TV Review: Sons of Anarchy 7×05 – “Some Strange Eruption”

As we saw last week, things are heating up in this final season of Sons of Anarchy, and they are heating up quickly. Tonight’s episode showed Jax’s reaction to Lin’s retaliation on the club that resulted in the massacre at the end of last week’s episode. The list of people who have died so far this season is a long one, and last week’s episode added close to twenty people to that list. This time, however, the body count consisted mostly of Jax’s own people.

“Some Strange Eruption” begins right where we left off last week, with Jax and the rest of the club taking in the carnage of the massacre at Diosa. Dead bodies take up most of the room as Jax sits on the couch looking at all of the death that he’s caused. You can clearly see that he is planning what his next move will be. In the meantime, though, the cops must be called, and when Jarry arrives (having just left Chib’s), she tells Jax that she needs some type of cooperation from him. In this episode, we see SAMCRO’s president’s elaborate plans for revenge coming completely undone. He has people pulling at him from all sides (Jarry, Nero, August, Lin) and he’s beginning to realize that he’s going to have to improvise.

Lin’s plan to get to Jax takes him to Nero. Lin threatens Nero and his family in order to get Nero to bring him Jax. I’ve felt pretty bad for Nero so far this season. Not only is he dating Gemma, the crazy daughter-in-law killer, but he has Jax lying and keeping him in the dark about all of the awful stuff that’s been going down. He hasn’t even realized all of the crap that the club has gotten him involved in until he sees what’s happened at Diosa. These are his girls that have been killed, and it’s all because of Jax’s actions. After meeting with Lin, Nero goes to Jax demanding an explanation (I loved seeing Nero punch Jax!) and he finally gets one. Jax lets him in on what’s going on and why they’ve been going up against the Chinese. As much as Nero loves Gemma, I feel like at this point he must regret ever getting involved in any of this, right? Later in the episode, it looks as if Nero may finally be betraying the Sons in order to save himself. Of course, Nero’s attachment to the club and to Gemma is too strong and it isn’t Jax he betrays, but Lin.

After being set up by Nero, Lin finds himself trapped at the hands of Jax Teller. It isn’t quite what Jax had imagined his plan for Lin to be, but as Jax says, he’s had to improvise. Just as Jax starts in on Lin, however, Chibs finds out that the police and SWAT are on their way. Jax gets a few minutes of fighting with Lin before it has to be broken up and the club has to leave. In that short period of time Jax tells Lin that he knows that he had Tara killed. Lin is, of course, confused, because as we all know, he didn’t have Tara killed. I think this may be the turning point in the season that will lead to Jax finding out who Tara’s true killer is. Now that Lin knows why Jax has been retaliating against him, maybe he will find a way to prove that he wasn’t involved in Tara’s death.

I was happy with this week’s episode because I felt that the main plot was the most interesting that it has been so far this season. We aren’t watching Jax make plans and carry them out in a slow build-up any more. We are watching him react and we are finally seeing some emotion from him, even if just a little. When he was fighting Lin and talking about Tara, we saw him as more of a person instead of the calculated killer he’s been most of this season. We saw him losing it when he was pulled away and realized he wouldn’t be getting his revenge just yet.  I think Jax is deeply broken and I think he’s finally starting to show it. As president of the club he will never truly be able to break down, but he doesn’t have to keep it all hidden either.

It seems like every week we get a look at how the life his Daddy leads is affecting poor Able. And each week it seems to be getting worse. This week, as everyone around him mourns what happened at Diosa, Able is all too aware that more people have died just like Mommy did not that long ago. Jax talks to Able, who asks if he takes care of all of these people. Jax responds by telling Able that it’s his job to take care of them all. It doesn’t happen now, and it may not for a long time, but I wonder when Able is going to ask his Daddy why he wasn’t able to take care of Mommy.

Later in the episode, we see more of how his surroundings are affecting him, when Gemma and Wendy find Able standing guard in front of Baby Thomas’s stroller with a hammer. Able tells Gemma, “I’m not gonna let anybody hurt him. I take care of him.” When Gemma assures him that no one is going to hurt Thomas, Able replies, “People always get hurt.” This is what life as the son of the president of SAMCRO has taught Able so far. People always get hurt. It’s a sad thing for a five-year-old to believe, but unfortunately in his case it is true.

And finally there’s Juice. Though he appears a bit more sane this episode, he is still most certainly losing it. He kills an innocent Asian man because he thinks he’s a part of the Chinese who have found him. Gemma, who was packing a gun last episode in what looked like part of her plan to “take care of Juice,” finally goes through with her plan to take him far away from Charming. After seeing what Juice did to the innocent man who worked at the hotel, she packs him into the car and begins driving him away, leaving Unser to clean up the mess. Juice realizes what Gemma is up to and he stops her before she can kill him. I don’t think there’s anything at this point that Juice can do to redeem himself. I’ve still got a small sliver of hope left for him, but a bigger part of me is beginning to want to see Juice dead too.

After this episode of Sons of Anarchy, I’m very curious to see what happens next. There are a lot of things that I can see coming, but I don’t really know anything for sure anymore. What is Jax going to do now that his plan for Lin was foiled? How about August? By now he must be furious with Jax, but what will happen next with him? I am sure that in the next few episodes Jax is finally going to begin getting hints that Lin is not responsible for Tara’s death, and I wonder what will happen after that? Also, I’ve got this gut feeling that something is going to happen to poor Chibs, who’s finally got a girlfriend it seems, that I hope is wrong. There are so many ways this could go on from here, and I can’t wait to see how everything turns out.

The Final Season of Sons of Anarchy airs Tuesdays at 10|9 c on FX.

All photos courtesy of FX.