['Sons of Anarchy' - 'So']

Note: The following 'Sons of Anarchy' recap/review assumes that you have seen the first two seasons of the FX drama and Tuesday's Season 3 premiere of the FX drama.

The act that ended the season 2 premiere of 'Sons of Anarchy' was horrifying.

To see Gemma violated by the enemies of the Sons was devastating, but it wasn't hard to envision the ways in which that rape would drive the club to exact punishing vengeance in the weeks to come.

Vengeance was indeed had in season 2, but the outcome wasn't what the club expected. The most serious fallout was, of course, the kidnapping of Abel, but the club ended up dealing with a whole series of setbacks: Half Sack died, Gemma had to go on the lam (and members of the club had to lie to her about Abel), and in the Season 3 premiere, Jax can't quite deal with the wreckage and tries to break up with Tara.

The club may have beaten back the white-supremacist threat, but the law of unintended consequences (which was often in play on 'The Shield,' where 'Sons' creator Kurt Sutter worked for seven seasons) meant that the Charming crew's victory exacted a horrendous personal cost.

These personal issues are certainly nothing to sneeze at, but what the Season 3 opener and the next few episodes establish is that the show is now working on a bigger canvas: Some of the threats to the club originate far from Charming and reach back deep into the club's history. As one of the closing shots indicates, Cameron Hayes is indeed in Belfast with Abel.

(By the way, 'Sons' creator Kurt Sutter wrote here of the SOA-Belfast connection and here of the differences that will emerge between seasons 2 and 3. For more on how the the club's Irish connections will impact the Sons, Sutter spoke more about that in interviews that can be found here and here.)

The focus on the home front at the start of the season makes sense, partly on a practical level (an extensive introduction to the Belfast angle in season 3's first episode would probably have been too much, too soon). But the Belfast-Charming links that 'So' begins to establish mean that season 3, especially at the start, will not be a repeat of Season 2. It'll take more time to set up the dual story lines, but I for one am intrigued by the bigger scope that season 3 promises.

In any case, the initial focus on the U.S. club makes thematic sense as well; the show frequently explores how we define ourselves by the company we keep and the difficulty of maintaining autonomy in the close-knit culture of Charming's resident MC.

Much as Clay reminds Jax at Half Sack's wake that going it alone isn't an option, Jax still instinctually rebels at the idea of having to share his pain with the entire club. But Clay knows that Jax needs to galvanize the people around him -- if not for them, then for the club's sake. SAMCRO may have wandered afield from John Teller's original intentions, but it was founded so that like-minded men and women could shoulder each other's burdens. And as a practical man, Clay also knows that without some kind of target, the angry energies that sometimes swirl around the club could go astray.

Personally and politically, Jax has to pull it together. But Jax's heir apparent role isn't a voluntary one, as much as he loves and relies on the men around him.

Charlie Hunnam is doing a spectacular job of depicting Jax's conflicting desires for connection and freedom. His encounter with Piney at the graveyard reminds us of his many personal losses (a father and brother dead, a child missing), but Hunnam makes Jax's murderous rage at the end of the episode just as believable as his impotent grief. In that moment at the end of 'So,' his rage as a club member and as a father come together, and for once, the distinctions don't matter.

"We don't know who we are until we're connected to someone else," Tara tells Jax.

Those connections haven't been severed, but they're fraying. Gemma's on the run, and as she slowly goes mad in a motel, Clay has to lie to her about her own grandson. Jax and Tara reunite (and Maggie Siff really shone in their reconciliation scene), but Tara can't quite deal with the fallout from Abel's disappearance and Half Sack's murder and she loses her cool in surgery, the one thing that steadied her life in the past. Gemma reunites with her father, but he's not the man she once knew. Everything is spinning on the edge of control, which isn't a great place to live in but it's an ideal place for this show occupy.

"You love the right things," Piney told Jax, but that's clearly not enough to save Jax -- or anyone else close to him -- from a world of hurt.

A few final notes:

- I wrote in my Season 3 review about the show's intensity, and by that I'm not just referring to the shootout with the gang members or the drive-by at the wake (though those moments are certainly pulse-quickening). In its quiet yet barely restrained emotion, the scene in which Jax tries to break up with Tara is every bit as compelling as those moments of violence.

- A moment of silence for Deputy Chief David Hale (Taylor Sheridan). He may have given SAMCRO a hard time, but he the man good intentions.

- Having said that, I love what Dayton Callie brings to the show, and this means we'll probably see a good amount of him this season. It makes sense to have just one sheriff, and one that is sympathetic to the club at that; SAMCRO has enough on its plate without dealing with local law enforcement issues as well.

- We've seen Katey Sagal play a lot of different kinds of moments over the course of the show's previous two seasons, but all those Gemma variations didn't prepare me for the way in which she was transformed in the presence of her father. Whatever other family drama Gemma has in her past, clearly she and her dad (played by the great Hal Holbrook) always loved each other a lot.

- Having said that, trying to keep Gemma caged up is like trying to kidnap Fiona on "Burn Notice": Proceed with extreme caution, but seriously, don't even try.

- I discussed 'SOA' on two podcasts this week -- the 'Talking TV' podcast I do with Ryan McGee, and I guested on Alan Sepinwall and Dan Fienberg's 'Firewall & Iceberg' podcast too. You can find links to both of them here.

- Be sure to return next week for next week's review.

'Sons of Anarchy' airs Tuesdays at 10PM ET on FX.

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