Sons of Anarchy Season 5, Episode 2: “Authority Vested“
Written by Kurt Sutter
Directed by Peter Weller
Airs Tuesdays at 10pm (ET) on FX
If last week‘s episode kicked right into high gear, with shoot-outs, gruesome murders, and threats posed from all sides, this week’s episode plays out in neutral, with the storyline idling to build up the approaching drama. It’s more talk, less action, a mixture that‘s not the common set-up for this usually fast paced show, yet a welcome change, giving some characters a little more play time instead of the constant rain of bullets flying through the air.
So Jax and Tara finally tied the knot, with surprising little hassle – putting aside Gemma‘s short guilt trip on the happy couple that‘s resolved with the passing on of her and J.T.’s wedding bands. It’s a wedding right up to SOA’s standards of romance, with Jax and Tara saying their “I Do”s at the brothel, surrounded by the inner circle (of course excluding Clay) plus an extra set of lady escorts and the saviour of the day, pimp Nero Padilla. While much less exuberant than Opie and Lyla’s ceremony last season, making someone an honest woman in style at a whorehouse is true to the heart of the show, making the strangest of ends meet.
While the long-awaited official union of those two is great to watch, the really exciting new bond is that of Padilla and Jax, who share an intimate moment in the car, exchanging the ups and downs of each other‘s business branches. To dot that freshly written i, the two bond over some shared history, as both take care of sons born with birth defects due to their junkie mothers. Though seriously heart-warming in a way, the greatest thing about these scenes is the subtle humour. This chit-chat over girls and guns has the two addressing the topics with pure banality, as if discussing the lunch special of the day.
It seems that for the first time, Jax has found a rather `positive´ father-figure, alive and breathing, not talking in diary form from the grave (J.T.) or slowly revealed as the murderer of the former, someone that might get the club out of the heat of running guns. But let‘s not get ahead of ourselves- Padillo already seems to be too good to be true and as Jax, for now, is stuck behind bars and bricks, the club‘s future is slowly moving back into reach of Clay‘s hands. Clay once again, under the cover of claiming to be `half-dead´, convinces Opie that it is necessary to back Jax, who then in return can‘t wait to punch out Debuty Sheriff Eli Roosevelt and get arrested alongside of Jax, Tig, and Chips. Even though this move plays right into Clay‘s hand, locking the resistance amongst his ranks behind bars, it is a glorious moment of SAMCRO loyalty, not to mention that it‘s always fun to see Opie launching out like that.
So besides half the crew back in prison (a scenario that‘s doubtful to last very long), it should be interesting to see how the last minute CIA subplot finally resolves (one can hope); how the boys deal with newly surfaced villain Pope‘s reach to the inside should make for some brutal times in the pound and Pope, who gets considerable little time, is still making the most of it. Sutter might just have found a potentially better Darby, pursuing his vendetta fuelled by grief over his daughter. Sadly, this also means he probably won‘t get more than a season to do so, but none the less, we should be in for more of Harold Perrineau‘s low key performance, creating more of a chill than the usual retaliation patterns that have previously run the action of the show. Let‘s keep up the hope that he will be a foe that sticks it out.
The attacks on SAMCRO houses, however, are left to wonder about; with last week‘s ending, with Unser getting knocked out while checking up on Gemma, we‘ve got a subplot on our hands that‘s very much in the dark, bringing the inner detective in Unser out to shine. And while this storyline does still feel a little shaky (maybe because it’s been kept under the radar), it’s intriguing to find out what threat the documents inside Clay’s and Gemma’s safe could pose and how all of this will be tied in as the season goes along. Anyone have ideas or thoughts on what kind of papers or proof that safe might hold? What were your favourite moments that I skipped over?
Merle Fischer