reverence, "Be very careful, Aunt Venus. Telling the truth… that can unravel so many ugly things." Venus breaks down, "Mama, don't. Please. Don't do this today. Not here, please?" Cut to Jax, assessing the whole situation and realizing that Venus has probably omitted a few key details. There's a stare-down between Venus and Alice, and then she lunges for Venus's crotch to do some damage, but Venus pushes her across the room ("Don't you ever touch me, bitch!") and thing you know, everyone's got their guns drawn. Or as SAMCRO's probably thinking: "Huh. Tuesday."
A brawl commences, Alice slips out the side with Joey, and it takes Venus firing a shotgun to get everyone to pay attention: "Boys! Stop it! She's getting away!" Venus takes her heels off to run to the car, and as the bikers pile in, Alice's most recent husband screams, "You ain't ever getting your son back, you lady-boy freak!" Jax turns to look at Venus all, "Come again?" and Venus asks Jax to shut up and drive. More politely, of course. This is Venus, after all.
So. Car chase, accessorized by a few motorcyclists. Jax is driving Gemma's SUV, Gemma's riding shotgun, and Venus is admitting that Lula is not his sister so much as his best friend, and one night, Venus and Lula tied one on and accidentally conceived a child, as one does in rom-coms or, well, this show. Tig listens to the whole story with a thoughtful expression. (I love how Tig is all, "I get to ride in the back seat with Venus! Jax, take the turns tight! Make me get lucky courtesy of the laws of physics!")
Anyway, Jax and Gemma chide Venus for not being totally transparent with Joey vis-à-vis the family dynamics, a mendacity so staggering, I half-expect a bolt of lightning from above and a Godly voice saying, "Oh my Me, I can't even, you hypocrites." Venus points out that Joey is already having a bit of a problem being Joey, so dropping the news that his favorite auntie is actually his father did not seem like the thing to do. Then Gemma's SUV is rear-ended by a car packed full of Dumb & Dangerous, and Venus snaps. She shouts in a bass voice, "Goddamn it," grabs a gun out of the cooler (as one does) and begins shooting at the sedan.
Everyone shout the SAMCRO Battle Cry of Incredulity with me: "Jesus Christ!"
The bad news that Alice and Joey have gotten away.
Tig says, in a voice that sounds equal parts smitten and terrified, "What the hell, baby?" and Venus huffs, "I'm afraid Vincent's rage has become uncorked." Jax replies, "At the risk of where this might go, please -- put the cork back in." Bobby comes up, noting that the sedan lost a place; Jax orders someone to call Barofsky and run the plate; that might give them some leads to where Alice has taken Joey. Bobby agrees to take Gemma home and Jax takes a moment to lean against the side of the SUV and ask the uncaring universe how this is his life. Chibs comes over, slings an arm around him, and asks, "Not quite the day you were expecting, eh, boss?"
We're back at the hospital. Unser and Wendy are eating a snack with Abel and Thomas in the cafeteria; Tara is by the vending machines watching them. Margaret comes over and asks, "Ready?" Tara is mute and Margaret presses, "We need to do this." Margaret then ushers Wendy over for a "meeting" and Tara sits down to warmly smile at her boys before asking Unser if he's got the restraining order. He does, but Tara's still not telling him who it's for. Tara reassures him, "It'll all make sense." She kisses the top of his head, then takes off.
The boys plus Venus have now pulled up in the alley behind a strip mall, where Barofsky is waiting for them. He eyeballs Venus and says, "I'm afraid to ask." "That's good, because I don't really have an answer," Jax sighs. Anyway, the car's linked to a business called Happy Carousel, which just happens to have been the name of Alice's portrait studio. Jax mutters the SAMCRO Battle Cry of Incredulity and explains to Barofsky, "The carousel's only happy when the kids ride naked."
Everyone heads into the business via the back door. (All save Venus have guns drawn.) The front lobby looks a little seedy, but mostly legit. As everyone moves into the back room, Chibs notices a now-shirtless Joy passed out on a leopard chaise longue, and Venus flies over to make sure her son's okay.
Tig, Chibs, Jax and Barofsky look around the studio space. There is a well-equipped computer console with editing equipment ("Editing home movies," Barofsky says darkly). Jax is drawn to a corner of the room where this convertible crib is set up -- complete with crib bumpers and a pillow pet-type thing to go with the quilt. And there is a camera aimed squarely at the crib. I'll just let you all come to your own conclusions as to what that implies.
Alice and her Dumb & Dangerous posse walk right in, and the bikers cheerfully gesture with their guns for the trio to take the center of the room. Venus promptly disarms Tig and storms over to Alice, clearly planning to shoot her in the head. The bikers manage to coax her out of it. Jax tells Alice, "You get out. And that kid is coming with us." When Alice and her posse fail to am-scray, Jax reiterates his orders at the top of his lungs. Dumb and Dangerous One and Two manage to skedaddle, but Alice decides she'd like to screw with Venus one last time and monologues:
"What are you going to do, Vincent? Raise him as your own? Give him a bright future? You don't deserve a son. I had a son once. Then he forgot who he was, deserted his family, turned into a freak of the fringe. You go ahead, you tell that sweet boy all about his daddy. How much you love him, want the best for him. It won't matter, because when he finds out what you are, he's going to grow up hating you. Hating your lies, hating the life you forced him into and hating himself. This boy's going to blow his brains out before his balls completely drop! Not 'cause of me or his dead mama, but because of you, the awful thing that turned out to be his father."
Jax, who has been near tears as he listens to this litany of his darkest fears being spoken aloud, finally snaps and blows Alice's brains out. Barofsky silently mouths, "Ooooh-kay," and both Chibs and Tig -- no strangers to the raging guilt that comes with admitting you were a lousy parent -- look concerned. Jax wipes away tears and everyone pretends not to notice.
In the scene, we see Chibs and Tix carefully cleaning the walls where Alice's brains came to their final resting place. Jax and Barofsky are watching a video. We don't see what they're watching, but the sentence "Give me a kiss, Tommy. That's good. It'll only hurt for a minute --" makes Barofsky punch the computer in disgust. He tells Jax, "If you hadn't killed that bitch, I would have." (On a horrifying side note: The closed captioning for this episode had text indicating that through the prior scene, as Alice was talking, we would also hear the video footage of Alice coercing a very young child into having sex with her. Because, you know, a movie camera aimed at a crib in a kiddie-porn studio isn't nightmare fuel enough.) Barofsky's planning on running the other guys out of town and he'll take care of Alice's corpse, his treat. Jax quips, "I guess Handsome Jack owes you another."
Jax heads over to talk to Venus -- who is Diosa-bound with Joey until the boy's got his wits back about him -- and urges, "You should tell him the truth." Venus looks up and whispers, "I'm just not ready to lose him yet," and I admit it: This made me tear up. Damn you, Kurt Sutter! I don't watch this show to tear up! I watch this show to shamelessly objectify Charlie Hunnam and think about FX is one of the few networks that's lending dramatic heft and respect to the pressures of working class America in the early 21st century. I DON'T WANT TO FEEL FEELINGS TOO.
Jax crouches down and says, "How do you know you're going to lose him? When he finds out what you did for him today, he's going to be proud as hell of you." Venus has no tears left. She says coolly, "That is a very kind sentiment. I'm afraid my lineage suggests something else, Jackson. My family, we judge and we hate. And when we have scorched every earth and we're all used up, we die. Miserably. I had to be reborn to escape that doom. I just hope something comes along to liberate my son from that fate." What, you mean a philosophically-minded transgendered Tiger Mother and a biker gang isn't enough?
Anyway, Jax says, "Yeah, I hope so." And it's fairly clear he's talking about his own sons and not Venus's kid.
And now, Wendy sets everything in motion: She meets Gemma at her office and says that she confronted Tara about "this guardian shit" and Tara's decided there's nobody she'd rather have the boys with than Margaret Murphy. Gemma is annoyed but not too exercised. So Wendy says, "There's more, Gemma. Her and that bitch lawyer are plotting something. I think that she is going to leave Jax, and try to box us all out, away from our boys. You've gotta stop her." "Where is she?" Gemma inquires in her frostiest tones and Wendy steers her to the hospital.
Gemma storms into the cafeteria -- where there are many, many witnesses conveniently sitting nearby -- and grabs Tara by the shoulder, hissing, "I've got to talk to you. You too, Red. Outside!" Margaret calmly points out, "We're eating dinner," and Gemma shouts back, "Yeah, well, you're going to be eating your own teeth in a minute! Let's go!" Tara asks, "What the hell is going on, Gemma?" (Side note: what I've really liked about this scene and the one is seeing what terrible liars Tara and Wendy are. Why can't Gemma see it too?) Gemma huffs, "That's exactly what I'm trying to find out. Where's your lizard lawyer? I understand you've been busy making arrangements for my grandkids!"
That is the point where Tara swallows the last bite of her salad and says, "Mmm, yeah. I'm not having this conversation with you." She gets up to leave, and Margaret trails behind her. As Gemma goes to head Tara off at the vending machines, Margaret warns Gemma to calm down before she calls security, and Gemma grabs Margaret by the throat, hollering, "Stay out of my way!" Unser pulls Gemma off Margaret -- cue an extra saying, "Someone should call security!" -- and Gemma goes stalking off toward Tara's office.
Tara's in her office, hands shaking as she rips open her dress and stuffs the bag of blood into her underwear, and then she hastily re-dresses right as Gemma storms in and slams the door behind her, demanding to know what Tara's up to and correctly guessing that Tara's "planning on some kind of custody coup." Tara replies, "What I do with my family is none of your business." "They are my grandkids," Gemma replies. "I'm going to make sure they never suffer the same fate as their father! Those boys will not be raised in Charming, they will not know this life and they will not know their angry and psychotic grandmother!" Tara says. Gemma shrieks, "Bitch!" as she slaps Tara, and Tara hauls back with, "Angry old whore! You evil old whore!"
Unfortunately, for Tara, Gemma then says she's pulling her big punches because Tara's pregnant, which is when Tara pulls the most lunatic thing she's pulled in this entire series: She screams long and loud, and she slams her abdomen into the corner of her desk, bursting the blood bag. Gemma screams, "Jesus!" in disbelief.
As Margaret and Unser come in, Tara crawls around on the ground, inexpertly lying about how Gemma attacked her -- "What are you talking about?" the legitimately confused angry psychotic asks -- and then as she turns around, we see why Tara wore tan that day. It showcases all that dark blood so much better. Tara weeps, "My baby," and Gemma gasps, "Oh, my God!" in what looks like legitimate horror.
Wendy catches sight of what happened and she reels to stand outside the office. I'm not sure whether she realizes that Tara faked a miscarriage or if she thinks Tara goaded Gemma into giving her a miscarriage, but the end result is the same: She is wondering what the hell she got herself into.
Inside the office, Tara looks up at Gemma and says, "Look what you did." Gemma protests, "I didn't do that --" "Oh, yes you did! We all saw it," Margaret says promptly. Tara begins the weeping and shouting, "Get out! I want my husband! I want Jax!" and Gemma begins creeping toward her. She doesn't get too far because Margaret brings in security. As Gemma's led out, she and Wendy exchange significant looks.
When Jax finally races in, he scoops up Tara. Bobby Elvis and Chibs get one look at the bloody scene and look genuinely taken aback. We then go into the musical montage that closes out the episode.,/p>
Gemma's in the squad car, eerily calm. My bet is that she's just figured out the entire scam.
Wendy's sitting in the hospital chapel. Unser hobbles in there and sits to her. They share a look -- What the HELL did we just abet? -- and Wendy pats Unser's hand.
Cut to a nurse pushing Jax out of Tara's examination booth. He looks agonized.
Cut to Venus loading Joey on a Greyhound bus -- really? Just hours after he was doped up? That's a good idea? Anyway, the point is, this scene is supposed to show Venus doing all she can to get Joey out of the cycle. And quite possibly to show off the breathtaking stained glass panels in the Greyhound bus terminal. And to show that Tig has managed to leash his libido enough to just be a strong arm around Venus's shoulder.
Poor Chibs and Bobby have drawn Jax-sitting duty, and they trail him like two graying mother hens while he fusses through the halls of the hospital. We see him talk to Roosevelt -- who is all too recently bereaved of a baby and the mother, remember -- and then fade to Gemma being printed. You would think that Gemma's prints would be on whatever the AFIS equivalent of speed-dial is at this point.
By the way, I sort of hate the croaky whisper-singing thing that is going on with the music here. Oh, are your feelings so enormous that they're choking the voice out of you? I couldn't tell from the bathos that permeates every hackneyed lyric?
Meanwhile, poor Nero can't get a decent night's sleep because his lower bunkmate is enjoying a vigorous sex life. Well. He can spend the time in quiet contemplation of how many ways he can sell SAMCRO down the damned river.
Tara's now sitting up in the bed, a sheaf of papers in her lap, when Jax is allowed in. The two share a long, agonized look. And then Tara executes her most breaktaking -- and authentic -- lie yet: "I lost our baby girl." Jax knows and he's very sorry. Tara presses her advantage: "I can't be around her anymore, Jax." Jax sniffles, but he nods.
Tara does not realize it, but today is her lucky day: Jax has a headful of turmoil courtesy of Alice dredging up all the old demons about his children's future (and possibly his own latent rage at never having any other choice than becoming the generation in the club) and Venus talking about the desperate need to help her son escape her family.
So he swallows her lies about Gemma's escalating pattern of abuse and signs everything she puts in front of him. Tara watches him, teary but strangely calm for someone who has purportedly been assaulted by her mother-in-law to the point of miscarriage.
Here is what has fascinated me about Tara's gambit all along: It demonstrates her uncanny ability to code-switch, i.e. adopt the protective coloration of a specific socioeconomic strata as it suits her. The ostensible arc of her character over six years has been "This highly specialized and respected specialist has thrown it all away for a barely literate murderer whose only redeeming factor is a bangin' body. WHY?" But Tara's story merits a closer look.
The first thing to pay attention to is how Tara has been code-switching the entire show. In the first season, her decision to lead Kohn back to Charming so he could be taken care in classic SAMCRO style reflects Tara's understanding of two things: Kohn had class privilege that she did not and if she fought him on his own socioeconomic turf, she'd lose; and that a middle-class professional like Kohn wouldn't fully realize how strong the currency of relationships is among working class cultures, so he'd underestimate her resources. Then Tara presented the Kohn problem to Jax in terms he understood: by threatening Tara, this guy's aiming his gun at Jax's entire tribe.
This season, Tara's inverted the scenario: She is using the tools of the upper-middle class -- a formidable legal strategy, medical know-how, professional collaboration -- to rout Gemma, who arguably lives and operates in a working-class milieu. And because she knows the rules and values for each socioeconomic strata, Tara has figured out how to enlist people for her plan using appeals that hit them straight in the values they hold. For example, when Tara correctly discerned that Wendy was clawing her way into the middle class, she worked that aspirational angle. She appealed to Unser on a relational level (the boys) and worked his professional pride (the restraining order angle).
In other words: Tara has figured out how to optimize the system at every socioeconomic level. I leave it to the readers to decide whether this is better or worse than the manipulations Gemma effects in order to get what she wants.
The episode closes with Montez, West and Jury all grinning at the front counter of the SAMCRO Soda Shoppe as children run in and out to eat the free candy the club's got out on the counter. Chuckie watches it all swirling around him and smiles radiantly.
We flash to Abel sleeping on the floor of the daycare while Margaret dotes on wee Thomas.
The episode closes on Roosevelt walking by the holding cell where Gemma is and giving her a look. Gemma's quite composed, her lips moving as she no doubt begins walking through how to emerge from this setback. Although if I were Gemma and I'd had the week I just had -- explosions, forced into a sex show, boyfriend falsely accused of murder -- maybe a few days to relax in a cell away from all the drama might be what the doctor ordered.
Lisa Schmeiser is an Oakland-adjacent reporter, editor and blogger. She regularly tweets here, blathers about comics here, and posts the oddball personal piece of writing here.
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