Sons of Anarchy - "Una Venta"

Season 4, Episode 4

An episode that holds my ire at bay for a week

“Those are some pretty vague metaphors

for someone as direct as you.”

-Tara

I know that I have railed against the show for the past few weeks for not moving the story along as fast as I think it should, and against that bar, “Una Venta” isn’t really a whole lot better. But in truth, I actually liked the episode, even if it functioned in a way I’m not used to seeing from Sons of Anarchy. There were three things that the show finally did right tonight, and while it doesn’t absolve season four of its current problems, it certainly keeps me satisfied for a week.

#1 Thematic Parallel: Thematic parallels, especially those that derive their impact from the obvious comparison of two groups, tend to be hit or miss. If you’re drawing the comparison merely to be drawing it, and by extension make some sort of claim of thematic depth, usually it just looks like you went for the level immediately below the superficial, and such moments are rarely as deep as you think they are.

But what made the admittedly fairly obvious parallel work in this case was the fact that it played off of an already ongoing plot. Given the traditional structure of the thirteen-episode cable season, it’s going to be a while before the club actually comes to blows over the decision to start running drugs into Charming. But since the decision was made last week, the episode needed to do something to address, and what something is better than some nice sublte, character drama?

That’s usually not the show’s MO, to be sure, but there was something prophetic and interesting in watching the Tuscon crew get torn apart by its own decision to get into the drug trade, and how that affected the SAMCRO members who were there. The show has got to put this plot on the back burner for a while, but if it can keep this bubbling with little reminders like this, and with more scenes of Bobby becoming more and more disgruntled by the crew’s latest venture, then hopefully the show can build up enough tension along the way that this can blow out in a powerful moment towards season’s end.

#2 Insight into Potter: As I have mentioned in the past couple of posts, I had yet to feel that the show had built up Potter enough to the point where he felt like a viable threats to the Sons. Though his soft-spoken, terse demeanor obviously helps to sell the fact that there’s a crazier persona lurking underneath the exterior, without seeing the crazy side (like we did with Roosevelt in the second episode) it was hard to judge just how big of a problem Potter might turn into. Tonight however, Potter became sustainably more dangerous. He randomly hung from the ceiling, letting his legs fling every which way as he thought over a problem. He adopted an alias in order to become closer to Gemma.

But the most dangerous thing about Potter, it turns out, is that he is a shit-stirrer. In an attempt to hopefully get someone talking, he visits Otto in jail, and plants into the man’s brain the idea that Bobby was sleeping with Luann when she died (true), and that he is most likely the person responsible for her death (not true). It’s already been proven this season that the club isn’t very stable right now, and is very susceptible to outside influence. And it Potter is going to be the one doing the influencing, then expect the club to take some real damage.

#3 Movement Elsewhere: Even though the show can take one of the major plots and place it on the backburner, it can’t stop telling the ongoing narrative totally. So in the place of actually moving the drug running narrative forward, the episode instead pushed up two plots that had up until this point been relegated to the sidelines. In the first, Gemma makes friends with a woman who’s in charge of a committee that’s seeking to overturn the new developments in Charming. It’s not a grand movement, nor does it create tension like the explorations of the effects of drug running or Potter’s methods do, but it does show that the show is taking that aspect seriously, and that we can expect that the factor into the club’s decisions at some point this season.

In the second, Tara and Piney form an unlikely alliance, as Piney, intent on stopping Clay’s mad move for cash, wants to learn as much about JT’s death as he can. Much like Gemma’s move above, it doesn’t amount to much, but since it’s Piney, and we know how much trouble he can cause when he gets truly pissed, it does manage to drum up some tension. And that’s a good way to look at the episode as a whole – it may be a place setter, but it justifies its existence by setting the table with some sweet, sweet tension.

Quotes, Etc:

I know most people are tired at this point of the various montages set to music, but I enjoyed the one that opened tonight’s episode. The calm acoustic Latino music that played over various shots of Clay getting cortisone shots and the club doing actions that not everybody agreed with has a certain thematic relevance that I enjoyed.

Oh, and in Spanish, “una venta” means “one sale”. Even in another language, the titles like to be ironic.

“Go wait in the car.”

“Well, I’m not most people.” “And she’s definitely not civil.” “What are we, George and Lacy now?”