THUD: SONS OF ANARCHY #4 AIN’T FAR AWAY

The last season may not have been much aside from a good premiere and a great finale, but that finale did get me pumped for next year. 

That's one crappy teaser, though.

I thought last season was a big letdown compared to S1 and S2 including the season finale which I can't understand why people loved so much.

All that said, I'll probably still tune in. Oh, and Jax looks better with short hair.

Quote:

Originally Posted by History Buff 

I thought last season was a big letdown compared to S1 and S2 including the season finale which I can't understand why people loved so much.

 

All that said, I'll probably still tune in. Oh, and Jax looks better with short hair.

It took out the two big hissable villains in stylish fashion and set up a much more interesting dynamic going forward.  Yeah, the twist was pretty much bullshit if you remember the rest of the season, but on its own it's a solid, fast paced hour of TV that packs in a couple big twists on the way to getting our guys back on top and in charge of their own destinies (which I'm sure they'll screw up in the coming seasons, but at least they won't do it while doing the bidding of poorly sketched ancillary characters).

My biggest complaint with the show is that the Sons never seem to placed in real peril and when they are it all seems to work out so perfectly for them; as was the case with the season finale. I liked the Belfast storyline and the Irish characters but the way it was executed was just so utterly weak and unconvincing. I probably would appreciate the show more if a major character or two were killed off.

It didn't work out so perfectly for Half-Sack.

Or Donna.  Or Hale.  But they were clearly a few rungs down from the leads. 

I actually think one of the things that has impressed me about the show is that it has always felt willing to kill off people even as it has left the main group pretty much alone (well, Bobby and Tig and Juice and Chibs have all been shot/stabbed/blowed up, but they're not really any worse for wear).  I'm guessing we see some another core club casualty sometime this year, as while I think Sutter has a good deal of affection for this cast, he doesn't strike me as someone who lacks the storytelling cahones to take people out.  Plus, if it stays at all true to it's Shakespearean roots down the stretch, people are gonna be exiting stage left, right and center as things wind down.

The twist was semi-cheap, but oh so pleasing. Not letting Ope have his revenge on that fucking she-demon would have made me quit the show. 

The thing that's bullshit about the twist is that we spend the majority of the season with the show asking us to feel sympathy for things that Jax isn't actually feeling, and tension from a predicament he isn't actually in. 

I don't remember the show telling exactly when Jax came clean to the club. Did it?

Anyway, as I said it was kind of cheap but it facilitated some much needed justice for some pretty shitty people. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by stelios 

I don't remember the show telling exactly when Jax came clean to the club. Did it?

 

Anyway, as I said it was kind of cheap but it facilitated some much needed justice for some pretty shitty people. 

Which was more or less what I said.  But it doesn't make the rest of the season any better.  It's not clear when he told them, but there's no really good answer.  If it was right from the beginning, then like I said, we're asked to invest in the entire season arc under false pretenses, and you have the kind of twisty bullshit where a conspirator acts a certain way for the audience's benefit even when he's alone/only with other conspirators.  If it's late in the game, the show missed out on an opportunity to play out the drama guys were play-acting in the finale for the ATF for real, to preserve some fleeting shock value.  If it's somewhere in the middle, you have parts of both drawbacks without any real benefit to offset them. 

But an ending casts a long shadow over what precedes it, and the finale put most of the problematic storylines to bed in a way that was perhaps more satisfying for how frustrating the build-up had been.  And it sets us up for a reboot of sorts, and a fresh pile of conflicts for the club when we return, without locking themselves in to too many specifics.  One hope I have for S4 is that the ATF doesn't fall for them laying the executions on the IRA so neatly.  Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that it benefited the club just as much as the Irish to take them out, and it's not like you have to dig too deeply to see the personal flourishes in the murders and connect these facial scars to those and so forth.  Plus when the only (no electronic database at this gov't agency, I guess!) copy of the deal with the dead agent's big informant goes missing and he is promptly re-embraced by the gang that was threatening his murder a few hours before, something has to smell fishy.  Oh, and then how right around the time the killings happened, the biker escort started honking their horns and the group of imprisoned bikers started laughing out loud in front of their guards.  I know they haven't been portrayed as super-competent, but it's going to take some enormous density on the ATF's part not to have put any of this together a year and a half later.

On a different note, I'm torn between loving Unser and not wanting them to waste Dayton Callie's time if there's nothing left for him to do.