The Best & Worst Things About "Sons Of Anarchy" Season Four

When Sons Of Anarchy returned for its fourth season this past September, it had a lot riding on it. The FX series had previously finished a somewhat experimental year that uprooted most of its main characters from their usual Charming, California, setting and placed them in Northern Ireland, right smack in the middle of an overreaching IRA conflict that the Sons themselves didn't have much to do with; a good portion of the audience, as evidenced by critics and fans alike, wished they'd stayed home.

But creator Kurt Sutter promised that this year would refocus the story on the motorcycle club's internal drama, so we went in with high hopes. And, we're happy to say (after last night's season finale), Sutter has proven to be a man of his word. In addition to bringing SAMCRO back home, the show's creative team kicked the Hamlet themes into overdrive, and long-brewing tensions spilled over to create one of the year's most suspenseful seasons across all channels.

While it may or may not be on Season Two's instant classic level, Sons Of Anarchy Season Four was definitely great, though a few glaring missteps prevented it from being truly exceptional. Put on your helmets as we break it all down.

What a year it's been for Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman). After a little jail time and the impending threat of old age and arthritis (if you can't ride, you can't lead), his inner bastard was unleashed. We finally got to meet the man who's always been capable of killing his best friend and president, Piney (William Lucking), whether he realized it or not. His relentless thirst to go out with as much money as he could effectively soured the club, getting the rest of the MC caught up in the dangerous world of drug cartels.

Clay's desperation contrasted with Gemma's (Katey Sagal) increasing empathy and made for some great drama when he decided to take a more direct approach to silencing Tara (Maggie Siff) and Piney's knowledge of how he gained the presidency. Even though he made it through the season alive (a letdown, for sure, considering how reprehensible his actions were), he now has his wife, Opie (Ryan Hurst), Tara, Unser (Dayton Callie), and, most importantly, newly appointed president Jax (Charlie Hunnam), against him. We can't wait to see how the resilient bastard tries to maneuever his way back into the head seat.

Things can get seriously dire on this show, and this season was the darkest yet. Amidst all of the cartel wars, suicide attempts, fratricide, domestic violence and career-killing injuries, a little levity is always welcome. Most of the laughs came from Chuckie (Michael Marisi Ornstein), the two-fingered perv who hangs around the clubhouse like a willing lapdog. Of course, funny on this show involves cops unknowingly eating stew that's been marinated with severed Mexican head. Trust us, it was hilarious.

Theo Rossi, who plays Juice, has always been a welcome part of the cast, and it's a shame that Sutter and his writers couldn't find space for Juice-centric arcs amdist all the baby-nabbing and white supremacist antagonizing in past seasons. But while Juice's shine this year was well deserved, it wasn't so well conveyed. Don't get us wrong, by the back half of the season Juice's snitch woes were aptly used to set up some great drama that Rossi sold the hell out of, not to mention it gave us the wonderfully tense episode "With An X" that culminated in a dude getting shot in the face—six times.

But, firstly, the MC black-and-white rules weren't explained thoroughly; in the show, that is; Sutter actually lays it out better on hs blog but viewers shouldn't have to go there to understand. The undeveloped racial guidelines left us confused about why Juice's black father is such a big deal. We didn't quite buy, A, Juice's willingness to believe the feds only wanted the cartel and not SAMCRO, and, B, that the club would really kill him or boot him over his race technicality.

After all, as Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) pointed out, the birth certificate says "Hispanic." Now snitching, on the other hand, is a surefire way to catch a bullet. Aside from Clay, Juice is definitely the character who benefits the most from the Galindo-CIA fallout; otherwise, he'd be a goner, whether stuck in jail or marked for death by SAMCRO.

If there's anyone who deserves to murder Clay as much as Jax does, it's Opie, who can now pin the loss of both his wife and his father on the selfish old bastard. It's easy to understand how he'd be quick to assign all the blame to the late, great Agent Stahl instead of turning against the club's ruthless president, but the murder of Piney was the straw that broke the lumberjack's back.

After years of watching Ope be a supportive best friend to Jax, while sucking it up and sitting at a table with his wife's murderers, it was as cathartic for us as it was for him to see Opie cut loose, say fuck all to the table, and go for Clay's neck. When Clay described Opie's wife's murder as "ancient history" we were practically cheering for Ope to gun him down.

Now that Galindo and the CIA are making Jax keep Clay alive (secretly), once can hope that Ope takes his offered position as Jax's VP and steers the MC back in the right direction. But he's lost so much that we'd also understand if he didn't.

It's always rewarding when you get to the halfway point of an SOA season and all of the many, many subplots dovetail and crash down on our [anti] heroes heads like dominoes. Most of the time, this series represents long-form plotting at its absolute best. Every once and awhile, however, there are too many severed heads in the stew. Did we really need Wendy (Drea De Matteo) to show up while the Teller family was already imploding good enough on its own? Couldn't Mayor Hale (Jeff Kober) and his land development be saved for next season? Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the new sheriff (Rockmund Dunbar) and his wife can't have babies.

OK, hear us out. As far as MacGuffin's go, the letters are fine. We can totally buy that the same man who wrote two copies of a manifesto about the club would also write emo letters to his Irish side-piece that implicated his wife and friend in his murder beyond a reasonable doubt. But, really, Gemma can just go in there and remove specific ones that also implicate herself and Unser? Just how detailed were these letters? And if John Teller knew so much about the conspiracy to kill him, how did they ever pull it off?

Katey Sagal, who also happens to be Kurt Sutter's wife, is basically the show's centerpiece, and she always delivers. Her fiercely loyal yet twisted dedication to family and the Lady MacBethian way in which she quietly influences the club are still as entertaining to watch as ever. This season saw Gemma telling different versions of the truth to five different characters per episode, and while her agendas were shady, Sagal's brilliance was quite clear. Listen up, Emmy voters: It's time to recognize.

We'd also be remiss if we didn't salute the rest of the cast, though, specifically Charlie Hunnam and Maggie Siff. Sagal may steal the show, but she's got extrememly talented people surrounding her at all times.

This is the minorest of quibbles, but, a season with one fake-out, character's-life-in-the-balance cliffhanger ending is acceptable; two, however, is pushing it. If we had to choose, Clay getting shot worked fine, but if Juice's tree branch snapped in the same episode, as opposed to the following week's opening, the moment still would've been just as powerful.

"Hands" was the season's best episode, not to mention one of the series' all-time best. For a season that featured many a shootout and the occasional rocket launcher and land mine, "Hands" was light on the action but quietly cemented Sons Of Anarchy amongst the ranks of the TV's top-tier dramas. We saw what life would be like away from Charming and the MC for the Teller family, even as the audience was aware of Clay's vicious machinations to have Tara killed.

While his "kill Tara" attempt failed, it wasn't without damage, as the episode gets its title from the injury Tara sustains that will permanently hinder the one claim to life away from the Sons that she had. Meanwhile, Jax's friendship with Opie takes a major blow and Clay's relationship with Gemma, built on lies, deceit, and murder, implodes in ugly, yet powerfully staged, domestic violence.

One of the major casualties of last season's far-reaching Belfast arc was that it turned down the flames on a lot of simmering tension within the club. This season, however, all of those conflicts hit their long-awaited boiling points, and we couldn't have been more satisfied. Whether it was Jax/Clay, Clay/Piney, Jax/Opie, Clay/Opie, or Bobby/Otto, the show's most toxic relationships all disintegrated.

As Season Four displayed, Sons Of Anarchy is at its best when the primary drama comes from within the club. The events of the season finale promise to shake-up the status quo and keep things fresh, while still focusing on the core characters. And, unlike Jax, we couldn't be happier to see that the action will stay firmly rooted in Charming.

With each passing episode this season, things became so apocalyptic that Sutter's announcement of three more Sons seasons felt more and more impossible. We hate to admit that we were worried he would drop the ball and deliver a finale that managed to maintain the status quo instead of making good on promised conflicts.

And, for the most part, that's what we got. The out-of-nowhere, all-too-convenient twist that "To Be, Act 2" started with set in motion a finale that saw SAMCRO caught up in an ongoing CIA—yes, the CIA—plot to support the Galindo-IRA deal for the greater good. But the IRA, long portrayed as stubborn fidgety types, will only deal with Clay, the devil they know. So now we have a scenario where Clay has to stay alive. After all Clay's done this year, it's rather anti-climactic to keep him alive; think about how ballsy it'd be to wipe off one of your biggest names and most important characters, just like that.

For now, Jax has to stay in Charming to protect the club and the secret and everyone makes it out alive—but not without the trials, tribulations, and truths of the past few months weighing on his mind. Hunnam's intense, superb acting guarantees that next season's Jax-above-Clay storyline will be riveting, but, still, it feels wrong that Clay's breathing in the first place. Sutter knows what he's doing, though, so here's to Season Five finding ways to make us change our tune.