Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
This week’s episode of Sons of Anarchy, “Laying Pipe”, was a regrouping of sorts, a chance for the characters (and the audience) to say a final goodbye to a beloved character, and time for Jax to weigh his options and make a move to turn the club in a new direction.
Losing Opie was a turning point for the show, as well as Jax. We saw how his best friend’s death affected him last week with his dealings with Pope and this week we got to see the more focused Jax push through his agenda with SAMCRO and move toward getting into business with Nero. The new business with Nero was a natural progression, they have been laying the groundwork for it since Nero and Jax first met. I am looking forward to more interaction with these two, especially considering that one of Jax’s stipulations was that Nero quit seeing Gemma. Jimmy Smits has been a fantastic as a love interest for Gemma and a potential mentor for Jax. As Nero said, “Let’s see where this goes.”
If Ashley Tisdale was looking for a way to distance herself from the Disney Channel, she picked a good project with Sons of Anarchy. Her guest arc as a prostitute who was beaten up by Gemma and ended up on the back of Jax’s bike while being chased by gang members was pretty far from High School Musical. The standoff between Jax and Chibs and the gang members was classic Sons of Anarchy with Jax thinking on his feet to get out of a jam. I especially liked his quiet apology at the end to the lady hiding in the house with her kids.
Seriously dude, my mom is trouble.
With Jax splitting Nero and Gemma up, things are only likely to get more tense between mother and son, and they were already plenty tense in this episode. Katey Sagal and Charlie Hunnam were great, as always, in portraying the complicated relationship between mother and son. Although Jax was dismissive with Gemma at Nero’s, the more shocking thing was that he didn’t tell her about Opie, leaving her to find out from Clay.
Tara’s journey so far this season has been a bit separate from the rest of the storylines, and that distance was exacerbated when Jax lied to her about crashing his bike. Whether the lie will turn out to be an important point in their relationship or just a blip remains to be seen, but Tara certainly had a strong reaction when Gemma told her the real reason Jax crashed. Always the opportunist, Gemma saw her chance and manipulated Tara right into that fight with Carla. Something tells me that with her ability to “outwit, outplay, outlast”, Gemma would be an excellent contestant on Survivor. The only question is whether the other players would survive long enough to be voted off. As for Tara, the fight was a reminder that although she is in a different world than SAMCRO much of the time, she is at her core able to live the life.
The goodbye to Opie was terribly sad, starting with Lyla’s despair at finding herself a single mom responsible for three kids instead of just one. Interestingly, Jax pointed out that SAMCRO was her family if she needed anything, although Opie’s life with SAMCRO was what got him killed in the first place. Sagal was heartbreaking in her reaction to finding out about Opie, as was Hunnam in his quiet withdrawal to the rooftop. Opie’s death last week was devastating, and the wake in this episode left us on a sad note once again.
Source : ign[dot]com
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