Kurt Sutter has been a familiar name to fans of television and FX for a number of years, and the channel wasted no time in bringing Sutter back onboard after the end Sons of Anarchy, giving a series order greenlight to his new series, The Bastard Executioner.
Putting aside all of the violence (which packs no punch), torture (which has gone too far yet again), and killing (which has no motivation behind it) for just a minute, this week’s episode of Sons of Anarchy tries to do some interesting things with its characters for maybe the first time all season. It doesn’t always pan out, but that is a result of not committing fully rather than refusing to take the time to try something different. After weeks of dropping breadcrumbs in regards to Abel’s mental state and the club’s effect on him, there is finally a definitive incident that proves Abel’s surroundings are turning him into an indiscriminately violent and angry person, just like his father. Of course, Sons doesn’t have the restraint to discuss raising a child in this environment with any sort of tact. So instead of Wendy and Jax having a one-on-one conversation about him attacking another child with a metal lunchbox (he’s resourceful, too!), Abel gets turned into an approximation of devil spawn at the kitchen table.
Sons of Anarchy just broke its own record for erasing any and all good will shortly after amassing it. Episodes two and three of this season are examples of how to properly build up excitement and suspense for the story to come, and here the show ruins all of that hard work in a matter of minutes. Once again, after multiple examples across the history of the show, an entertaining episode filled with well-executed character building and excitement is undermined by the unnecessary and senseless killing of female characters.
…these actors were fantastic talents caught in a rut of a tragic show – tragic not just in the Greek, dramatic tragic sense, which this series certainly exemplifies, but tragic in how misused many of these superb elements have been lately.
One of the more interesting discussions that’s been going on between TV critics this year – now that Breaking Bad has finished and Mad Men is slowly on its way out – has revolved around darkness of tone and how unrelenting it can be in a series to the point where it’s a problem. We’ve seen plenty of new, dark shows carve a niche for themselves without being too oppressive with their content. Sons of Anarchy, though, is one of those shows in which I often feel like I’m being pounded in the face with pessimism.
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 11 – “Aon Rud Persanta” Written by Chris Collins and Kurt Sutter Directed by Peter Weller Airs Tuesday nights at 10 on FX Nero calls it the Godfather dilemma: the more you try to distance yourself, the closer you get sucked in. Tara is extremely familiar with this concept …
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 10 – “Huang Wu” Written by Kurt Sutter and Charles Murray Directed by Billy Gierhart Airs Tuesday nights at 10 on FX Oftentimes, a TV series unintentionally develops a weak link in its cast. If any of you are viewers of The Walking Dead, too, you could easily point out …
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 9 – “John 8:32” Written by Kem Nunn and Kurt Sutter Directed by Guy Ferland Airs Tuesday nights at 10 on FX After finally managing to craft something kind of interesting out of Tara’s fake pregnancy plot last week, Sons of Anarchy is beginning to make the exponential climb to …
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 8 – “Los Fantasmas” Written by Roberto Patino and Kurt Sutter Directed by Peter Weller Airs Tuesday nights at 10 on FX All season long, we’ve been following a pretty lackluster B-plot in Sons of Anarchy focusing on Tara and her subversive plans to get her kids out of the crossfire …
The emotional core of “Sweet and Vaded” comes from a rather unpredictable place. After seeing Walton Goggins return to the role of Venus in last week’s episode, there didn’t seem like there was going to be much a of a follow-up to his appearance. And while “Sweet and Faded” doesn’t exactly revolve around Venus’ story, it is certainly the heart of the episode.
With TV series that are as relentlessly dark as Sons of Anarchy, an episode like “Salvage” should feel out of place and awkward. It’s not that it’s happy or anything (there’s still plenty of fighting and scheming going on); but this episode isn’t oppressive. And a lot of series really beat you over the head with that oppressiveness until it feels like there’s little point in sticking around if there’s no enjoyment in it. If “Salvage” is out of place, though, it’s anything else but awkward. Completely immersed in a mythology of brotherhood, “Salvage” brings Sons of Anarchy back to its foundational concerns: how does this family overcome its obstacles? Specifically, how does it overcome its obstacles as a family.
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 5 – “The Mad King” Written by Chris Collins, Roberto Patino & Kurt Sutter Directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton Airs Tuesday nights at 10pm ET on FX So, after last week’s Sons of Anarchy, we didn’t quite get a sense of what was going to happen with Roosevelt’s investigation into Nero. …
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 4 – “Wolfsangel” Written by Kurt Sutter and Kem Nunn Directed by Billy Gierhart Airs Tuesdays at 10pm ET on FX If there was a feeling of dread and death hovering around the Sons of Anarchy characters in last week’s episode, the reckoning of that came to fulfillment in last …
A couple of seasons ago, Sons of Anarchy closed an episode with Juice jumping from a tree with a chain noose around his neck. As the SoA logo entered the screen, the sound of the tree branch snapping could be heard, removing the cliffhanger of Juice’s fate. When the curtain shuts on “Poenitentia,” we don’t actually see Tig get killed by Pope’s men. “Poenitentia” feels like a major death episode as it plays, echoing Opie’s prison death through Clay’s scenes (Opie’s death was in the third episode from last season).
Sons of Anarchy, Season 6: Episode 2 – “One One Six” Written by Chris Collins & Adria Lang Directed by Peter Weller Airs Tuesdays at 10pm ET on FX FX has pretty much let Kurt Sutter have his way with Sons of Anarchy. Even when disregarding how combative the series is with non-premium cable content (Sons is …
While Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter tends to favor the music montage sequence for beginnings and/or ends of episodes, this season six premiere – “Straw,” which may also be the penultimate season premiere for this series, since it is only planned to run through seven seasons – opens with a montage set to Jax’s narration as he reads from a journal entry he is writing for his sons.
Sons of Anarchy Season 5, Episode 1: “Sovereign“ Written by Kurt Sutter Directed by Paris Barclay Airs Tuesdays at 10pm ET on FX Jax (Charlie Hunnam) is at the gavel, vendettas are all around SAMCRO, the Niners are under the cold, hard reign of promising new villain Damon Pope (Harold Perrineau), and there’s a new …
Sons of Anarchy, Season 4 Recap Created by Kurt Sutter Airs on FX If getting out was that easy, this would simply be a different show; so while highly predictable, this season‘s ending brought the Shakespearean step-father-son relationship finally to the peak season one had already laid out: Jax stepping up to the gavel. Hopefully …