Paul Risker reviews Sons of Anarchy season 6…
Five seasons down, two to go. With an impressive consistency to date, the approach to the penultimate season of Sons of Anarchy is lined with a mix of anticipation and trepidation. Few shows have sustained the level of consistency that has been nurtured by Kurt Sutter across his episodic crime and familial drama. So inevitably one’s natural inclination is to adopt a nervous trepidation as we enter the penultimate season.
Not uncommon in the current climate of slow burn television drama, of which Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and True Detective immediately spring to mind, SOA builds slowly. Unlike these other shows which build slowly, the sixth season of SOA is a little more hasty as we find ourselves immersed in yet more high drama that Sutter continually brings back to the boil after returning to a simmer.
Perhaps the appeal of such a show as SOA is a subversion of our moral inclinations, as once again we are in the conflicted predicament of sympathising and even supporting SAMCRO and their associates, as the law in its desperate need for justice sheds its idealism. This is with a stark honesty that adds to the compelling conflict at the heart of such drama, and the morality of the spectatorial experience.
From the outset of the inaugural season, Sutter established SOA as an escape story functioning on numerous levels – the relationship between a father and his son, the relationship between mothers and their children, and the loyalty of blood and life brothers that in the sixth season comes to a head with the expressed idea of owning one’s life, and first and foremost for Jax (Charlie Hunnam) being a father and a husband.
The penultimate season finds Jax within touching distance of his so far unattainable dream – SAMCRO extricated from the gun running business with the Irish Kings. But as is Sutter’s habitual tendency, he weaves a complex web of manipulation and negotiation, which sees events collide and lo and behold threaten to re-shape SAMCRO’S future in alternative ways.
This tangled web is not exclusive to the business side of the story, and as the familial machinations play out, Tara (Maggie Siff) begins her descent to her darkest and most daring depths to ensure the liberation of her sons from the care of SOA’s Lady McBeth, and true antagonistic centre – mother and grandmother Gemma Teller (Katey Sagal).
In this crime and familial story just who is the spider and who is the fly? It is difficult to look past the characters as playing the part of the fly caught in the spiders web. Even Kurt Sutter brilliantly places himself as both predator and prey – simultaneously incarcerated former SAMCRO member Otto and creator or rather weaver of this tangled web.
Sutter allows the story lines to fizzle out; of one story line to grow out of another to evolve in ways which we may not expect, and to perhaps even get what we expect but not how we expect it. Of course all of this comes as a consequence of SOA’s habitual manipulative negotiations. For Sutter characters are manoeuvred on the chess board with the most intriguing of moves behind which lies an uncertain strategy, where a characters presence or survival is never guaranteed. Out of all of this chaos Sutter weaves a dramatic tale of one man’s attempt to save himself and his club, and the powerful bond that ties a man to a woman.
It quickly puts asunder any trepidation as it builds to an uncertain conclusion that recalls the second season cliff-hanger, which fuelled an urgent need to witness the next series of events. If the penultimate season is greeted with anticipation and trepidation, then these two opposing forces will be escalated as the opening images of the seventh season grace our screens.
It seems Sutter has a plan – a destination which he his motoring towards. Despite a sense of an ongoing nervous trepidation, the ending will almost certainly work for the story, with the only question or concern being whether we will like the ending we have been hurtling towards unknown?
Paul Risker is a critic and writer for a number of on-line and print publications, including Little White Lies, Film International, Starburst Magazine, and VideoScope. He is currently based in the United Kingdom.
Originally published September 8, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
