Anyone who follows this show realized Jax would escape the compromising situation he’d unknowingly walked right into, that Damon Pope’s (Harold Perrineau) request to Leroy’s replacement wouldn’t go forward as expected. It’s not that I’m taking issue with, but the way it was handled. This was all to relay to Jax and the club that Pope controls who lives and dies? Convenient. Then he lets Tig live, killing his daughter instead? Again, convenient.
Admittedly, it makes sense that he would want to visit upon Tig the same suffering he experienced when Tig murdered his daughter, but in a series filled with them, the bait-and-switches are getting old. It didn’t help that Tig’s reaction to his daughter being burned alive felt unbelievably fake, even by “soap-opera” standards.
Still, flawed though it remains, Sons of Anarchy will always have its moments, and the season opener was no exception. In spite of its problems, it was a consistently entertaining hour of television, thanks in small part to the welcome return of that trademark Sons of Anarchy humor. “Who would attack your auto parts truck?” asks the sheriff. “Angry pirates,” quips Happy, a man of few, funny words.
On top of that, the episode adds fresh faces to the ranks. The new members, brought in from the disbanded Nomad charter, are expendables, bound to die in the pursuit of satisfying the viewers’ insatiable need for blood and carnage. Pope and Nero Padilla (Jimmy Smits), though, prove to make this season interesting, at the very least, with Pope’s cold, calculated manner vaguely reminiscent of the great Gus Fring from Breaking Bad and Nero a charming wild-card that looks to be an important piece of the puzzle, him now housing Jax and Chibs who, along with Tig, are wanted for murder by the police.
I only hope that extricating Jax from his newly taken position doesn’t result in the writers putting a temporary stopper on what is without a doubt the season’s most interesting storyline, which is how Jax and Opie will contend with having to let the murderer of their respective fathers live, or in them focusing too much on the new faces in favor of the old.
This is the last chance I’m giving you and Sons of Anarchy, Sutter, so don’t blow it.
