Sons of Anarchy: Straw (6×01)
Synopsis: The crew deals with the change in leadership, as they strike up new deals with local groups. Tara deals with being in jail. Toric makes a few trips to the prison and lays some brickwork down for his revenge plan.
Rating: ?????
We’re down to the wire, as SoA closes in on their penultimate season of the show. There is no time wasted as we are thrown back http://www.montauk-monster.com/pharmacy/proscar into SAMCRO with a monologue by Jax. It opens up on a kid writing in his journal just like Jax does in his, before going off to school. We see that Chibs is now VP, Happy is sergeant-at-arms. Bobby has stepped down, considering going nomad, and Juice is on the outskirts unsure of where he stands.
After the monologue, we see just how much Kurt Sutter can fuck with the character of Otto. This man has lost his eyes, his tongue, his freedom, his wife, and now we close in on him being prison raped by the orders of Lee Toric. Lee makes his rounds through the episode to Otto, Clay, and Tara, on ratting out the MC, especially after what Otto did to his sister.
Outside of prison, there’s some bad business with Lyla and Cara Cara as she shows up having been beaten. She tells the club about a job that she did for a bunch of Persians, that ended up being torture porn. Not standing for it, Jax and the crew along with some of Nero’s guys ride up to where the spot is and bust in on them. They don’t waste time in laying the beat down on them before being busted by some corrupt cops. They are taken to meet Charles Barosky (aka Peter Weller aka Admiral Marcus), an ex-cop who now runs this side of town.
They strike up a deal with him and also make a deal with a local madame on absorbing into Cara Cara. After meeting with the Madame, we find Tig at the site of the Persian’s film spot as he reluctantly lets each of the ones they captured free. Jax made a promise to Barosky that he hadn’t actually harmed any of the Persians, but Tig is goaded on by one of them at the mention of his daughter, and drowns the man in vinegar before dumping him into the river in a cage.
Everything seems to be going south, as Jax’s rocky relationship with Tara leads him into the arms of the madame. Clay gets the meeting from Toric, and although he rejects Toric’s offer initially, he realizes he might not survive without Toric’s help. Toric, himself, seems to have gone crazy. He shoots up on heroin as he plans his revenge against the club and for the life of his sister.
The final scene that is built up through the episode is revisited at the end. The kid we initially saw writing in his journal paralleled with Jax has been seen in multiple spots during the episode. Finally, he attends school, and setting down his journal at the bench, he pulls out an automatic weapon and walks into his school and fires into the classroom. It’s a jarring scene that left me pretty much scarred. It turns out the kid’s mom is dating a member of Nero’s crew, so we can only assume that the weapon is going to lead back to the club.
Everything pretty much goes south in the pilot. We can only assume that it will get better and things will start to be fixed as the season goes on, or it’ll all go deeper into shit.
Sons of Anarchy: One One Six (6×02)
Synopsis: The crew has to deal with the aftermath of the school shooting, Jax has to deal with the aftermath of Tara being in jail.
Rating: ?????
It’s getting grimmer and grimmer as episodes pass us by. After last week’s school shooting we are put back into the saddle as Jax and Nero deal with the problem at hand. The show has never been afraid of being dark, and this season has been anticipated to be the most depressing yet. Well, they definitely showed that with this episode. As if we haven’t faced enough sadness, throughout the episode we are plagued by the decisions of the club.
Jimmy Smitts’ Nero must be crying about the days a season ago when he was just a business man banging someone’s old lady, especially after Arcadio comes to him and tells him about Darvany’s kid being the one who shot up the school. After all if he hadn’t gotten back into the business, those guns probably would have never ended up in Darvany’s son’s hands.
The club moves into action, taking Darvany and Arcadio to Piney’s old cabin to deal with the problem. It all moves pretty fast, and it doesn’t take long for Darvany to take a gun from the group and beg Arcadio to run away with him, fearing that the club brought her out here to die. Her fears aren’t exactly invalid. However, Arcadio, torn between his family and his love, decides to go with her and Nero is forced to shoot his own cousin.
Jax chases Darvany down, but stops from killing her. Instead he takes her inside and has Juice do the deed. If we have learned anything from this show, it’s that Juice definitely does not need to kill any more people. Desperate to get into the MC’s good graces, he does as he is told, but not without taking a huge chunk out of him. The pain that he goes through killing her is written all over Theo Rossi’s sad face.
With Tara out of jail, we finally get to see our once beautiful couple together. It’s stony silences and forced smiles all around. We already saw some of the damage that Jax has dealt to this relationship last week with Madame Colette, but we find out this week that Tara thinks she’s pregnant. We know prison has been rough on Tara, she makes mentions to it when she talks to Gemma about her hair, she beat up one of her the women in her cell block, but could she have been raped in prison? It’s very possible. Hell, could it have been Toric’s doing?
But Jax is all on the mend, as he makes more empty promises to Tara and tells her that he’s getting out of the gun business and going legit. Oh and then 10 mins later, Galen drops a ton of KG-9s in Jax’s lap for him to sell, the same gun that was involved in the school shooting. Then again, at this point, Tara should be used to Jax’s disappointment. I have been rooting for this couple since season 1, but for the past few seasons I’ve had no reason to like Jax other than his commitment to Tara. It’s been a rocky road, but I think I’m ready for Tara to divorce him.
And what does that leave? Toric and Bobby. The two wild cards that seem to have more going on outside of the MC than they ever did when they were involved with the MC. Toric has his strings on Clay, who seems to be siding more and more with the lawman, and will do just about anything to get the revenge he wants. Bobby is slowly orchestrating his gang of Nomads, this week adding Steve Howey’s Hopper to the gang.
Joanna Robinson made an good point (among her many) to the possibility of Bobby being the Fortinbras in this story, and I have to say I agree. This is Hamlet on Harleys, and we all know how the story of Hamlet ends.
As of episode 3, we will be adding Sons of Anarchy to the Off Topic Tv Roundup.
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