This week’s Sons of Anarchy kicked things down a notch.  Which is perfectly acceptable considering this entire season has been going full speed and everybody needed a breather.  Especially Jax.  He decided that he needed to step back from Tara and take some time to evaluate his life.  This kind of stuff is good, it’s what attracted me to Sons of Anarchy in the first place.  Jax’s angsty search for the meaning of life.  Ultimately while I was hoping to see Jax go apeshit on Tara, I’m glad he didn’t.  Even though he may be cheating he still gets to claim a moral high ground.  Even though he doesn’t have that really, does he?  He’s still the same guy that’s murdered in cold blood and oversaw a gun distribution operation that indirectly resulted in a school shooting.  BUT, he’s the protagonist of our story, the main character.  So his wife trying to fuck him over makes her our enemy.  Besides she did cross a line that even an old badass biker lady would never cross.  Faking a pregnancy and miscarriage.

So the ending to last week’s episode was a bit of misleading drama, as Tara never did anything with the gun she was holding in the chair with the baby.  She’s still carrying around the gun, though, and becoming increasingly desperate.  She alienates everybody she talks to in this episode, her nurse friend, Gemma, Wendy, Juice.  Juice is assigned watchdog duty to make sure Tara doesn’t try to do anything with Jax’s kids and Tara nearly runs him over.  She finally visits the DA to take the deal turning in Jax and the Sons in exchange for protection for her and her kids, only to find out that the deal’s off the table.  Tara is reaching her lowest point and she knows it.

Jax isn’t doing too much better, but he’s a little better.  He apologizes to his mother and Nero, which is something I needed to see personally.  He then is caught by Tara fucking the head prostitute chick at his brothel, which is awkward.  I also found it weird when Gemma asked, “How long has he been dipping into that?”.  You really want to know about your son’s sexcapades, Gem?  Even more awkward is the meeting Jax sets up with Gaalan and his potential investors in the gun business.  The investor also invites the Chinese to participate so as they’re competing for his business.  This backfires when psycho Gaalan opens fire on the Chinese, killing at least one.  The Sons at the meeting, despite not knowing what was going to transpire, know that they’ll be blamed for the shooting.  And blamed they are, as the Chinese open fire on them as they’re driving down the road. Luckily for the Sons, the Chinese can’t hit a single bike despite having a clear line of fire and automatic weapons. They eventually have the Sons dead to rights somewhere off road, and Jax agrees to give Gaalan to the Chinese as payback.  I’m assuming that since he’s already promised Gaalan to the DA for immunity, the Chinese might be unfortunate bystanders in the bust.  Anyhow, the Chinese take Happy as collateral, which isn’t too bad as near the end we see him having a great time eating Chinese and watching cartoons with his captors. Jax ends the episode working on his father’s bike, a nice symbol of him working on his life.

Meanwhile Clay’s trial got moved up, which complicates the break-out the Irish had planned for him.  So now Gaalan is forcing Samcro to help break out Clay, which Jax is worried could end up in a pile of dead cops.  Clay sees Gemma in prison, and gives her his financial assets.  He gives her everything in a surprisingly selfless move to somebody that fucked him over hard.  Maybe Clay is reforming.  Then my personal favorite element of the episode was the arc between Nero and Unser.  The two are charged with checking in on Wendy.  Nero continues to be the most charming fellow in Charming, and even grumpy Unser can’t resist.  I appreciate in shows like this when they take two characters who, while both likeable,  would normally not associate.  They end the episode as friends, and it made me smile.

A slower episode, but still great.  I love the simplicity of this season as well.  Sons out of guns, Tara out of Charming.  I mean, it’s more complicated than that, but there’s not too much else you need to follow.  Unlike previous seasons where there’d be all kinds of land deals, local politics, RICO cases clouding the main storyline, this season is right to the point.  Love it.  Four and a half stars out of five.