Sons of Anarchy, Season Four

Over the past few weeks, due to a variety of reasons – mostly illness, grad school, and grading – I’ve been unable to keep up with Sons of Anarchy as originally promised. As the weeks wore on, it became harder and harder to catch up. In order to make up for this, and to save myself a whole lot of time that I don’t really have to spare, I present to you a review of the show’s fourth season, albeit two weeks after the fact.

As I’ve said many times since the season premiered back in September, the fourth season of Sons of Anarchy was going to be a pivotal one for the show, a time to see if it could recover from the miscalculation of season three, and more importantly provide a solid way forward so that the show wouldn’t make a misstep like that again. Unfortunately, I found that even as the show did succeed on the latter challenge, it wasn’t as able to accomplish the former.

One of the biggest, and perhaps most important changes that Kurt Sutter and his writers did this season was to move the show away from its pulpy, action-oriented storytelling towards a more character-based drama. Now, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the action-oriented format, especially as it was presented in the show’s second season, and the fact that the transition from one tone to another was a bit rough would almost seem to suggest that the show shouldn’t move in that direction. However, what I think made this move work more so than it did last season (where there was some sense of slowing things down) was the focus of the show became tighter, to the extent that it was in season two. This is a show about one specific motorcycle club, and the more the show keep that in mind, the better it tends to be.

It’s to that end that I have to criticize the cartel subplot of the season. Much like how the club’s connection with the Irish gun smugglers lead to their trip to Ireland in season three, their involvement with the Galindo cartel has its origins in subplots plots from the third season, so I can’t pretend that it was an illogical move to make. And yet like the club’s sudden turn into dealing with the Irish, their sudden deal with the Galindo cartel, apart from being a positive way to kick off the arc of Clay and Jax’s attempt to get out of the club, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. This was mostly due to the fact that the Cartel’s actions were highly marginalized within the narrative. Every few episodes, they would pop up with some new, off-screen problem that SAMCRO would suddenly have to deal with in order to keep receiving the drug money. These events had nothing to do with the club itself, and thus robbed the show from the character-based drama that I know it capable of doing and doing well, but even worse it robbed the characters of their agency. It’s hard to believe that these characters are badasses when their being led around like a dog on a collar by the cartel.

(The same can be more or less said for the Charming Heights plots, but there was so little to it that I can’t even come up with more words than this sentence. But that’s what you get when you relegate plotlines to the sidelines. It probably could have been scrapped without any real change to the overall season.)

This ended in the most egregious of these storytelling snafus, in which it was suddenly revealed at the top of “To Be, Act 2” that the cartel (or at least the top two officers) were in fact working for the FBI, having made turncoat to avoid jail time. It was a twist that came out of nowhere, and thus made little sense. Where was all this talk earlier in the season? Wouldn’t it have made for better drama to know that the Mexicans were going to cross the Sons earlier in the season, and thus given their scenes together an extra layer of tension? Or is that just me? As it stands, that twist really only seemed to exist because Sutter and his writers ran out of a way to write out the cartel, and so they went with a simple but unmotivated twist to close out the storyline. And that bothers me because while this plot engendered some good stories (more on that later), it didn’t work as a story itself, and all those scene that didn’t make much sense in the first place now become even more useless. Even worse, that finale twist seemed to serve as some sort of narrative justification for Clay to keep on living.

But I have to wonder if Clay really does need to survive. This season Clay went bad, or at least badder than usual, and while it was entertaining to watch, it also left Sutter in a difficult position, because there’s really no going back for Clay, not after he killed Piney and attempted to have Tara killed to keep the secret of his killing of John, not to mention how he destroyed the club for his own selfish purposes. For most shows, when a character goes this far off his original track, it usually means that it’s about time for him to die, and Clay dying would have been a perfect statement on the cost of hubris. But instead we have a man, who’s been broken down by his actions, but he’s completely without recourse, and I see no way the show can given him an interesting arc off of his current position.

There was a similar parallel to this in Juice’s story arc, which was one that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. It gave Theo Rossi the best and largest amount of material to play with, and it actually made me glad that the show copped out of his suicide by having the branch break, as he got even better material after the fact. It not only created some excellent in-group tension and had a character with his back against a metaphorical wall (the show’s best two veins of drama) but it also revealed to us something new about the club (vis-à-vis there “no blacks” policy) and even roped in Chibs at the end. It served as strong evidence for the show’s slide into less-action-more-emotion mode, and it did it in a way that kept me hooked.

Unfortunately, much like with the cartel, the show somehow botched the ending when it just sort of ended. Now, there’s still the possibility that this is a secret that can come up again (something that happened a couple of times this season, actually), but as of now we just have Juice deicing that he’s Hispanic dammit, and nobody can tell him otherwise. There’s something to be said for searches for self-identity, but I don’t think the show put enough emphasis on this aspect, assuming they were going for that angle in the first place. As such, it just sort of felt like Sutter chose this ending to make room for the larger events of the two-part finale.

And that’s to say nothing of Potter and Roosevelt, and their role in these events. Ray McKinnon and Rockmond Dunbar are fantastic actors, and they both got their small little moments to shine and define their characters. But those moments were still small, and I was always left waiting for the other shoe to drop, for these characters to get a real spotlight and prove to themselves to be the large threats that the show kept trying to convince us that they were. I know many people didn’t exactly like her character – heck, I number among them – but I remember agent Stahl being a really powerful force against the Sons, and that’s the bar that more or less been set by the show. Any antagonist that doesn’t clear that bar (or even come close to it) just won’t feel as threatening, and that leaves the show without the high stakes that it generally uses to create good drama. 

(And let’s going ahead and stick Kozik’s few episodic appearances in their as well. This season was just a serious misuse of Kenny Johnson.)

I know that that most of the above makes it sound that that I’m highly critical of the season, but I didn’t really feel down on the show when I was watching it week-to-week. Creating a show in which each episode can hold interest is a difficult task, especially when you’re trying to do a lot of setup, as Sutter was obviously doing, so I do have to give him credit for accomplishing that. However, where I think that the season feel apart was in the way it resolved of all the storylines. I’ve already talked about how the storylines with Juice and the cartel just sort of ended, and how Clay’s didn’t seem to get the ending it deserved, but it goes beyond that. For the longest time this season, I was convinced that these storylines were going to connect to some of the others, or at least cause a bigger impact, because, hey, that’s how this show tends to operate. (Hell it’s how most dramas work, and it’s sort of become a de facto rule for televised storytelling.) But instead these storylines just sort of existed separate from each other, and that feels like a waster opportunity, especially considering how strong they were individually. 

In the name of ending on a positive note, I would like to discuss the main arc of the season, which worked extremely well from start to end, and helped to buoy (or at least distract from) the other, less successful arcs of the season.  The main conflict at the heart of the season was how/when/if Jax would be able to abdicate his VP position from the club, which led to the question on the critical end of how the show would be able to keep Jax in the club long enough to fulfill Sutter’s seven season goal without making it seem like the show was just throwing manufacture obstacles at the character or having him run around in circles. In all honestly this required some contrivance in the early episodes, but as the character arcs began to rev up, and they began to encircle Jax, the game changed, and the collusion of arcs led to a far more believable set of event that ended with him at the head of the club table.

In fact, I’ll say that the ending to “To Be, Act 2” was one of the strongest moments that the show has produced throughout its entire run, and it was the reason that I was finally convinced to stick with the show after two seasons that weren’t as strong as I would have liked. Putting Jax at the head of the club plays on a lot of what we know both about him and his father, and that’s highly interesting, but I don’t think it would have worked had the show not dragged the other characters as well. The fall of Clay and Gemma (who’s been able to climb back up the ladder somewhat) nicely contrast the rise of Jax and Tara, though of course “rise” is a relative term. Sure they’ve gained power, but at the expense of their remaining humanity, and that’s a great thread for the show to explore next season, to say nothing of how far off the path Opie has gone.

Tara’s path – especially everything since “Hands”, the best episode of the season – is the one that most interests me, and the one that I’m most pleased with. The show has often had a hard time with Tara, both in keeping her characterization constant, and her exactly role within the universe of the show. Making her more than just an “old lady” (in the vein of Gemma) really opens up her character to a much better exploration of how the club corrupts, and places her in a much more logical proximity to the action. I’ve always known that Maggie Siff is capable of playing strong yet damaged women, but I don’t think it was until the finale that the show finally embraced those two modes at the same time for the character.

But – and I cannot say this enough – a great ending does not make for a great season. There were a lot of great elements that Sutter was able to infuse into the show this season, but being unable to make them all work together was what kept this show at “good” instead of “great”.