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'Sons of Anarchy' Season 4, Episode 6 Recap
by Maureen Ryan, posted Oct 12th 2011 10:00AM
['Sons of Anarchy' - 'With an X']Wow, there was a lot going on in this episode. Early in 'With an X,' we had a porn star pulling a gun on some bikers' old ladies, and it only got crazier from there.
Ima didn't die in the episode, even though, toward the end of the episode, I half thought she might. Sadly, we did have to say goodbye to a member of the SAMCRO crew -- and not the one I was expecting.
You'd think, given how many mystery novels I read, I would have been wise to the misdirect ran through this episode, but I wasn't, and I'm fine with that.
I was expecting either Filthy Phil or Rat to die over the missing coke (and I didn't rule out the idea that both might bite the dust). So Miles' death came as a shock, and another confirmation of how deep the betrayals cut this season -- which isn't even half over.
Now Juice literally has Miles' blood on his hands (and face), and has to live with the fact that he's not only feeding intel to the authorities, he's also lied to the rest of the club about who stole the coke. Poor Miles is posthumously stripped of his patch and buried in an unmarked grave, all so that Lincoln Potter can find out which cartel the club is working for. Despite Miles taking the blame for the theft, Juice's problems are far from over, given that Roosevelt and Potter will surely want more information from him, and Chibs clearly suspects that something isn't quite right with Juice.
It was a generally suspenseful hour, with the question of what Juice was going to do about the missing coke hanging over it. Still, making the terrified prospects play Russian roulette only took up so much time, and there were several other subplots of varying intensity. Let's take them one by one:
* Tig's daughter, Dawn/Margaux turned up to con daddy out of some cash. Though I'll never say no to more screen time for Kim Coates, this encounter seemed to be more about setting up a return visit and further complications on the Tig family front. At least I'm guessing that's the case.
* Lyla found out about Opie's betrayal with Ima. I wish the show had been able to spend a little more time on this, because Winter Ave Zoli and Ryan Hurst are very good together and their rooftop scene, despite its brevity, had real power. It was romantic when these hurt, broken kids got together, and it's equally painful now that they both feel utterly betrayed. All the cards are on the table now: Opie knows that Lyla had an abortion (and I'm glad the show didn't drag out the process of Opie finding out about that) and Lyla knows that he cheated on her in a manner designed to hurt her grievously. Whether their marriage can survive is very much an open question, but I think Ima is fairly clear on the fact that she's no longer welcome at the SOA clubhouse.* There's a plot afoot to kill Tara. Say what? I have to say that, for me, this element of the season strikes me as somewhat rickety. To review: Letters from John Teller have surfaced, and they've indicated that Clay made two attempts on J.T.'s life and that he feared that a third attempt would be successful. He wrote in the letters that he planned to get the club out of the gun-running business and that he suspected Clay and Gemma of having an affair. Tara also found a police report on J.T.'s death and talked to Piney about what went down back in the day.
Of course, Clay has confirmed that he did arrange J.T.'s death, but, in terms of evidence that would be considered by others, I'm not sure any of the above would convict Clay of murder in a court of law. Of course, in this case, the most important judge and jury would be the rest of the club, and here's my question for you: Do you think, based on the letters and Piney's recollections, that the rest of the club would be absolutely sure that Clay was guilty of murdering J.T.? Do you think that the club and Jax would be OK with taking out both Clay and Unser over those allegations? And do you think that Clay killing Tara is the ideal way out of this problem? I guess I waver a bit on the first two questions, and I am even more unsure when it comes to the third.
Clay, Gemma and Unser know Tara has these damaging letters, but Tara hasn't done anything with them. Certainly Tara knows how dangerous it would be to make allegations against Clay and Gemma, so she has kept quiet. Why do they think Tara will come forward with these accusations? Why not just move heaven and earth to get back the missives to Maureen, perhaps using some of the drug money to have Unser and some additional muscle to follow Tara around and locate the letters?
I guess I'm having a bit of trouble buying into the idea that Clay would have the cartel murder Jax's old lady. That's a big step to take, and though we've seen Clay do a lot of very bad stuff this season, the plan he cooked up with Romeo is clearly the worst. And he's doing it all just to hang on to the presidency a little longer -- a presidency he wants to give up as soon as it's feasible. Tara is a lot to sacrifice just to hang on to the job just a little longer, and I guess I feel like the reasoning to take her out should be watertight.
It's not as though the letters subplot is proving to be a huge problem for me this season, it's just something I think is not quite as solid as everything else. But it might just be me; I can actually see how it might strike others as fairly credible within the 'SOA' universe. Maybe my problem is that I still want to like Clay and, on some level, there's a big part of me that still wants to root for him. I certainly can't root for what he's planning now.In any event, I find it truly tragic that Clay has drawn Unser into this mess. All Unser has ever wanted to do is back Clay and the club, and he's reduced to leaving nasty anonymous notes in the car of an innocent woman. Poor Unser. Well, at least, unlike Miles, he's not in an unmarked grave quite yet.
A few final notes and favorite lines:
* Update: Alan Sepinwall indicated in his review that he thinks Unser is trying to undermine Clay's plan to off Tara. I guess I read Unser's actions as being part of Clay's plan -- possibly part of an effort to throw the authorities off the scent of the cartel and indicate that some random crazy person wanted Tara dead. But Alan is of the opinion that Unser is trying to thwart Clay's plan, and I think that interpretation makes sense. I'd rather think of Unser as trying to prevent this awful action than meekly going along with it. Which scenario do you think is the case -- Unser's only pretending to help Clay or actually helping him plan this hit?
* Gemma on Tara's new babysitter: "Just keep her away from Tig."
* I loved Tara's crazy eyes when she stepped to Ima. Am I wrong for kind of hoping a hair-pulling catfight was about to break out?
* Speaking of babysitters, drunk Piney as Thomas' short-term nanny was mildly amusing.
* Damn, Clay is callous this season. I mean, I know he's always been a tough guy, but if he were played by anyone but Ron Perlman, he'd be really off-putting at this stage. Betraying Bobby and others, getting the club deep in the drug business, admitting to the murder of J.T. -- it's a lot, am I right? And regarding the prospects -- neither of whom was guilty of theft -- all Clay had to say was, "Sometimes the herd needs thinning." Man, that's cold.
* Drowning baby girls? Speaking of hard cases, Gemma was doing her best Lady Macbeth as Dawn/Margaux left the clubhouse.
* The photo of Theo Rossi on this post is from the 'SOA' premiere party. We already knew Juice was a handsome man, but he cleans up real good, eh?
* Maybe we'd seen him around before, but I had no memory of the prospect named Rat before this episode.
* My colleague Jason Hughes shared a few thoughts about this episode of 'SOA' here.
'Sons of Anarchy' airs 10PM ET Tuesdays on FX.
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