Following this week’s episode of Sons of Anarchy, I was left with more of a feeling of uncertainty than usual. Each member of the main cast has gone down a path with an end point that neither we nor them will know until they reach it.
Jax seems destined to become Clay, the man he’s trying so desperately to bring down. Everyone is a pawn to him. Gemma, Juice, Tig, Chibs. He’s been poisoned by the seat and gavel, showing that it will turn anyone, no matter how well-meaning, into an unrecognizable monster.
Because though they may call this a club, in reality it’s something much more sinister. They are the threats to Charming, the town they call their own, the one they believe that they benefit in some fashion. Sooner or later, they’re all either going to have to realize that or the club will disintegrate along with all of its members, giving this modern-day re-imagining of Hamlet an ending even Shakespeare would approve of, that being one where everyone dies.
The chances of that ever happening, though? Next to nil. Jax has spoken of adopting a take-the-money-and-run approach, leaving the club and Charming as soon as he had the funds to make his exit strategy a reality, yet his position as president delays that indefinitely. Then the rest? They just follow his lead, the club more or less all they have, like with Juice. So it looks as if the club is set to ride until the wheels fall off.
Speaking of Juice, one has to wonder if Jax’s promise to him will hold. Just this episode, he reneged on one of his promises, Chibs killing one of the men who murdered Opie in prison. On the other hand, though, Sutter enjoys stringing characters along long past their expiration dates. He already did it with Juice on multiple occasions last season and again this week when Juice was intercepted by the Sheriff’s men before Jax could get to him. What’s to stop him from playing this game for the rest of the series with Juice? Absolutely nothing.
Likewise, Clay’s received the same treatment from Sutter, to the point that even Death has begun to look at its watch impatiently, wondering when he’ll finally get what’s been coming to him since the series first started. This week, Clay himself seemed to have grown weary with living, or at least with living the life he has up till now.
He now knows that, unless he negotiates something with the feds, his time is about up. Yet, as always, he wants things his way. That no longer includes him at the head of the table, apparently, as he’s resistant to their offer of out with the new, Jax, and in with the old, him. Has he been humbled? Did having to give his bike up to the prospect drive home that he’s in no condition to be president of SAMCRO?
It would seem that way based on his interactions with Juice and Gemma. Earlier this season, he was feigning being a wounded man by clinging to his oxygen tank longer than he needed to. Now he really is one, pleading to Juice to watch his back and to Gemma to not make him have to lose her again.
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