"I know what you're thinking, and you're right. This show does need more me."
Apparently there's a sign up in SAMCRO HQ that says "Brains before bullets". So how come last night's episode of Sons of Anarchy seemed so senselessly violent? Is this what we can expect?
First things first: let's say you got this plotline with those two Mexican gals that were killed in the fire at the wirehouse. (The first warehouse fire in the pilot we mean; not the second.) When you got the law from two counties sniffing around, and you're worried about them tying the warehouse (which had been full of guns) to your club, it's no great position to be in. And that goes double when one of your boys -- let's say Tig, who seems to be a potentially scary dude -- might have left a little, erm, evidence of his own inside those aforementioned dead gals.
OK, that's a jam. But what we wanna know is where, exactly, does it say in the SAMCRO bylaws that the solution to this problem is to buy some bodies from a horny funeral home attendant who's got a thing for one of your club honeys so that you can fake a whole other murder across town to get the fuzz out of your hair long enough to steal the bodies of those Mexican gals and dispose of them as you please.
Hey, look at that, we just summarized like half the show in a single sentence. A single, wholly preposterous, needlessly crass sentence.
Are we beginning to rethink this whole Sons of Anarchy thing? A little. This was a pretty underwhelming second ep to a series, and one filled with too much non-gritty, non-quirky violence and a number of obvious plot complications that just kind of rose and fell out of nowhere: Tig's relationship with the dead Mexican ladies, Tara's suddenly knowing that Gemma tried to kill Wendy, Jax beating the crap out of some guy just because he cut him off in traffic. They're all developments that have something to do with character, and yet they don't really hang together all that well.
Also kind of half-baked is the story of Opie and Donna, who continue to have money problems, so much so that Opie's angling for more work in the club -- of the parole-violating sort, dum-da-dum!, that won't complicate things later on... So Donna's too proud to accept charity from Gemma. We get it, she's a toughie, and she'll have to be since he's probably got a target on his head. But maybe if there was just a hair more context for this story, like Opie having something to say about being passed over as heir to the club in favor of Jax... something to give these sadsacks some gravity! But we got nothing, so they're kind of chugging along, and we're supposed to feel bad for people we barely know who aren't going to dinner with the rest of the club? Meh.
The only satisfying plotlines this week had to do with Clay and his attempts to hold the club's finances together in the face of this whole warehouseless situation. The gun deal with the 'Niners apparently went off smoothly -- there were even celebratory muffins! -- but a few days later what first seems like business as usual -- a protection run arranged by the outgoing police chief, Unser, played by Dayton Callie (aka Charlie Udder from Deadwood) -- turns out to be a bold power play by Clay. Instead of making the protection run as promised, and keeping Chief Unser happy, Clay hands the shipment of [we don't know, we weren't paying attention] to "Uncle Jimmy" and the local mafia, making a percentage of the profits -- and putting Chief Unser in his place. Kind of an awesome move, but for some reason it had less screentime than Jax's corpse/booty snatching. We can't help but say: The Sopranos would have given this storyline serious play. We'd have been on that "protection run" so much we'd be picking insects from our teeth at home.
So hey, SoA, as our hero would say: You're on notice. Take it slow, ditch the Tarantino-esque, well, anything, and more Clay. If he's our Uncle Junior or Al Swearingen, we gotta get inside his head more. Ron Perlman can handle whatever you throw at him and besides, Clay might have much to teach us. Anybody who can make a little scratch and keep their local in-the-pocket-lawman from retiring in the same move belongs on The Apprentice!
