Tag Archives: Charming

September 21, 2010 · 9:59 pm

Sons of Anarchy – “Caregiver”

“Caregiver”

September 21st, 2010

The Sons of Anarchy have positioned themselves as a morally complex guardian angel for the people of Charming, but that image can only last for so long – in the wake of an event like a shootout where an innocent child and an authority figure are gunned down outside a church, two questions emerge. First, how could SAMCRO let this happen; and, second, was this SAMCRO’s fault?

These are questions that, in the past, remained largely within the club: the series was, after all, about the internal conflict between Jax and Clay, specifically the former’s struggle to reconcile the current club with his father’s vision, so the external side of things wasn’t particularly important. However, with political forces swirling and legal troubles surfacing and resurfacing, SAMCRO is facing an uncertain future for reasons that go beyond their internal volatility.

“Caregiver” is another strong entry for the show’s third season, and one which nicely captures the difficult position of taking care of someone who runs off without notice, or turns coat with little to no notice.

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Tagged as Analysis, Bachman, Caregiver, Charming, Cherry, Clay, Entertainment, Episode 3, FX, Gemma, Hal Holbrook, Ireland, Jax, Katey Sagal, Maureen, Nate, Opie, Piney, Review, Robin Weigert, SAMCRO, Season 3, Stephen King, Taryn Manning, Television, TV

September 14, 2010 · 9:59 pm

Sons of Anarchy – “Oiled”

“Oiled”

September 14th, 2010

“I’m afraid the 21st Century has come to Charming”

Nothing has really changed within SAMCRO as Sons of Anarchy enters its third season: there’s little discord amongst the group, and even though Gemma’s on the run and Abel’s a hostage of sorts in Ireland there is still the sense that the club itself is as solid as it’s ever been in the wake of last season’s tragedies.

However, the problem is that the world around them is no longer bowing down to their power: as Hale’s elder brother Jacob, trying to leverage his brother’s death into a successul mayoral run, notes in “Oiled,” the sort of old-school notion of law which the Sons held over Charming is no longer effective. We saw the wheels starting to come off the train last season, but there was a sense that it was SAMCRO’s lack of cohesion that led to their struggles. And yet, even when Gemma’s rape united Jax and Clay, and Opie got over his wife’s passing, things still unraveled in the finale, and things continued to unravel last week when mysterious gunmen killed Hale and threatened the safety of Charming.

“Oiled” is certainly a more methodical hour of television compared to last week’s premiere, as the sense of urgency which we expected to take hold during last week’s hour is replaced by a more functional effort to properly interpret the situation at hand. And yet, as the club tries to piece things together, their enemies are either committed to a more dangerous course of action or are already at work obfuscating reality in an effort to throw SAMCRO off the trail.

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Sons of Anarchy – “Culling”

“Culling”

November 24th, 2009

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve checked in on Sons of Anarchy, primarily because I’ve run out of superlative things to say about the show. Right now, the show is riding a wave of momentum that feels almost Wire-esque, relying less on twists or turns (which would perhaps illicit more of an immediate desire to write about it) and more on a clear depiction of SAMCRO accomplishing what they want to accomplish in the form of some really compelling asskickery.

“Culling” is the first time in a few episodes where things, you could argue, go wrong, but what’s most intriguing is how uniquely situated the audience is within this story from a traditional law and order perspective. Because our point of view lies with the Sons, who are in this for vengeance over justice, we root against the ATF and become legitimately concerned when the Charming P.D. enter into the equation. The show has us cheering things that television doesn’t necessarily always condition us to cheer, and it makes for an episode that builds tension not by having things go terribly wrong but rather having the definition of justice become a debatable topic on which different characters have very different perspectives.

It’s the complicated web the show has been spinning with shocking clarity all season, and it’s making for an enormously entertaining march to the finale.

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Sons of Anarchy – “Falx Celebri”

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“Falx Celebri”

October 13th, 2009

When I fall behind on a particular show, chances are that it’s not intentional. I don’t “decide” to not get around to watching the most recent episodes of Dexter before the DVR goes kaput, it just sort of happens in the midst of catching up with everything else I didn’t get to post-vacation. With Sons of Anarchy, this is equally true: after simply not getting around to the season’s fourth episode, the fifth was a casualty of the vacation and it was only last night that I caught up with the adventures of SAMCRO.

And they have been adventures this season, one that has been the very definition of rollicking. It’s the season where storylines never sleep: while it and Mad Men are at the top of the serialized drama food chain right now, their approaches this season could not be further apart. While Mad Men likes to isolate its stories on a particular set of characters, the very point of Sons of Anarchy’s second season is that you can’t escape the coming storm, and that no one (not Tara, not Gemma, not Hale) is capable of standing on the sidelines and avoiding the fray. Rather than trying to depict a slow and tragic fall, the season has never shied from the fact that Zobell is not kidding around, and that the Sons are in some serious trouble.

Some general thoughts on the last few episodes and more detailed thoughts on “Falx Celebri” after the jump.

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Tagged as Charming, Clay, Entertainment, Episode 6, Falx Celebri, FX, Gemma, Jail, Jax, Katey Sagal, Kurt Sutter, League of American Nationalists, Maggie Siff, Opie, Otto, Review, Season 2, Tara, Television, TV, Zobell