Sons of Anarchy Review: “Playing With Monsters” (7×03)

Nothing much happens this week on Sons of Anarchy, and yet, I can't help but feel like this is the best episode of the season so far. As things plummet further into darkness, the show gains a surety of narrative that it hasn't had in a long time. Now that there is no question as to Jax's villainy and Gemma's madness, we are back in full-on Hamlet mode. Jax is going to start a war and likely (figuratively) burn Charming to the ground, only to realize that his mother is the monster he's been seeking. And what's worse he'll do it all for Gemma's sake to begin with.

We are fully in on Jax being a terrible monster, now, and the show makes that statement in a very powerful way, none more so than a neat piece of editing in the middle of the show. Gemma ensures Abel that Jax is a good man, then we cut to Jax immediately after he's committed yet another cold-blooded murder. Charlie Hunnam answers the phone and says, “Hey, Mom, what's up?” in this wonderfully flippant way, like he's a cocky high school kid playing at gangsters. He's perfectly nonchalant, in a way that suggests not only the extent to which he is cavalier about his actions, but also that he considers it behavior his mother would approve of, and even be proud of. When he answers the phone he's practically giddy—he's solving problems the way Gemma told him how. This week's closing scene it the show's most toxic portrayal yet of their relationship, but it feels surprisingly vital.

Even thought he show is just spinning its wheels, this week—Jax continues to enact his revenge, which boils down to “kill them all,” and Juice tries one last time with Chibs before splitting town. The main conflicts are yet to come. But this episode is still a powerhouse, featuring some strong acting, some legitimately good writing, and a tone that embraces the pseudo-Shakespearean tragedy of the plot. In a way these three episodes have been a very long first act, one likely to conclude last week, but since it's the first act of the last season in the cycle, everything is allowed to feel vital again. Any wheel-spinning here is a legitimate attempt to build tension, and not a desperate grasping of straws for fodder for future seasons.

It helps, of course, that the attempts to build tension are also successful. The machinations of Jax's plan concerning the Niners are exciting to watch unfold, and sufficiently dastardly. Yes, we've seen this all before, and need no further convincing of the extent of Jax's villainy. But the show is no longer trying to convince us. There is a gleefulness to Charlie Hunnam's performance tonight; he makes Jax like a Richard III or a Macbeth, rather than the brooding anti-hero he's been for too long now.

Katey Sagal accomplishes the same with Gemma this week. Sagal deserves a lot of credit, because it is her performance above all else that keeps this show afloat. She is digging into Gemma's arc this year with even more verve and aplomb than usual, and it shows. Gemma has now taken to addressing Tara's ghost, which on its face is ludicrous, but is so dementedly Shakespearean, and so entrancingly performed by Sagal, that these soliloquies become fascinating illustrations of Gemma's madness. This kind of stuff is what Sons should be doing more of.

Juice has his best scenes so far as well. The character is torn between Gemma and Unser, two parental figures in his life, while he loses the third, Chibs, in a heartbreaking scene. Tommy Flanagan hasn't had as much to do as many others on this show, but he's always great to watch, and he's made Chibs such a fully realized character that his cold abandonment of Juice here stings.

Would it be nice if we'd reached this point a long time ago? Absolutely. And from the previews, it looks like the hammer won't even begin to fall until next week. The sense that, to an extent, we're marking time, is unavoidable, and it does linger in this episode still.  But even though this episode retreads so many of the same old Sons twists and motifs, it embraces the usual baggage with such energy that it's hard not to be pretty happy with it anyway. It's taken us a while to get to this point, but now that we're here, the final act proves to have been worth sticking around for after all.

Stray Observations:

-Althea Jarry is most reminiscent of Ally Walker's June Stahl, right down to the corrupt act she pulls to curry favor with Jax and the club. It's ambiguous at this point how much is an act, but Annabeth Gish is great fun in the role, and Jarry's flirtatious scene with Chibs was a highlight of the episode.

– This week in SAMCRO: my DVR cut off the beginning of the episode slightly, and so I was launched immediately into the shooting of the lesbian pornographic masterpiece, Skankenstein. And you know what? That's hilarious. Point, Sons.