Episode Title: “Straw”
Writer: Kurt Sutter
Director: Paris Barclay
Previously on “Sons of Anarchy”:
Episode 5.13 “J’ai Obtenu Cette”
During the summer, the FX hype machine basically said “you’ll never guess the shocking twist in the season premiere of ‘Sons of Anarchy!’” Anytime the words “shocking twist” are used to describe a TV drama, it’s almost always comes down to a school shooting.
Although “prison rape” was my second guess…
But it’s the school shooting that’s going to overshadow an otherwise solid premiere. That was probably by design.
There are full spoilers ahead for “Straw,” so skip this review if you missed last night’s “Sons of Anarchy” season premiere or else Tig will drown someone in a tub of urine. Wait… is that too specific?
The school shooting at the end of the season premiere was my least favorite thing in the episode that included the aforementioned prison rape and Lee Toric (Donal Logue) humping a mirror while naked and high. Not that I enjoyed those aspects either, but at least they fit the tone of the show.
Potentially, the fallout from the school shooting could be interesting, but in this episode I didn’t like it because it felt exploitive and forced. This storyline came so out of left field that Kurt Sutter had to create a new character to hang it on. In interviews that went live after this episode aired, Sutter said that he always wanted to do this storyline, but if that’s true then he should have seeded this a long time ago. Imagine how dramatic it would have been if the shooter had been one of the children of SAMCRO, or if it was someone we had seen before this episode.
Instead, the shooter is only tangentially connected to SAMCRO as the son of a woman who is dating one of the guys in Nero’s (Jimmy Smits) crew. Neither of those characters appear to be central to this show, nor did this episode go out of its way to introduce them by name. The shooter appeared sporadically throughout the episode, but it wasn’t as effective as Sutter was probably hoping it would be.
Take a moment to think about Sutter, the man who created this series and appears as Big Otto Delaney. I can only assume that Sutter has depicted Otto crying while masturbating, Otto getting his eyes nearly gouged out and Otto biting his tongue off because that’s what Sutter wanted to play. In “Straw,” Sutter increases Otto’s suffering by adding a morning prison rape to his routine, courtesy of Lee Toric.
Toric was one of the more intriguing adversaries to come out of the previous season, but the show is really starting to strain credibility with his pull inside the prison. Toric’s murdered sister worked inside the prison, so I can see the guards and personnel allowing him to pursue his vendetta against Otto. But who empowered Toric to offer deals with Tara (Maggie Siff) and Clay (Ron Perlman)? By his own admission, Toric is retired from the U.S. Marshal service, so he should have no authority, especially outside of the prison.
The opening minutes of the episode dealt with SAMCRO avenging Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli) after she was brutalized by torture porn producers. Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) and SAMCRO rode out to Stockton with Nero and his crew to get some retribution from the men who abused Lyla, but they end up surrounded by cops.
That was a nice swerve that introduced the audience to Charles Barosky (Peter Weller), an ex-cop who has the local PD in his pocket. Barosky is not what we might call a good man, but he’s sympathetic enough with Lyla’s plight that he kicks the torture porn producers out and he gets into business discussions with Jax and Nero. Although I believe that Jax’s interest in working with Barosky probably smoothed things over in their favor.
Nero was visibly unhappy that Jax jumped at the chance for expansion without consulting him. Nero even blew off the meeting with their potential partner, Colette (Kim Dickens) to spend time with his kid. Getting Smits for another season was a smart move. Nero is one of the more complex characters on this series and he still has the relative moral high ground. Nero is fully back into his gang life, but his facial expressions convey his dissatisfaction with it. Nero also looked unhappy when Gemma (Katey Sagal) gave his son a water gun as a gift. Nero will probably be even less pleased when he figures out where the shooter received his gun.
Amazingly, Nero makes Gemma tolerable. But when Nero isn’t around, Gemma’s back to her Old Lady ways as she threatens the club’s lawyer, Ally Lowen (Robin Weigert) for telling Jax that Tara believes that Gemma turned her into the cops. Despite Gemma’s denial and Toric’s hand in it, I still think that Gemma was likely the one who tipped off the police. The outcome was too favorable for her. With Tara out of the picture, Gemma’s relationship with her son and grandsons was restored and she was once again the “Queen” of SAMCRO.
Gemma played up her “Queen” status when Jean Carlos “Juice” Ortiz (Theo Rossi) rolled back into town, but she didn’t help Juice when the new Vice President of SAMCRO, Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) beat the crap out of him. Juice took the beating as his penance for betraying the club and he earned yet another reprieve when Jax pardoned him in exchange for helping him frame Clay.
Inside prison, there is no penance for Clay. Faced with the prospect of his imminent murder in the general population, Clay didn’t even wait until the door closed before telling the guard that he wanted to take Toric’s deal. Meanwhile, Tara refused to let Jax see her, but she used her SAMCRO lessons to beat up a woman who attempted to intimidate her. Tara also refused to give up her husband to Toric even though she’s facing a few years in prison.
Keeping Jax and Tara apart made some of their conflict seem artificial and it was probably an excuse to get Jax in bed with Colette. It’s worth noting that Colette first expressed interest in Nero before turning her attention to Jax. I believe that Colette was simply looking to seal the deal with one of them to get the upper hand in any partnership. Jax was weak, but what do you expect from the guy that nearly slept with his younger half sister before he knew who she was? Jax was a cheater even before he was married. This is just Jax backsliding into bad behavior.
Meanwhile, Bobby Muson (Mark Boone Junior) appears to be estranged from Jax and the club over what happened with Clay, but it’s not clear what Bobby is doing by himself. However, Bobby’s marks on a map suggest that he has something in mind.
Tig (Kim Coates) had his own subplot as the anger and grief over the loss of his daughter led him to drowning one of the torture porn producers in a tub of piss before urinating on the man’s corpse and sending his body to the bottom of the harbor in a metal cage. That’s the problem with Tig, he never thinks these things through. The entire war with Damon Pope started because Tig retaliated against a presumed attack and he killed Pope’s daughter. The new leader of Pope’s empire, August Marks (Billy Brown) still wants Tig dead, but this plot feels like a rehash of last season’s story.
There are more than enough plotlines in play to keep things compelling this season. The big question I have is whether the school shooting angle will be worth the trouble. I do trust Sutter’s storytelling skills, even if I have to wonder about his judgment.
