Sons of Anarchy Review: “Toil and Till” (7×02)

With this week’s episode, “Toil and Till,” Sons of Anarchy makes the first compelling case for its unending, unrelenting depiction of misery of the season. In fact, I can’t remember the time I was as invested in or even interested by an episode of this show. Considering where I stood last week, we’ll consider this high praise. I genuinely tried to be more positive about the show this week, and am very happy that those efforts dovetailed with an episode that is worth them.

Last week’s premiere got a lot of necessary, but not inherently compelling, exposition out of the way, which means we get to spend this episode settling into this new status quo, before the revealed truth of Tara’s death inevitable blows everything to smithereens. And “Toil and Till” does truly go a long way toward bringing some human dimension back to these characters. Consider Gemma’s conversation with Abel: Are you okay, Grandma? he asks her, and what is her perfect response? “Always.” This is such a quiet, well-acted and -directed moment, the sort that justifies running over time (this week, it’s by a perfectly reasonable sixteen minutes), a character-developing scene that is both given sufficient room to breathe and which allows the audience to refocus our empathy toward that character. Gemma is an awful woman, the worst person on this show by almost any measure, but we know enough about her to begin to understand her, and this one scene reinforces so much about the character.

Similar successes are had this week with Juice and Unser, whose early scene in the episode, while committing the perennial Sons sin of immediately undoing a cliffhanger, is another instance of the show using its history effectively, and allowing small, talky scenes that might otherwise have been cut from the episode, to instead do very important character work. Theo Rossi has gotten me this week to question my judgment of his acting in the premiere. Then, I found him listless and affected; this week I wonder if it’s intentional. Juice as a character is in so far over his head—he’s “basically a child,” according to Unser—and he is posturing at being as ruthless as Jax or Gemma, as being the kind of guy who could kill Unser just to keep a secret. But he’s not that ruthless, and Unser knows it.

Speaking of Wayne Unser, this is a big week for him! The character feels dramatically relevant for the first time in ages, and to have him back in the mix in some official capacity with the law promises a minefield of conflict in the coming weeks. Dayton Callie is great even when the writing is fumbling, so this week, with several great scenes to play, is a real treat just for his performance.

That said, the show still has a massive problem, and that’s the way it depicts Jax and the Sons. It is impossible at this point for the show to have its cake and eat it, too: either the Sons are badass, super cool biker badasses, or they are a group of wrongheaded, violent men who doom themselves and everyone around them. You have to pick one. Walking a strange tightrope between these two depictions of the characters and of the world itself causes too many moments where the whole thing is flat—for instance, any moment in which we are subjected to a reading of Jax’s journal entries. Perhaps the way those two stoners so plainly idolize Jax, up until he murders them, too, is a comment on this very issue. But when every episode still features a motorcycle chase set to a rock song, it seems we’re asked to forget just who, exactly, we are watching, if only until the commercial break.

So when the episode ends on a shot of Jax cradling Abel, a single perfect tear falling down his cheek, while across town, who is Jax’s brother by Jax’s own definition of the word, cradles the dead body of someone he clearly knew and loved more than he suggested to Jax; when the episode ends asking me to appreciate how much of his soul he has lost, well, that falls flat, because Jax is a murderer now, several times over. Any sympathy or desire for redemption that might have once existed for this character is completely gone, but the writing seems completely unaware of this fact. We’re asked to view this violent behavior as a lashing out in the wake of Tara’s death, a single-minded quest for vengeance, but that’s not really a valid request. Jax has been this violent for a very long time now, and he had been knowingly placing Tara’s life in danger since the middle of season four, when his own father-in-law tried to have her killed. That he doesn’t know that his own mother is the most dangerous of all his associates is the only oversight of which Jax can be forgiven at this point. But Tara’s safety? He had already demonstrated a complete lack of concern for that.

Does this make sense for Jax’s arc? Yes, absolutely. His final story arc taking the shape of a willing dive into the darkness is thematically fitting for the show. But this all needed to follow directly from the season four premiere. Instead, Sutter and team crafted two artificial seasons, that treaded water until the characters could reach this point, but which continued upping the ante on the violence and crime anyway. Jax has been on this level for some time, but only now are we asked to take it seriously and take concern. Taken on its own, it works well, and has the potential for much more, but you’re basically required to jettison most of the past two seasons in order to do so.

Then again, maybe disregarding the business with Romeo and for some reason Dave Navarro isn’t the worst that could happen.

Regardless, this is a solid episode of Sons, and hopefully it’s indicative of things to come. The show still needs tighter editing; even though this episode actually doesn’t run that long, I think it could comfortable have been cut to a cable hour. The show would be more exciting if it were more concise in its storytelling, and that’s true on the micro-level of episode structure as well as on the macro-level of: this should have been a five season show. But the episode does strong character work, and more importantly, positions characters interestingly for maximum conflict and fallout at the end of the season. In that sense, at least, the show is still honoring its Shakespearean inspiration. If the series can more effectively grapple with the issues of Jax’s history, and I think that even this will become less of an issue as the conclusion nears, then we are in for some potent drama, and a hopefully fitting finale to the series.

Stray Observations:

– The montage at the beginning, which is mercifully silent, actually features some stellar directing and editing, as well as a knowing wink at the show’s unbreakable musical montage addiction. Jax, Gemma and Juice, along with Unser, are positioned as the major players going forward, and that’s a great combination of relationships, so it’s very cool to see them linked visually here, as well as throughout the episode.

– Annabeth Gish is the new commissioner in town, but it remains to be seen exactly how Althea Jarry will figure in at this stage. I’m much more interested in Unser’s new role as consulting investigator.

– This is a show where “the porn warehouse” is a real thing that exists, and also is a suitable alibi.