Let’s get this out of the way up front: this should be the antepenultimate episode of a seven or eight episode season, tops. For all the plot that this season has had to this point, every new twist and knot in Jax’s elaborate vengeance scheme, there really has not been enough story to justify the more than ten hours that the season has lasted so far. So regardless of how good or bad this episode is, the overlong path that brought us here results in unavoidable diminishing returns. Think, for instance, how much more impactful this episode’s opening scene would have been were it only the first or second time that we saw Gemma talk to Tara. This episode finally begins allowing the various conflicts that have been bubbling since the premiere to boil over, but the pot’s been threatening to boil over for weeks now.
But let’s forget that. Let’s pretend that this is indeed the antepenultimate episode of a season of more appropriate length, because “Suits of Woe” is for most of its runtime undeniably great. In fact it is pretty much the best episode of the season to date. Everything comes to a head, and more importantly, everything is laid out on the table. Color me impressed: the writers charge headlong into the fallout and aftermath of Abel’s revelation, rather than maneuver the plot into yet another contortion. The result is that the characters finally evolve in their current conflicts, rather than playing the same ones out over and over in varying configurations. “Suits of Woe” is essentially the Sons equivalent of “Ozymandias”, in the way it so totally changes the status quo for these characters. The entire episode is a protracted, inevitable reckoning, summative of the show’s emotional journey to this point.
These are the same qualities that made the season’s early episodes successful, and they are qualities that are nigh impossible to maintain over a larger number of episodes. But in bursts, in the small dramatic units they’re intended to compose, they can really work. As the extremely dour end of the second act, “Suits of Woe” works super well: the writing no longer has to stop just short of tragedy, and the actors give the material their usual best efforts. Gemma’s soliloquy that opens the episode is a final draw of the curtain, an ominous epigraph that precedes the (albeit overdue) fall of the hammer. Katey Sagal plays Gemma throughout the episode as a ghost, never more reminiscent of Lady Macbeth than she is here.
Really, every character is by this point a shade of their former selves, if not by the beginning of this episode, then certainly by its harrowing conclusion. Take Unser, whose bitterness to Jax is something to behold. Dayton Callie has played the role of long-suffering knight so well, even when the show has given him little and less to work with, so it’s great to see him get some real room to play around here. “If you gave a shit about Tara maybe you’d spend a little less time being a thug and a little more time being a dad,” is a sentence I’d nearly given up on hearing on this show, and it’s fitting that Unser is the first to damn Jax.
Even more fitting is that Juice serves the role of soothsayer, and watch how great Theo Rossi throughout this episode. First, when Juice murders Lin, he is nearly gleeful, and yet detached in a sociopathic way. Then as he details the night of Tara’s murder for Jax, he has a barely restrained grin that cracks his face, almost as though he relishes being the one to bring Jax crashing down, before he realizes finally that he has truly lost everything. Juice and Jax are so similar in this regard—both have idealized SAMCRO, made it the center of their lives, and the club has returned the favor to both of them in blood and tears.
Jax breaks down twice in this episode. First it is in listening to Juice. Charlie Hunnam is pitch perfect, allowing Jax to just completely fall apart, but then something clicks within him one last time, and suddenly Jax is more reserved than ever. He thinks for just a few hours longer that Gemma is just another problem to be solved, that he can keep everything held together and move forward with the club and his life even still. It’s only at the end of the episode, when he breaks down for good in Nero’s arms, that we see the full scope of the wreckage Gemma leaves in her wake.
If I weren’t so convinced that the next episodes will destroy SAMCRO that way that this episode destroys its president, I would be concerned that the episode is structured around the reveal of Gemma’s deeds, and her final decision to skip town and leave her damaged past behind. Everything might have spun from her lie, but that doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, absolve Jax from his sins. For a while it seems as though Jax will be let off the hook, but that last scene with him suggests otherwise. It’s not so much that Gemma is taking the fall for everything; it’s just as Juice said: “Gemma knows every truth, behind every lie, inside every secret. She’s the gatekeeper.” Jax may be a monster, but he’s a monster Gemma created. There’s no doubt at this point that Sons is aiming for a scorched earth finale and nothing less, but it all begins and ends with Gemma Teller.
This is an awesome episode, in the truest sense of the word. It deftly employs the show’s significant, weighty history, and as such the episode’s events have import. They matter. That’s been a rare quality too this season, and for a few seasons now. It’s pretty frustrating that it’s taken so long to get here, and that the road has been so inconsistent But this is the ending that Kurt Sutter began to hint at all the way back in season four, it’s been a long time coming, and now, after a lengthy final pause, it’s finally here. This episode is a powerhouse, and well worth the wait, even for lapsed fans, even for those who may have lost patience over this last season.
Stray Observations:
- Jimmy Smits’s Nero is yet another casualty of Gemma’s, and the scene where Jax fills him in is expertly shot and acted. We don’t hear Jax give the details, as they’ve already been repeated multiple times. Instead we just watch Nero, over Gemma’s shoulder, as he falls out of love with this woman.
- Let’s talk about tone: the jazz music scoring Jax’s flight from the police is completely absurd, some ridiculous, Dukes of Hazzard cool outlaw bullshit that has no business on the show at this point, let alone with Jax. The man is a violent criminal who is, finally, going to have to face down his actions. He is a tragic hero, yes, but that’s the only type of hero he is anymore. “Suits of Woe” doesn’t make many missteps, but this is a pretty big one.
- Annabeth Gish hasn’t really gotten much of a chance to do a lot with Jarry, but the character is kind of redundant, huh? When she and Unser go to meet Juice, she delivers a couple of prison rape jokes and some platitudes about needing Juice’s cooperation, but she’s filling a plot role only at this point. It’s Unser’s emotional involvement that matters now.
- Did Theo Rossi Show His Ass? He did not, but after he killed Lin and started unbuttoning his shirt, I thought for sure we’d get a gratuitous butt shot. There’s always next week!
Michael Wampler is a graduate of The College of New Jersey, where he completed both B.A. and M.A. degrees in English literature. He currently lives and works in Princeton, NJ while he shops around his debut novel and slowly picks away at his second. Favorite shows include Weeds, Lost, Hannibal and Mad Men (among many more). When not watching or writing about television, he enjoys reading, going for runs, and building his record collection.