What’s On Tonight: ‘Sons,’ Son

I watch So You Think You Can Dance. It’s a good show. And Cat Deeley is probably the best reality host on TV. Of all the various talent competition shows, I’d put it third behind Top Chef and Project Runway.

I have to say, if watching sweaty nubile half-naked young men and women cavorting about a stage for your pleasure doesn’t interest you, I may have to withdraw my offer to include you as an extra when The Caligula Protocol* begins filming.

*Original working title: “The Queen’s Dog Boy.” The story has changed somewhat.

All Jeff Ross has is balls, and they probably burn.

Sons was wow…holy shit. A few things I found interesting:

*******SPOILER**********

1.) Clay: What. The. Fuck. I pity him, but at the same time he’s a bigger piece of shit now than he’s ever been.

2.) I predicted before the season that this will end up as sort of a Vic/Shane with Jax and Opie going at it. Jax ultimately ending up being the bad guy because he can’t decide which part of his life to let get die: the club, Tara and his kids, or Gemma. He can’t save all three, maybe he can’t even save two of three. He’ll try to save everyone but become irredeemable somehow, my guess is that he’ll end up killing Opie because he’ll get in the way of a deal to get the Sons out of trouble with Rico or go after Gemma or Tara, possibly all three. It certainly looked like things might head that way. Yes, I know, double waffling. That being said, the fact he completely shut Jax out and viewed him as a man that betrayed him, despite the best intentions from Jax, and he’s lost quite a bit to the club already. My guess is that he loses everything (well just his kids now) and he takes it out on the club.

3.) Racism/Jax’s new enemy: Pope is absolutely cold, he’s like Clay Davis crossed with Marlo Stanfield, and his body guard whose name I missed is like Chris Partlow levels of cold and intimidating. Already a perfectly loathsome creature, both him and the body guard. They managed the one thing I never thought possible, they’re making me root for Tig. Tig was always the character you were okay with dying. Not because he was a bad dude or anything, but he killed Donna, on accident, and he was hopelessly devoted to Clay. He turned around to be more of a benign presence, but he wasn’t Chibs, Juice, Opie, Bobby Elvis, or Big Otto. He was at the low end of the totem pole for me. Now after Pope had Dawn killed, fair retaliation, but still man…cold blooded. Tig volunteered to die instead of his daughter, but Pope said no. Now I want to see Tig brutally murder both Pope and the bodyguard. It seems odd that most of the truly despicable villans in FX’s shows are black. Claudette was ultimately a good person, but everyone hated her. Kavanaugh was a character that inspired a ton of hate, and now there’s Pope. I’d have to look more into this, but the worst bad guys on FX’s two network crowns all seem to be black. Yes, I know Zobelle was an asshole that we all wanted to see die (I even was glad when his daughter was killed) and Lt. Roosevelt is awesome too, and I guess Juice is technically black too…but still seems a bit odd considering that most of their protagonists are angsty or angry white guys.

4.) The Cartel: The ultimate looming question is how Jax will leverage the Cartel into killing Pope. That’s clearly what’s going to happen, right? I’m not sure if Jax is this cerebral, but that seems to be what will most likely happen? Pope is a well connected ruthless business man that’s extremely guarded. He’s like Zobel and Hale all rolled into one. Jax better go Heisenberg on them, or Sutter could decide to make Jax go on his irredeemable streak like The Shield did with Vic and turn the audience against him.

5.) Gemma: So…Gemma sucks, she’s not quite Marie or Winona, but she is awful. We might start seeing true tension between Gemma and Jax with the Tara/kids situation and the Nero situation. Will Jax care that his mom’s blowing some weird scarred latin Pimp? Will he realize that neither Tara or Gemma are in any condition to care for his kids? (which isn’t to say that he is) Or will his mom continue to mindfuck him?

6.) Summing up: Sons of Anarchy isn’t truly great television, nor does it inspire to be truly great TV. It’s probably the best show that falls just short of that truly great TV category. It’s not Boardwalk, The Wire, Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones…nor does it try to be. However, it’s still addictive as fuck, and it’s a perfect gateway for people who watch bad TV to start watching good TV. Sutter said seven seasons, and I’m unsure what this means for the rest of the program or the story lines or how he’ll advance Jax but I don’t think we can expect Breaking Bad level movements.

7.) Left overs: What’s up with Unser? A break in from amputees? Seriously? Does anyone notice that for a “guys show” that there’s way too much man ass? Not much was alluded too, but how’s Bobby Elvis going to handle the fact the Feds broke him out and Jax is working with the CIA? He’s VP, so that may play into it for a bit…but there still needs to be more with that arc. Juice? How are him and Roosevelt going to get along now? Where’s Potter? Has anyone noticed that Chibs seems criminally underused in the show? He was a huge piece in Season 3 but him and his wife would be great additions for bigger lines. Nomad’s getting patched in…nice. Wonder who will take Lem’s role. Finally I was glad to see that fat guy got patched in. I can’t imagine that he’ll be anything more than worthless and probably be more of a liability than anything.