“Na Triobloidi”
December 1st, 2009
In the world of motorcycle clubs, elegance is a luxury. In the complexity of running guns and internal politics, there’s no way for one to easily chart their way through life as if it was all planned out ahead of time: situations change, and people are forced to make tough decisions and follow a path that could be inherently dangerous. The same club that offers some semblance of stability is the same club that may eventually lead to your death, a cruel irony that is at the heart of Sons of Anarchy’s mythology in the form of John Teller, a man who hated what the club had become and yet was too dependent on the club to abandon it entirely. The men and women who are part of the Sons of Anarchy are trapped in a world that can turn at any moment, and where the unpredictability is a constant threat against their livelihood.
The central conflict of this second season was the fact that, for the League of American Nationalists, everything is sheer elegance in its simplicity. Ethan Zobelle is a character who challenged the sons with elegance, as everything seemed to go completely according to plan. The show set him up as a master of manipulation, and he lived up to this reputation by crafting elaborate schemes that feasted on the unorganized and divided Sons at every turn. There were times in the season where the show went too far, painting Zobelle as a mastermind more than a character, but the purpose was clear: the elegance of Zobelle was the stimulus necessary to focus on how the Sons were ill-equipped to handle a threat in their current state, and his continued action inspired the Sons to band together in order to look past their differences and see the common enemy.
The problem with “Na Triobloidi” is that it feels entirely inelegant, to the point where the escalation present in the episode feels completely out of control. The driving forces behind the action in the episode range from spiritual belief to intense grief, from bitter revenge to self-preservation, and yet none of it feels as satisfying as it should, or more problematically as satisfying as earlier episodes in the season.
I’m not suggesting that the chaos which dominates this finale isn’t exciting, nor am I suggesting that it is in any way a blight on the season. However, it’s a finale that takes one too many leaps of logic in favour of escalating tension as opposed to demonstrating character, crafting situations which will likely become compelling in the long run but here feel manufactured in a way which goes against those elements which elevated the season to new heights.
Cultural Learnings 