Sons of Anarchy Review: “The Separation of Crows” (7×08)

“Do you understand what an accident is?”

Technically speaking, ‘The Separation of Crows' is better than last week's “Greensleeves.” There is one genuinely great, tense dramatic centerpiece, and many of the scenes surrounding that are also good, creating mood, developing character—in other words, doing a lot of the work that, on occasion, Sons can forget to do.

But one centerpiece, even a genuinely great one, doesn't speak for an entire episode of television, and the rest of “The Separation of Crows” is a solemn retread through beats we have covered tirelessly multiple times this season. The episode even ends in literally the exact same place that “Greensleeves” did, as the Sons receive Bobby's hand in a box. I am dumbfounded. I cannot even begin to imagine the writer's room conversation in which the episodes are blocked, and either 1) no one notices that these two episodes follow the same dramatic beats, or 2) someone does notice, and everyone decides it's no big deal.

The episode is not totally devoid of development, at least. I especially enjoyed the emotional journey that Chibs and Jax go on in a set of scenes throughout the episode. Chibs is so usually the voice of reason, yet early this week he encourages Jax to continue on this vengeance quest. He talks about the dream of SAMRCO, its mission—but what is it? I've no doubt that these men care deeply for each other, but at what point does this escalation stop? It's refreshing to see Jax finally expressing some doubt, but annoying to see otherwise reasonable men convince him nothing is amiss.

The show wants to sell the point that this is out of blind deference to their leader, and likely, deference to John Teller as well. I can buy that—the performances among even the tertiary members of the club certainly suggest this sort camaraderie, the fraternal mindset that would inspire devotion to a man and an ideal, even if that ideal is tarnished beyond all recognition. And so we get the big centerpiece of the episode, as Jax confronts Jury, the Indian Hills charter's president, whom Jax has determined ratted SAMCRO out to the Chinese. Every word Jury says cuts deep, and while it's not imparting any new information about Jax—Jury has after all come to a conclusion that any reasonable viewer arrived at episodes, if not seasons, ago—but it means something that these words are coming from a fellow Son.

“You had the chance to be something good for this club,” Jury says to Jax. “And you turned into everything he hated. You became the poison.” He earns a bullet to the head for his trouble, one Jax sells as self-defense even as the lone other Indian Hills crow loses his shit (“Your boy is out of control,” indeed). Finally, though, this scene gives us a turning point; in the later scene between Jax and Chibs, Chibs is no longer encouraging his president to continue down this path. Finally, a wake up call. “There's gonna be questions about the rights and wrongs of the whole thing,” is perhaps a sterile way to put it, but it's a valid point. No matter what the club's mission is, no matter what ideal Jax thinks he's upholding, what righteous vengeance he believes he's carrying out, there is still right, and there's still wrong. Murdering a club president, at least, falls on the wrong side of that line.

But while that scene and the ones surrounding it may be gripping, there's no excusing the fact that it's taken entirely too long for the story to reach this point, and that moreover there is entirely too long to go before the story reaches its next point. The rest of the episode bounces back and forth on the balls of its figurative feet, remaining firmly in place until finale time, when Jax will finally be permitted to learn the truth. (Right now, my money says that Unser finds out first, then somehow dies before sharing with anyone important, probably in the eleventh episode).

Outside of the scene with Jury, this episode features an incredibly silly, on-the-nose scene between Gemma and the pastor's wife, which earns the distinction of being even more clunky than the frequent soliloquizing; another indication that Abel's acting out is getting worse (and the actor's acting is just plain bad); and Juice way too obviously playing out Jax's plan to get him in proximity to Lin. All these machinations of the plot are here for the sake of it, here because there are episodes that need filling; but as always, they run circles around each other, giving just the illusion of progress, before we arrive at a final scene that we've already seen. The episode makes a decent thematic statement on the idea of accidents—neither Gemma's murder of Tara nor Jax's descent into darkness qualifies as one, even if they'll both try to argue otherwise—but thematic statements also do not make for a complete episode of television, let alone a good one. The story that Sons' seventh season wants to tell is not big enough to fill thirteen normal-sized episodes, let alone thirteen FX-style jumbo episodes, and the longer this goes on, the more frustrating that fact becomes.
Stray Observations:

– Finally, a good song choice! “All Along the Watchtower” on a fiddle fits well, and reprising the song at the end at least gives the sense that the contents of the episode are purposely meant to reframe the situation with Marks, and to paint him as an opponent much more serious than Jax gave him credit for. Then again, Bobby's eye in a box might have hinted at that, too.

– Scenes like the very long silence between Chibs and Jax are what remind me that FX's disregard for running times can be a very, very positive thing. That long, excruciating pan out would be the first thing cut on another network, but it is absolutely necessary to the scene.

– How funny would it be if Unser's scrabble letters had spelled out “Gemma did it”?