As if shaking off a series of body-blows, Sons of Anarchy commenced its new season on Tuesday night with deliberation — in a fugue state, almost.
The story picked up where last season left off. Gemma is in the wind, on the lam from a murder-rap frame-up; she doesn’t even know the crucial fact that Jax’s baby son, Abel, had been kidnapped. That kidnapping is now the primary motivation of the new season. Almost the entire SAMCRO crew has been marshaled to help Jax locate the child. (We saw that the child is safe, but far from Jax, in the possession of Cameron.)
As this week’s hour began, Jax and Clay spent some time trying to figure out where they go from here. Another show might have felt the necessity to start things off with a bang, a big action scene, to remind viewers of SOA‘s roots in a violence that can be thrilling to watch, but show creator Kurt Sutter is more subtle and stubborn than that. He knows that giving the audience what it thinks it wants is sometimes the easy way out, and the audience, as much as the show itself, has to earn its pleasure. Sound like work? Turn the channel, is the implied answer.
Given how upset Jax is, it’s agreed that SAMCRO must put aside other immediate business and concentrate on the danger to the baby. (Oh, how some of us wanted someone in the club to hop a plane to Budapest and plug Adam Arkin’s great, creepy Ethan Zobelle, but alas, it is not to be.) Sons of Anarchy never forgets its title, however — even as he wants to placate and genuinely help Jax, Clay has other problems: The running of the club’s various businesses; the safety of his wife. The anarchy of the life Clay has created for SAMCRO used to mean freedom; now that freedom has become a trap. This tension is what gives the series its underlying power.
Gemma reunited with her father, played by Hal Holbrook. Stricken with an early stage of dementia, Gemma’s dad is both poignant and a handful, a difficult, complicated man -– you can see where Gemma gets her stubborn, independent streak, and Sagal and Holbrook played their scenes together beautifully.
For me, the trickiest — and ultimately, most accomplished — moment of the hour was when Jax told Tara to, in effect, get lost for a while. His impulse to shield her from further danger was understandable, but Tara is the one character whose connection to SAMCRO is the most tenuous, high school sweethearts or not. After all, she’s a surgeon who’s basically sacrificing her career with every week she continues to spend with Jax and the club. She has to have a very strong reason to stay with Jax and with a group of people whom a sensible outsider such as herself must occasionally view with, to put it mildly, great dismay. So for Jax to tell her at this point, “You don’t belong here” — that’s taking a risk by which this relationship will be mightily strained.
I can’t imagine what anyone coming upon SOA for the first time might make of the series’ complex hierarchies of social system and moral priorities. Committing to Sons of Anarchy is like undergoing a hazing and coming through it a true believer. I’m believing, feeling, the show — I just hope it can maintain the headlong narrative momentum it had last season, even as it scatters some of its crucial characters into the wind.
Did you watch the season premiere of Sons of Anarchy? What did you think?
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OMG! Not much else to say!
You can’t begrudge the writers for not making the Sons as “crazy” as the Sopranos. They are limited by the censorship the FX network restricts them to. I’m sure you have noticed that Sons features less graphic violence and absolutely no F words. You can’t really blame the writers when they arent allowed to make the Sons as crazy as The Sopranos.
First of all, who’s funeral were they at? Second, who got shot at the end? Watched on my computer and I could not tell.
It was Half-Sack’s funeral. It was a random kid and the fingerless accountant that were shot.
Try watching it with your eyes open you muppet!
i hated the premiere it sucked. WTF….half sack and deputy hale? i AM PISSED AT KURT SUTTER. i am the biggest soa fan ever. by far the biggest fan of this show. i am pissed!
Half Sack was written out at his request. Feel free to get pissed at the actor, not Sutter for that one.
Half Sac wanted to be written of, and that was the best way to do it. If you watched the end of Season 2 it shows he was stabbed which more than likely is going to be a death, so this should not be a shock to you. They kill of the actor or actress when they want out, to make them go out with recognition, instead of just quitting. And that happening to Hale was one of the greatest things that has ever happened on this show.
No, you’re not really are you.
I think this season started off perfectly. Just enough to remind you why you got hooked on the show in the first place. I’ll definitely keep watching. Killing off secondary characters (lets face it, aside from a few semi-key scenes, half-sack and hale are hardly important to the show) shouldn’t be a reason to get upset. If all the characters were always around, it’d be a bit disappointing.
You gotta cut Sutter a break. The guy who played Half Sack wanted to leave the show. I’m not sure why Hale was killed off but it was out of nowhere. I’m not sure that was his fault either. If so shame on him, I’d have loved to see Hale slowly become Unser over the years.
I think the season started off great. I am a huge fan and I wasn’t disappointed at all. I hope it keeps getting better.
I was also hoping to see Hale grow over the years, but I trust Sutter implicitly, more than any other showrunner. Whatever the reason, I’m sure he has it all planned.
The actors that portrayed Half-Sac and Hale both wanted to leave the show.
hale!
i was so sad. i liked that guy and he was killed so suddenly and brutally. anyway, great premiere. totally ready for another entertaining, hardcore, awesome season. also, how amazing is the music on the show? usually all these dark shows have barely anything playing, but the songs they play in this show and when they play them are amazing and totally make scenes (like today’s ending) even better.
the music really is amazing, and they always get the timing right with it too.
It’s called editing. LOL
haha!
I thought it was great as well! We had a viewing party and everyone was shocked and left wanting more! I can’t wait for next week!
Do we know for sure Hale was killed?
I’m thinking that getting his head run over by the van would kill him; but that’s just me.
hey you never know it’s t.v…he could just have some serious head trauma lol
Me too!
Did you miss the brains being spread across the ground?
OMG!!!
thats all i have to say, the season premiere was amazing, this season looks like its going to throw everything we thought we knew upside down. Who is going to be sheriff now? How are they going to handle the club? Gemma and Abel are still off on their own…
Wow, it looks great so far. The scenes with Jax i thought were especially powerful.
I’m with you. I was blown away and loved the premiere. OMG! I can’t believe I didn’t wake the kids when Hale was run over I yelled so loud. I couldn’t help it. I never saw that coming and I’ll miss Hale but it should be good for the story. I love this show!!
i don’t think it was as amazing as season 2, but premieres are just set-up episodes anyway. the ending was shocking and the beginning with gemma/clay’s phone call made me tear up, but other than that, i thought the premiere was a little underwhelming. not a whole lot happened — i didn’t want a whole hour of shoot ‘em up action but i wanted more advancement in the kidnapping plot than we actually got. eh, no matter, it’ll turn out to be a good season in the end and that’s all i care about.
oh, and i LOVED the scenes with gemma and her dad. beautiful to watch.
I was initially very surprised at Hale’s death: I had thought that he would be playing a big role this season, with his brother running for Mayor and Unser tied down with his age and the weight of his association with SAMCRO. Cutting him out of the picture like that seemed to be creating an unnecessary problem for the sake of shock value.
Now, however, I approve of the creative decision because the more that I think about it, the more I realize that his arc had essentially run its course. Hale might have assumed the role of uneasy ally to Jax last season, but he was never going to truly embrace the club like Unser has. At the same time, his potential as an antagonist was less than inspiring – his strict morals forbid him from becoming someone who could ever truly compete with SAMCRO on their own dark and treacherous turf. To my mind, the producers couldn’t move him much further to one side or another without completely reinventing his character, and so I’m glad that he gets an exit that reaffirms who he truly was: a good man willing to stare down the forces beyond his capacity to fully stop for the sake of the town he had sworn to protect. In that respect, I think he and the Sons had more in common than they ever realized.
I was actually looking for Tayler Sheridan’s name in the opening credits last night, thinking that perhaps he, like Dayton Callie, might have become a series regular this season. Guess it’s pretty obvious now why that wasn’t the case. Hale’s apparent death last night was sudden and unexpected. Like you, Jared, I was surprised at this choice. Thinking back on the pilot, we saw Hale drawing his line in the sand with Jax (“I will not look away”), and his gradual recognition, beginning with Donna’s shooting and continuing through last season with the havoc brought to Charming by Zobelle and Weston, that right and wrong are not black and white constants, but continually shifting shades of grey. I found Hale’s uneasy alliance with the club – and Jax in particular – one of the most interesting developments during Season 2. Hale’s universe of law and order has been constantly tested; while Unser’s collusion with the club has been a continuous source of frustration for him, Hale has come to realize that sometimes it’s the law that is on the wrong side of the equation (Stahl’s arrogance and recklessness led to Donna’s shooting, the FBI intervened to protect Zobelle). One of the best moments of the Season 2 finale was Hale’s casual dismissal of Zobelle’s pleas to rescue him from the convenience store in which he’d been trapped by SAMCRO. I’ve found Hale’s gradual evolution from hardassed deputy to troubled lawman compelling. If this is the end of the story for Hale – and it certainly appears that’s the case – I couldn’t agree more with your closing comments, Jared. I will miss Hale’s role as a counterbalance to the club’s brashness. Tayler Sheridan did a brilliant job as the sometimes anti-hero of this show, and I wish him continued success after SoA.
If you think about it, Hale being killed off as a hero was a smart thing to do. Unser having to move on due to health will bring in a new Cheif from the outside that will more than likely want to shut down SAMCRO
I definitely agree with you, Jared…Hale as a character had basically fulfilled all he could without being modified beyond the point of recognition. Sending him out as Sutter did was spot on.
I feel like the episode was perfectly titled, “so”. That’s exactly how I felt at the end of the episode. There was nothing in the episode to draw me in, things happened–we saw Gemas dad, Tara/jax broke up and got back together, samcro chased some guys, people got shot; the episode ended and I didn’t give it another thought. I didn’t want more bang just more time with the characters I came to be interested in. And maybe something to draw me in.
Aren’t you interested to know who organized the drive-by?
My hunch is that it’s the IRA, organized by Cameron over in Belfast. Yeah, he got away with kidnapping Abel, but he’s not done getting revenge on SAMCRO yet. And if was the IRA, that’ll give Jax & Co. reason to travel to Ireland for payback (and I believe it’s been established that this season will partially take place in Belfast).
I totally think it was Hale’s brother. He has a reason to want SOA out of public favor. Organizing a drive by at the funeral where they were all rallied was a perfect place to do it. Now he is set up to be a nuisances to the club in Charming, while they deal with all the Irish drama.
Same thought crossed my mind. Who organized that? That crazy woman who is out to destroy SAMCRO.
I agree with Katerhater, I think its the IRA, possibly to avenge the Irish Kids death? However, Jessica may be onto something, re: Hale’s brother
The guy who fell out of the van looked like a Mayan from a previous episode.
Doubt it’s the IRA. In the finale SOA were back to gunrunning with the IRA again and the last the IRA knew, both Cameron and his son were rats.
Yeah, I say it’s not the IRA. I would say Hale’s brother running for election and him trying to get rid of the Sons could be a major plot this season
Def Mayans
The pacing of this show is brilliant. It never moves too fast, or too slow. If you want that watch network lame ass tv
that was worth waiting for! kudos to the cast and kurt! who were the costars? especially the guy that looks like nick nolte with dark hair?
Do you mean Jeff Kober? He plays Hale’s brother who was in a deal with Zobel last season and is now running for mayor. Looks like he might get more of a role this year.
Also, is that a hint that Kenny Johnson might be joining the cast now that Saving Grace is done? Awe. Some.
Love Jeff Kober! He was terrific as Daedalus in “Kindred: the Embraced.”
Lem? I couldn’t believe the last 2 minutes. Glad I tuned in. Seeing Kenny Johnson just made me miss The Shield again, still in mourning.
great music, heavy seeing a child shot! I think we get lost in the aloha for the club and forget that they are all killers and innocent people are harmed. Kurt Sutter is amazing please keep working.