Sons of Anarchy Review: “Poor Little Lambs” (7×04)

This week's episode of Sons of Anarchy is, for a while, business as usual. Jax's murder of the reverend comes back to haunt him, Juice finally agrees it's time to skip town, and Gemma realizes she's accidentally framed Nero.

But then, with twenty or so minutes to go, things escalate, and fast. When the club meets up with those meth heads, two cops get shot, and one survives, perhaps to tell the tale. When Jarry goes to confront the club at Scoops, the Chinese lob a handful of bombs through the window; and while the Sons and Nero are distracted by that, Lin's men murder all the women at Diosa.

At this point in the series, the momentum of the narrative depends on the rate at which everything twists out of control and into chaos. Each episode must introduce a new complication, or else the show merely treads water. So far, the writing has made good on that, making clear that the center here cannot hold, and throwing everything into disarray with wild abandon. The writing on the wall has never been clearer. Escalation is an effective storytelling technique only when the escalation doesn't have to stop. Sons, finally, is in a place where stalling is no longer necessary. The continued success of the narrative here, then, is entirely dependent on future episodes continuing the pattern. For now, though, the Sons' final ride has been one heck of a rollercoaster.

The characters, as well, are finally falling victim themselves to the havoc they've wrought. Gemma descends ever more deeply into madness. Even in admitting that Jax is responsible for beating that girl's father up, she won't reveal her own complicity in that. She truly believes she can manipulate everyone around her and get away with it. Meanwhile she's having regular conversations with Tara's ghost. Gemma's delusion is so total, and her madness so vividly and explicitly portrayed, that she has yet to realize she's the villain of the piece.

Jax, also, is seemingly ignorant of the evil within him. When a mission to track down the reverend's son goes awry, he rescues the reverend's widow from drowning. It's a real “save the cat” moment, one that ordinarily might fall flat, but here serves to highlight how Jax is as deluded as his mother. He believes he can be a good man, still; but just as the narrative explodes all around his character, Jax is faced with the death of sixteen women, and the blame lies directly at his feet.

Zach Handlen of the The A.V. Club writes this week that the show is setting up Jax for the same old redemption story, that by having Lin's men murder Diosa, the writers' have moved the morality markers, so to speak, and given Jax a legitimate reason to go on a resumed vengeance quest. And while yes it's true that Jax has not crossed that particular line, I think for once the show is still asking Jax, and therefore asking us, to consider his own complicity in this. The hammer will fall harder upon Gemma, if there is any justice at all, since it is her lie that has set this whole war in motion; but I think show and character both are well aware of Jax's role in this. As I've noted before, he long ago made the decision that sealed Tara's fate, and his own. Now, I could end up being wrong about this, and if this turns out to be a legitimate attempt to paint Jax as an essentially “good” antihero, that will re-color my whole perception of this season. For now, though, I'm buying what Kurt Sutter is selling; this is the reckoning for six seasons of increasingly immorality.

By episode's end, there is a legitimate question as to how the Sons will escape this situation. It's been a while since that's been the case. This kind of breakneck pace might not be sustainable for a full thirteen episodes, but so far, it is indeed holding up. While some of the moments this episode are quite predictable (Tig's fling with Venus, for one, as well as every plot twist leading up to the explosion), others are genuinely shocking, especially the final twist of the knife at the end of the episode.

The other major development this week is not so major at all, as Juice's decision is another of those forgone conclusions. Theo Rossi's acting is still only intermittently effective, and he isn't quite as good as Katey Sagal at selling the whole act of soliloquizing. But then, the writing doesn't provide as strong of a reason for his soliloquizing, either. It's not exactly a weak link in the episode, but this scene could just as easily have been put at the end of last week's episode, too.

Overall? This final season has been a pleasant surprise. All-out tragedy is a mode that suits Sons well, if it can keep things going at this rate.

Stray Observations:

– “This is a bad place, isn't it, Wayne?” Althea Jarry asks. Sister, you don't know the half of it.

– Speaking of “sister,” Gemma's taunting of Jarry over her name is so typically Sons, but somehow pretty funny.

– Jarry also appears to be getting chummy with Chibbs. That'll be an interesting development to keep an eye on.

– Theo Rossi is suddenly naked all the time on this show (not that I'm complaining about it). Sons has always had a fairly equal-opportunity nudity policy, and seems like Rossi is filling the FX man-ass requirement until a Jax sex scene makes narrative sense again.

– Venus Van Dam returns this week, and more Venus is never, ever a bad thing. Walton Goggins does so much with what could easily have been a one-note joke in poor taste. Even the running joke of Jax wondering if he should be “worried” about Tig plays as funny, rather than offensive. We know these characters extremely well by this point, and the joking, the innuendos, are all rough edges we know to expect; but they also treat Venus like a person, as does the show itself.