Sons Of Anarchy [FX (US) -Spoilers]

lertsnim

Bobby has been rather useless this season so he will be no loss really.

jd007 wrote: »

Abel is one seriously creepy kid..

He never had a chance with a junkie mother and murdering father. He will actually add something to the story now

scudzilla

Poor Bobby, Ride free with Opie (not that SAMCRO do a lot of riding anymore)

Look on the bright side Jax, you got a free tablet

Agent Coulson

scudzilla wrote: »

Poor Bobby, Ride free with Opie (not that SAMCRO do a lot of riding anymore)

Look on the bright side Jax, you got a free tablet

With added retina display! :pac:

squonk

scudzilla wrote: »

Look on the bright side Jax, you got a free tablet

Well said sir! That's exactly what occurred to me watching the episode!

Boom_Bap

I'm not sure if Bobby was iced, or just eye'd.

Free eyePad for the win.

Snake Plisken

I don't think Bobbys dead Marcus will use him as leverage against the club, again it's thanks to Gemma he was separated from the lads to go to the cabin because she was freaking out. Jake won't be happy with Nero selling his share to the Myans.

kryogen

Jax will have to live with that, business is business, and right now he will be looking to strengthen ties anyway so it shouldn't be a big issue short term.

If this show ends with Gemma alive I will end up hating it and wishing I never came back to it after giving up after the whole Irish season.

*shudders*

CastorTroy

Calling it now: Last scene will be Juice and Gemma as last ones standing. With creepy Abel in between. :pac:

Crazy Christ

CastorTroy wrote: »

Calling it now: Last scene will be Juice and Gemma as last ones standing. With creepy Abel in between. :pac:

And Ulcer (Unser) who can only be killed with a flamethrower.

Charlie19

I dont normally make fun of children but Abel walks like the robot in Buck Rodgers.

TireeTerror

Lets be honest, Bobby was too fat to be any use for anything.

Clareman

Bobby had a great opportunity to be the moral compass for the season, but when he wasn't going down that route I'm afraid there wasn't anything for him to do.

Kirby

That's simply not true. Without Bobby, we would never have had those inane and pointless 1on1 talks with Wendy like he used to have with Tara! We can't be without those........

So episode 4 is where things finally kick it up a gear and all that chaos which has been hinted at finally erupts. It's a nice change of pace considering that the first three episodes of the current series could easily have been told in a single 40 minute episode though that said things do escalate a little too quickly and it all feels like Sutter and company throwing all they have at the wall hoping to keep viewers interested.

The episode opens with a rather jovial tale of Jax and the Sons searching for the wife of the reverend they murdered in cold blood a few episodes back. It was a light hearted romp that seemed to treat the murder of 3 innocents as little more than a joke. The episode tries to paint the murders as something not all that evil as the writers go out of their way to paint the reverend as some kind of monster deserving of death, it feels like a cheap cop out intended to redeem the Sons and just falls flat. There's a cruelty at the heart of the club which has often been exploited for cheap theatrics and at this stage in the game it's hard to know if Sutter wants us to sympathies with the Sons or to judge them for their actions. What stinks most about the whole casual and flippant attitude toward cold blood murder that the Sons have exhibited this season is that it undoes six whole series of character development. Bobby and and to a lesser degree Chibs have always been the shows voice of reason and the moral center around which the show has evolved. By having them not only keep silent about all the chaos but actively participate makes no sense and goes against everything that we know about them.

After the incident with the dead man's family the show turns everything up to 11. In one of the worst drug deals in the history of everything, Jax organises a drug deal with a bunch of Neo Nazis out in the open when two cops sit watching. As this is Sons things don't end well for the cops with one dead and the other in a coma. From here things get even worse when Lin's men retaliate, first by throwing some grenades into the ice cream show and then by shooting up and killing all at Nero's whore house. The latter is actually a rather effective moment and is one of the few shocking moments this series that works. There's an efficient brutality and matter of factness to it all and it's the first time in many an series when the show portrays violence as the vile act that it is.

The biggest issue with episode 4 is the moralising that is inherent to the episode. It feels like Sutter is trying to once again paint Jax as a good man who does bad things. The writing doesn't so much hint at but hammer us over the head with the fact that bad as Jax is, his enemies are so much worse. Lin is shown to be a cold calculating sociopath who lacks a moral compass and is redeemable where as Jax only does bad things because he's forced to. It simply doesn't work and cheapens everything that we know of the characters.

It's hard to care about the show all the much anymore and were it not for the fact that this is the final series, I think I'd simply give up on it. There's simply not enough here to justify the price of admission and with no rhythm to the characters it's impossible to care about anyone.

The comedy highlight this week were the numerous moments where characters spoke to themselves and the less said about Juice's big moment where he speaks about the voices in his head the better. It was the kind of melodramatic crap that's there simply to set him for another of his big, dumb nonsensical moments. He's most likely going to sacrifice himself to save that club and honestly, at this stage I couldn't care less and just wish that the writers would get to it.

It's always easy to know when Sons is trying to portray itself as something a bit more than it really is. It's usually in the wake of some big event where things go bad and were treated to Jax doing his unsettled face and episode 5 has Jax with a look of bemused anger on his face for most of the run time.

The aftermath of the massacre should have been played with a little levity but once again the show beats us over the head with what happened and just how bad it was. The show has never been one to shy away from controversy and has embraced extreme actions of violence but it's been so long since they had any affect that it all feels so cheap. The school shooting in the past series was an effective and strangely humane moment but the whore house shooting and it's ramifications just feel empty. The episode is all about Jax getting revenge but who cares, at this stage in the game we've seen it far too often. What really hurts the episode is just how little of a threat Lin is. There's no weight behind any of his actions, he comes across as an angry teenage throwing a fit.

The best moments of the episode involve Juice and Gemma, though sadly Juice doesn't empty a clip into the back of Gemma's head. This entire series has been building the whole Juice is crazy angle and it makes sense that Gemma would attempt to take him out to protect her family. What doesn't make sense is how she goes about it. Her plan, like all the past ones is dumb, dumb, dumb. I get that Gemma is a little unhinged but in the past there was at the least a hint of intelligence to here conniving and scheming. Maybe it's just me but the manner in which characters have been changed to suit whatever this weeks plot is just makes no sense, the writers have undone six series of character development with no reason given.

The biggest issue is perhaps how unwilling the show is to embrace any sense of change aswell as how it telegraphs the twists. Nero betraying Jax is something which has been hinted at for as long as he's been in the show and episode 5 sets that up only for the writers to pretty much tells us that Nero won't minutes before they try and make us think he will. Unser is once again caught up in the **** storm and simply goes with it, even though it goes against everything that he stands for. A show such as SOA needs characters we can invest in and care for but there's no surprises left here. Everything is so familiar that this final series is the equivalent of a comeback tour, everything simply going through the motions for the sake of it.

Episode 6 of the current series is proof that anobdy involved really cares all that much anymore. The longest episode of the series, it's an hour where so little happens that you could easily tell the exact same story in under 5 minutes. It's a banal, bland, dull and uninspired hour of TV that in no way justifies its extended run time.

The current series seems to be built around the concept of having good men do bad things, which can make for incredibly powerful TV. It worked masterfully in The Wire and Breaking Bad but Sons of Anarchy has done such a great job or rewriting it's characters and their motivations that the show has simply became a case of scumbags doing evil things and then staring longingly into nothing as they contemplate their actions. The glacial pace doesn't help matters and it's getting to the stage where we'll have all forgotten why everyone is mad at everyone else before we see any resolutions.

The ongoing Gemma story is being dragged out for all it's worth here and while I can see the moment where Jax uncovers the truth being great TV, I can also imagine it being just another uninspired cop out. That the entire series is being built around this moment only shows up just poor the rest of the plot is. These episodes should be building the tension and ratcheting the suspense all the way up but the only thing being build around here is boredom. The writers seem to think that the best way to explore the conflict of the characters is through monologues including some truly dreadful ones involving Gemma talking to Tara. Much like the voices in Juice's head, these feel like a cheap cop out when they should be showing how Gemma is slowly unwinding as the pressure mounts.

Juice is likewise going off the rails though not in the way the writers hope, his decision to let Gemma live makes no sense and that we are not shown the moment feels odd. Likewise is his decision to rob a store and murder the clerk while leaving behind a number of witnesses. He then turns around and offers to sell the club out to the Mayans in one of the dumbest moments in the show to date. None of it makes any sense unless you believe that Juice really is insane.

The biggest issue with episode 6 is that after an hour absolutely nothing has changed. You could easily skip from episode 5 to 7 and miss nothing.

PeteFalk78

I've made it all the way as far as Season 7 Episode 2, I can't watch it any more. It's beyond terrible, apart from the violence who thought bikers could be soooo gay?

Staplor

I think I just saw espisode 8, hooray the end is in sight.

Before I get into talking too much about episode 7 I have to ask just what the writers were thinking when they wrote that exchange between Jax and Uncer where Uncer reassures Jax that the cop whose partner was killed won't be telling anyone what happened. The reasoning behind the move seemed to be that the cop went to high school with Jax and loves Charming. Now maybe it's jsut me but if my partner was gunned down in cold blood by Neo Nazis I wouldn't be keeping quiet so as to ensure that a club who have brought nothing but death to town can continue to do their thing. The entire scene felt like the writer recognizing that they had written themselves into a corner and couldn't be bothered doing anything but get out of it as easy as possible.

Epsiode 7 is another by the numbers episode and has a comicmal moment whre Jax turns to the Sons and tells them that the end is in sight. There's just one more job to do and then it's home free. How he can say it with a straight face is beyond me given that we've heard the same statement at least twice a series since way back in series one.

The whole Marks storyline is dumb and really doesn't make all that much sense. There's no real reason for Jax to go to war with Marks' crew and the whole thing feels like the writers recycling the tried and tired one last threat before they get out. Kidnapping Bobby was an interesting move but the scene where the Sons gather round to watch the torture tape was more comical than anything else. It simply didn't work and created not a single tea spoon of suspense. In fact, the current story line and Bobby's torture tape is pretty much a retread of the Lin crew taking out the whore house. Both times the Sons think they have the upperhand only for the bad guys to prove themselves far more evil and capable than out rag tag team of bikers. it's something which has plagued the show for quite some time, there's no longer any narrative push here with show simply recycling the same ideas and themes over and over again.

Abel hearing Gemma's confession was an interesting move but I can't see it going anywhere. Talking of Gemma, what the hell was up with the whole sending Happy to bring Gemma to the cabin. Why Jax didn't just pick up his phone and ring here I'll never know, but I suppose the convoluted nature of how it played out allowed the writers to wring some tension out of a few nothign scenes. it's sad to see how little Katey Sagal is being given to work with, she's proven herself a great actress but this current series has her playing the most generic and cliched character imaginable. It's obvious that they want us to believe Gemma has snapped but much like Juice and the voices in his head it's not believable.

It really is hard to care about the show anymore, so much so that trying to write about each episode is a chore. The show simply isn't fun or entertaining anymore, it feels like hard work and that pretty much says it all.

Faith+1

Used to love this show but at this stage I can't wait for the series to end. There's more life in an episode of Corrie these days than Son's.

Tristram

Good god. How does it manage to get worse.

JP Liz V1

Will Bobby's body have any parts left by the finale

Dempsey

I see the total destruction of the Sons MC by the end of the series and it will be because of Jax Teller and hopefully the final scene will involve the realisation that it was his mother that killed tara and set in motion the chain of events that took him from seeing out John Teller's dream to making Clay Morrow look like a boy scout. They all get shanked in prison by the Lins. Charming gets cut up by all the other players and turned into an even bigger shíthole and Wayne gets to witness the transformation before his cancer turns him inside out.

Faith+1

Dempsey wrote: »

I see the total destruction of the Sons MC by the end of the series and it will be because of Jax Teller and hopefully the final scene will involve the realisation that it was his mother that killed tara and set in motion the chain of events that took him from seeing out John Teller's dream to making Clay Morrow look like a boy scout. They all get shanked in prison by the Lins. Charming gets cut up by all the other players and turned into an even bigger shíthole and Wayne gets to witness the transformation before his cancer turns him inside out.

I so wish it turns out this way but the way the storyline keeps twisting anythings possible!

JP Liz V1

I thought Clay and Gemma killed John

Agent Coulson

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

I thought Clay and Gemma killed John

I think they are just making it up as they go along now.

JP Liz V1

Agent Coulson wrote: »

I think they are just making it up as they go along now.

Yes is John even dead now

Agent Coulson

JP Liz V1 wrote: »

Yes is John even dead now

That has crossed my mind a few times to be honest.

Since they were in Ireland I keep expecting him to appear.

Latest episode was just awful, a joyless hour of TV that managed to do absolutely nothing but repeat all the mistakes and story beats of the past few weeks. It's incredibly hard to find any enjoyment here and the repeated cruel acts if violence no longer have any impact. It's all so generic and tired and its obvious that the everyone involved is just going through the motions. After watching episide 2 of Scorpion I'd go so far as to say that it's head and shoulders above Sons.

blackwave

Usually I would be one for supporting Sons of Anarchy but the plot has so many holes in it now, its just gone to crap. I am going to keep watching it just to get some closure but I think they will do extremely well to turn this runaway train around. Should have finished it out last season and left it at that.