“We are all doing impulsive things…” – Gemma
Can a show redeem an entire season with a single episode? Sons of Anarchy makes a pretty strong case for exactly that with “NS,” the finale to its ambitious, yet highly criticized, hit-or-miss third season. “NS” is a taste of what the season could have been, had the characters (and writers) not been so preoccupied with Abel-gate. Even though the episode is 90 minutes long, it feels like a blink of an eye and leaves you wanting more – exactly what you expect from a good season finale. “NS” is SOA getting back to basics, all bikes, backroom deals, betrayal and bad-assery. Don’t get me wrong, the episode was not perfect; it had its faults (which I will nit-pick later). But if there was a way for the show to end the season on a high note and win back some fans that may have bailed somewhere along the line in Belfast, “NS” was the way to do it.
In the past I have questioned some of the musical choices the show has made, but this episode warrants no such complaints. “NS” starts with a montage of sorts accompanied by Joan Armatrading’s “This Charming Life.” This upbeat, happy little number works nicely paired with scenes of Jax (Charlie Hunnam) and Tara (Maggie Siff) waking up in bed together, Gemma (Katie Sagal) at home with Clay (Ron Perlman) baking treats in the kitchen, Clay returning Abel’s long lost Reaper beanie and Opie (Ryan Hurst) and Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli) announcing their engagement to an adoring crowd at the clubhouse. The song evokes feelings of hope, that no matter what happens, the worst is behind these people. Things are starting to look up a little bit in Charming… this charming life. For once everyone is happy, or at least closer to being happy than they have been in a long time. Well, everyone except Agent Stahl (Ally Walker), who wakes up in bed alone… you know, because she shot her partner/lover in the throat last week and all.
The bliss, of course, is short lived. The guys (and gals) of SAMCRO have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. “Today’s about to go off the rails, baby. We gotta find Jimmy before we go inside,” Clay tells Gemma while filling her in on the deal he cut with the IRA council (or as he calls them, the “read-headed Godfathers”) to expand the club’s gun business in exchange for killing Jimmy O (Titus Welliver). By now, Gemma is a little more familiar with the IRA than she would prefer, having stumbled across an ATF dossier documenting the council’s members in Jax’s cut.
Panicked by the thought of her son betraying his club and ratting on an organization as powerful and dangerous as the Army, Gemma turns herself into Unser (Dayton Callie) to be taken to the county jail. Her first visitor is Stahl, who shows her a statement exonerating her of the murder charges. All Gemma will have to face will be a maximum of six months of house arrest for fleeing the country. Under normal circumstances this would be great news, but Gemma would gladly spend the rest of her days in jail if that meant saving Jax’s life. “I found the folder, I saw what Jax is giving you. You are going to get him killed. If not by his own club, then by the IRA,” Gemma says. She again threatens to blow the whistle to Stahl’s superiors, but Stahl assures her that it is too late for that. “You’ll just have to trust me,” she says, which I don’t think is supposed to be a laugh line but is so ludicrous that it becomes one. “That could never work. These deals are based on lies. You’re lying to your bosses, Jax is lying to his club, and you’re both lying to each other. Something will go wrong. Somebody will get hurt,” Gemma fires back. Somebody is going to get hurt alright…
Next up on Gemma’s visitor list is Clay, who is a little annoyed at what he perceives as Gemma impulsively deciding to turn herself over to the cops. “We are all doing impulsive things, things we would never do otherwise. Losing Abel, all the death. Every decision you make has to be viewed in the light of these extreme circumstances…its a different time, we can’t look at Jax in the same light as John,” Gemma says. I find that last part very interesting because in context it is (to my recollection) the closest we have come to an admission that Gemma and Clay played a role in John Teller’s death (more on this later). For a second there I was worried that Gemma was going to tell Clay about Jax’s deal with Stahl, but thankfully she didn’t. Had Clay bothered to ask her what the hell she was talking about with all of the “We all do impulsive things…Jax and John” mumbo-jumbo she may have told him, but he was busy with trying to get to Jimmy and probably assumed his wife was just babbling.
Sons of Anarchy does something annoying that a lot of shows have a tendency to do and I normally wouldn’t harp about it, but “NS” was such a good episode that if I didn’t point out the small flaws this review might be a little too positive. SOA likes to introduce new characters without much, if any, back story or explanation regarding how said character relates to the greater world of the show. Generally, this isn’t a problem – in fact I appreciate a show that respects me enough to assume I can figure out who is who for myself – but sometimes they just drop someone new in as if he or she has been on the show forever. This confuses me. Have I seen this person before? Did I just forget them? Should I know who this person is?
Am I not really a fan because I have no idea who this is? Take Lenny Janowitz, AKA Lenny the Pimp, for example. Lenny is an incarcerated member of SAMCRO’s First Nine, played by real-life former Hell’s Angel Sonny Barger. This is the first we have seen of Lenny and I don’t remember him being mentioned prior to this. But if he is one of the founding members of the MC, you would think we would have at least heard him talked about a time or two before. The only reason I know anything about him at all is because I looked him up online. I know the show has released an iPhone app that gives users detailed bios for all of the characters, but why should I have to refer to that? I don’t have an iPhone. Hell, I just got text messaging like six months ago. I’m what marketers would refer to as a “late adopter.” But I digress… Why not just include some back story in the actual episode? A little more character depth and a little less baby chasing would have gone a long way toward making the Belfast portion of this season more palatable. How much better would the scene of McGee and Clay on the roof had been if we knew a little more about the history between the two?
Clay and Bobby (Mark Boone Jr.) visit Otto (Kurt Sutter – SOA Creator and Showrunner) in prison to recruit him in their mission to get Jimmy. They want him to pass a message to Lenny, who is providing muscle to the Russian mob inside the prison. This turns out to be easier said than done because Otto’s movements inside are severely limited due to his history of violence against staff and fellow inmates. In what is turning into quite the pattern, Jax turns to Stahl for assistance. She pulls some strings and arranges a meet between Lenny and Otto in the infirmary. Lenny tells SAMCRO that the Russians will be willing to hand over Jimmy for a price – a price that turns out to be two million dollars.
But where is the club going to find two million bucks in a matter of hours? Enter Chucky (Michael Ornstien), the fingerless masturbator, who just happens to have a box full of counterfeit bills lying around. Gotta love TV, right? Suspend disbelief with me a little bit, people. But the Russians are smart, so SAMCRO decides to pad the fake currency with real bills. Once again Jax is forced to turn to Stahl for help. She gives him the $250,000 left over from the Tara ransom in exchange for letting the ATF in on the location of the prisoner exchange. At this point I’m thinking, “Wow, Jax is really pushing his luck here going back to Stahl again and again for help. There is no chance she doesn’t burn him. How is the club NOT going to find out about the deal?”
The remainder of the episode is a whirlwind of awesomeness, culminating in a final ten minutes that is arguably as viscerally satisfying as anything since The Shield finale. Several things tipped me off to that fact that things were about to get crazy as the club prepared for the meet with the Russians. First, Jax suits Tara up in a bullet-proof vest before sending her off to God-knows-where in Gemma’s old black Cutlass. Then Unser shows up to tell Clay that Gemma is about to be released from jail and says cryptically “…And I’m all set.” Set for what? Finally, Jax gives the prospects two letters and the instructions to deliver them after whatever goes down, goes down. The club splits up, with Piney (William Lucking), Opie, Lem (Kenny Johnson) and Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) splintering from Jax, Clay and the rest of the crew. Something fishy is definitely going on.
The deal with the Russians goes through without a hitch, they don’t do a very thorough job inspecting the cash before handing Jimmy over. Tara and the Cutlass are waiting close by and the prospects load Jimmy into the car’s trunk before hopping in and cruising off toward the garage. By this time the Russians have realized that the money is fake, but SAMCRO is waiting to lead them right into an ATF roadblock.
Stahl is shocked to discover that Jimmy is nowhere to be found. Come on, how could she be so stupid as to not have surveillance on the transaction at all times? “You get Jimmy and my statement when my club is free of hard time,” Jax tells her. Stahl seems ready to play ball, she has in hand a recommendation typed up and ready to go stating that the club’s federal weapons charges should be reduced from 15 to 3 years. In return she demands that Jax sign an agreement of cooperation in the government’s ongoing case against Jimmy O and the IRA council. Jax signs. “I’m officially a rat. Your turn,” he says. And just like Gemma and everyone else with half a brain predicted, Stahl burns Jax. She refuses to hand over the sentence reduction without first seeing Jimmy alive.
Now, this all got me thinking. No chance some random federal agent has the clout to go around making deals with witnesses or possible informants all willy-nilly without the presence of an attorney or prosecutor, right? What’s to keep a judge or a DA from taking one look at Stahl’s recommendation and laughing at it? I don’t know much about the justice system, Ron Pearlman from The Wire taught me enough to know that this isn’t really the way deals are cut. Again, not a big deal, just a nit to pick.
Jax takes Stahl to Teller Morrow, where Jimmy is being held, but she doesn’t just want to see him, she wants to take him into custody on terrorism charges. I’m certain Jimmy has never been more thrilled to see a bunch of United States federal agents in his life. “Sorry things didn’t work out the way you planned boys, luck o’ the Irish though, yeah?” Clay demands to know how the feds knew to come to the garage for Jimmy and Stahl couldn’t be happier to inform him that it was his VP who made a deal with the government. Jax explodes on Stahl, the guys of SAMCRO explode on Jax and, surprisingly, Gemma stands up for her son, making excuses and laying all of the blame at the feet of the feds. “You just signed my death warrant,” Jax says. “I’m sorry, but your mother was right. This could never work. There’s just no trust. I had to make sure that the prince had turned rat.” Not the best piece of dialog ever written…anyone else a little tired of people referring to Jax as a “prince”?
The episode is bookended by another well-chosen piece of music. A sad, slow version of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey My My” plays as the fellas are loaded into an ATF paddywagon, almost like a reverse mirror-image of the opening montage. Gemma is wailing while Stahl, the only one in the scene with anything to be happy about, smiles smugly as she hands the MC’s lawyer a copy of her recommendation for the reduced sentence. Even if the club only has to serve three years, Stahl knows it will be a struggle for survival if one of their members is a known snitch.
If all of the other clues weren’t enough to tip the viewers off that something off the wall was about to happen before the final credits, the scene with Unser in his office at the police station was about as effective as taking an ad out in the Yellow Pages that reads “SOMETHING CRAZY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN!” Anytime a cop leaves his badge and service weapon on the desk and retrieves his personal revolver from a drawer, you know it’s about to be on and poppin’. My love for Chief Wayne Unser is well documented, but the last sequence of events in “NS” solidified his place in my pantheon of all-time favorites.
Unser catches up to Stahl, her ATF cronies and Jimmy O on their way out of Charming and pulls them over on a stretch of deserted highway. He tells them that he received a tip that some of Jimmy’s guys are planning to ambush them up the road a few miles. Stahl takes the bait and sends her partners to investigate while she and Jimmy wait with Unser (who promises to call for backup). He doesn’t call for backup. Instead he sparks up a jay a tries to pass it to Stahl, insisting she should have some. Now, I know exactly what is going to happen, the joint just solidified it for me. Subtlety has never been SOA’s strong suit, but I am still on the edge of my seat. I am rubbing my hands together in anticipation, I am approaching vinegar strokes-level excitement at this point. Is this really going to happen?! Please let this happen. Man, I hate you, Stahl! God, I love you, Unser!
Just when I think I can’t take the tension any longer a school bus pulls onto the scene and Unser pulls his gun out on Stahl. It’s really going to happen, no turning back now! The still-free members of SAMCRO quickly file out of the bus and Chibs takes Jimmy out of the backseat of the ATF sedan while Opie points a machine gun at Stahl. The machine gun is a nice touch considering that this is the same weapon used to kill Donna (and even though Tig is the one that actually pulled the trigger, it is widely accepted at this point that Stahl is the person most responsible for her death). Giddy now, I have moved my chair to within three feet of my television. “Take care of our girls, Phillip,” says Jimmy, accepting his fate. Chibs gives him two quick slices to the cheeks to match the wounds Jimmy inflicted on him years ago and then goes for the money shot, burying two blades in the Irishman’s upper chest. For some reason my pants feel much tighter than they ought to.
With one of the show’s Big Bads dispatched, it is time to shift focus to the other. Opie makes her sit in the front seat of her cruiser and he takes up a position behind her. She knows what is coming and starts to beg for her life. (By the way, I think Ally Walker is a pretty decent actress, but she doesn’t do a very good “panicked cry”) My pants are around my ankles, I think my neighbors may have just called the police due to the strange sounds coming from my apartment. “This is what she felt,” Op says, referring to Donna, before spraying the back of Stahl’s head with bullets. YESSSS!!!!!! They did it! They actually killed Stahl! Given her status as a federal agent, combined with the fact that Ally Walker is the wife of one of FX’s big wigs or something, I always kind of assumed we would have to put up with her for the foreseeable future. But no, DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD!
After all the killing they guys find the deal Jax signed in Stahl’s car and tear it up, which I assume means that he is no longer technically considered a government “cooperator.” They clean up their tracks by punching Unser in the face (kind of like what happened with Tara and her boss after Gemma’s escape from the hospital), a classic TV trope – just punch a guy in the face, no one will ever suspect he was in on it. To seal the deal Chibs scrawls an IRA symbol on the windshield of the car in blood.
After the deed is done the prospects receive a text message confirming mission success and ride alongside the ATF paddywagon which they have been following. They honk their horns, causing the imprisoned members of SAMCRO inside to begin laughing manically. So they were all in on the plan, but since when? How long had Clay and the other guys been aware of Jax’s deal with Stahl? I rewatched the episode several times in an attempt to pinpoint the moment when Jax must have had to come clean but was frustrated to come up unsuccessful.
The episode ends with a series of letters. The prospects deliver Gemma a letter from Jax filling her in on the details of their scheme. The club voted to keep her in the dark in order to avoid making her an accessory to their crimes. He assures her that he would “never turn on my club or on my family, I’m not my father.” Meanwhile Tara is reading the stack of letters that John Teller wrote to Maureen Ashby. It is not clear whether or not Jax has read them yet, but my guess is that he has not. They would certainly make for some interesting jailhouse reading. In one letter John writes “I’m certain now that Clay and Gemma are together…you can be certain that my death will come at the hands of my wife and best friend.”
Let’s analyze this for a moment, shall we? Taken by itself, Jax’s letter to Gemma would indicate that Jax has finally moved on from his father’s manifesto and his ideas about the future of the club. Jax and Clay appear to be completely unified and there doesn’t seem like much chance that they will resume their power struggle either in prison or upon their release. If this is the case, it is a shame because, as I have said on many occasions, I found the inevitable Jax/Clay collision course to be the show’s strongest element. However, the fact that Tara (and by extension, the audience) has learned that Gemma and Clay were in fact responsible for JT’s death (props to me for predicting this in season one) has the potential to reignite the battle, should Jax ever happen to find out. The question now becomes; would discovering that Clay and Gemma killed his father, a man that Jax has seemingly written off as a coward who abandoned his club and family, be enough to send Jax to war with people he loves? Unfortunately, we will have to wait another year to find out.
Some stats and info about Sons of Anarchy, “NS”
TV SHOW – Sons of Anarchy
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 13
AIRED ON – November 30th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FX
GENRE – Drama, Crime Dramas
CREATED BY – Kurt Sutter
CAST – Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Theo Rossi, Dayton Callie, Maggie Siff, Ron Perlman, David Labrava, Jimmy Smits, Drea de Matteo
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.