Sons of Anarchy

[vagus]

Finale was a joke until the last 5 min.

Spoiler: show

When the door opened, i thought it was Ope. As he's about to slam the hammer, i'm like FUCK YEAH, Ope. Boy was I disappointed

. Suns go out so quickly, but i guess we'll see what happens next season. Where will happen to Clay? Where is Ope? WTF is this Cartel crap come from?

[Dmitry]

I think it was really cheap because they weren't renewed for the 5th season til close to the end, right? I feel like they had two different endings, a glorious one where shit goes down badly, and this one, where the show will continue. I just want to know what's going to happen since they're basically covered by the CIA now? Unless the cartel and the Irish cut them out somehow, but I doubt that.

[imveryemo]

just like season five of dexter...buildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildu pbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildup buildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildupbuildup. ..DISAPPOINTMENT. i'll be watching next season but shit, god, damn it.

[Zetanio]

I watched it again today. I can honestly say they should have ended the show instead of this wishy washy crap. I'll be back because everyone except Jax is so compelling. Especially Ope. That dude is the Viking king.

[Doombear]

Yeah I rewatched it myself. I just can't help but think back to the announcement of them adding the extra episode(s):

"Creatively, this has been [the show's] best and biggest season ever ... [Series creator] Kurt [Sutter] asked us to consider adding an extra episode to fully close this current chapter of the ['Sons'] saga. By adding the extra episode, it wraps up a magnificent season in extraordinary fashion. This is a real bonus for fans of the series.”

Laughable now isn't it? What a bonus. I feel like the extra episode was the worst possible tacked on bullshit ever. They added an extra episode to do all that?! I really don't understand. The shitty thing is I will HAVE to see what next season does, with the shake up being so big potentially and the possibility existing for gears and focus to shift drastically. But who knows, I would half expect for next season to end with another 'lol just kidding, Clay is back, it was all a dream/CIA/coverup/oopsie!' twist...

[Zetanio]

My motivation is that they have to kill Clay and I need to see it. I want it to be horrific.

[Fiddle Sticks]

My motivation is that they have to kill Clay and I need to see it. I want it to be horrific.

It doesn't look like you're going to get your wish for a couple more years...

Spoiler: show

http://www.tvline.com/2011/12/sons-o...nale-spoilers/

Phew. Sons of Anarchy concluded what has arguably been its finest season (take note, Emmy!) with an edge-of-your seat, twist-filled, game-altering hour that tied up a number of loose ends and planted just enough seeds to keep viewers pumped for Season 5. In the following Q&A, the show’s passionate, outspoken creator, Kurt Sutter, weighs in on the finale’s biggest question marks and reveals what’s in store when the show returns next year.

TVLINE | Was it always your plan to have Clay survive the season?
Yeah. The character of Clay was essential to me for at least a couple more seasons. There’s so much more dramatic ground to cover with Jax at the head of that table and Clay now almost the Piney character in that he’s weakened and stripped of some of his previous weight and power. To me, that’s a really interesting dynamic. And quite honestly, I didn’t want to waste the power of Jax having that knowledge and passion and knowing about the deceit that happened and the secret that’s been kept from him for all these years with just one episode of him killing Clay. Because then it’s done. He’s avenged his father’s death and it’s almost like that storyline kind of burns out, and I just feel there’s a lot more story to tell there. I equate it to a little bit of what we did on The Shield. When Vic found out that Shane was responsible for killing Lem, we played out a whole season with those two guys knowing that. It was so much fun to have those two guys [harbor] intense hatred and and yet they had to suit up every day and go to work together. That’s just really fun fertile ground for story.

TVLINE | The Tara-Gemma dynamic was forever altered, too. They’re essentially becoming the same person. Moving forward, what is the one thing that prevents Tara from truly becoming like Gemma?
That was always the idea to have Gemma kind of bring Tara close and ultimately create her own little Frankenstein there. Look, I don’t think we’re going to waste the arc that we built with Tara this season. Meaning, she’s not going to go back to the, “Am I in or am I out?” Tara that we’ve seen previously. But clearly Tara is not Gemma… Tara gives Jax that syringe and says, “This is how you [kill Clay].” Well if it was Gemma, she would have already done it, so there’s still an element of Tara that’s somewhat removed. I don’t thing Tara would actually be able to go up to Clay and put a bullet in his head or put the syringe in the tube. Is Tara really capable of becoming Gemma? And what happens if she’s put in a position where she has to make that ultimate sacrifice for her family and her club? Is she going to be capable of going that dark? So I do think they’re definitely some struggles with Tara yet to play out.

TVLINE | Tara and Clay now have something in common, in that they both know that Gemma is concealing the truth about her role in JT’s death from Jax.…
Right.

Sons of Anarchy Spoiler Alert: Look Who’s Returning in Season 5

TVLINE | I have to imagine that that’s going to be a big story for next season.
I think so. It’s interesting — people have been asking me what’s going to happen with Clay and Gemma, and I’m not quite sure yet. I just know that they will always be intrinsically connected because of the secrets and the lies that they have together. And that’s an example of one. It’s why when Gemma sees Clay alive at the end [of the finale], that’s just a really bad thing for her. That’s a really big, dangerous loose end. So that will be something that we will definitely play with next season. And for Tara, that definitely gives her some leverage over Gemma. There are definitely still some loose ends from those letters — even though we see Gemma burning them. The physical evidence is missing, but Tara has enough weight with Jax that if she told him the truth, even without seeing the letters I think he would believe Tara. Perhaps Jax might not believe Clay, but I definitely think he would believe Tara. So I do believe there is some danger there even though she’s destroyed the evidence firsthand.

TVLINE | Is it safe to assume that the crime boss father of Leroy’s dead girlfriend will be a huge character next season?
Yeah. In terms of the level of participation, that always remains to be seen. But I definitely wanted to lay some track for Season 5 and put some complications already on Jax’s shoulder as he’s sitting at the head of the table. He’s already got a problem [going into Season 5].

TVLINE | Is it possible that we’ve seen the last of Opie for now?
I don’t think so. It was never my intention to suggest that he is away. To me, it was just too convenient and too soon for Opie to suddenly come back to that table with Jax. So much has happened to him and he’s such a thoughtful guy. I just think he’s the kind of guy that’s going to [need] a minute to put all this stuff in order in his head. And we’ll probably build some kind of story around that before he’s able to actually come back and be [at Jax's side]. So that was just [a matter of] protecting the character and then to give me some story play for next season as well.

TVLINE | Given the pressing nature of the Irish deal, will Season 5 pick up almost instantly?
Fairly close. Obviously, there’s not going to be the huge break we did between Seasons 3 and 4. But I’ll try to [build in] a little time, maybe a month or so.

For Sons of Anarchy Scoop and Spoilers 24/7 Follow Ausiello on Twitter via @MichaelAusiello

TVLINE | Where do you stand on setting an end date to the show?
I’ve had a conversation with [FX president] John Landgraf and I look at [doing] potentially seven seasons. And, honestly, that’s really just coming from the model of the show and knowing that usually by Season 6 and 7 the above-the-line costs start to get pretty high and the show sort of loses profitability and it’s really difficult to continue to [produce] beyond that point. So my thought was that if I could get seven seasons, I’d definitely have stories to tell and a way to end it. So ideally, I’d love to be able to get another three seasons.

[Fiddle Sticks]

Spoiler: show

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ng-finale.html

For much of this season, it has felt like The End was coming on Sons of Anarchy. Betrayal upon betrayal. An attempted suicide. Another attempted murder. A murder. It’s the stuff of series endings: the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original completely turning on itself, marching toward a tragic finish.

Turns out, it was all creator and executive producer Kurt Sutter’s wicked Hamlet-inspired plan to turn his fictional Charming, Calif., upside down and create a new paradigm that he hopes will grant him three more seasons of work, but reboots the plot of FX’s biggest hit in an exciting way for the fans of the show. A chapter has definitely closed on SAMCRO as the fourth season drew to a close Tuesday night and Jackson (Charlie Hunnam) fiddled with the president’s patch in his hand. But one thing was clear: there’s a lot of life left in Charming.

(If you haven’t watched the season finale, you should stop reading now. John Teller said so in his letters.)

Jackson Teller, the new president. It’s what a lot of viewers want—to see Jax at the head of the table, the seat vacated by his idealist late father. From the start, Sons of Anarchy has been built around Jax questioning who he is and, more important, who he wants to be. The season opened with SAMCRO’s release from prison, after a 14-month stint, and Jax’s resolve to leave the club and move away with Tara (Maggie Siff) and their two young sons.

But a lot happened in 14 episodes, and Jackson is now stuck trying to save his reeling club from going back to prison and keeping Clay’s (Ron Perlman) numerous dirty secrets, including that he murdered club cofounder Piney (William Lucking) and tried to murder Tara to keep them both from disclosing that Clay murdered Jax’s father, J.T., in 1993. Who didn’t sniffle, at least a little, when Jackson broke down while telling Tara that he has no choice other than to take over as president?
How Jackson finds himself in this predicament was the finale’s biggest surprise and a gold-star moment for the writers—not to mention the actors. The Galindo cartel members Clay got into bed with early in the season to transport drugs actually work for the CIA, and they stopped SAMCRO from being charged under the RICO act in exchange for Jackson staying put and brokering an arms deal with the Irish. The hitch is the Irish will work only with Clay, who is in the hospital after Opie (Ryan Hurst) shot him for killing his father, Piney, and means that Jax must abandon the plan he chillingly hatched with his mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal), and a newly empowered Tara to kill Clay in his hospital bed. To stay out of prison, the club needs Clay alive.

“To me, it would be too simple to kill off Clay this season,” Sutter said in an interview. “To have a guy head down that road and do some nefarious things and have somebody put a bullet in him to kill him, I just wanted more. I want to see a guy like Clay suffer a little bit. I want to see him struggle to be in the club. What does that look like next season, with him sitting in Piney’s seat? To me, that shit is really ripe story territory. Can Jax be president of that club without ultimately becoming Clay, or does that just come with the territory? As we’ve seen in our own political system, men who take positions of power with a sense of ideology and desire and hunger to be different are then faced with the problems and challenges and struggles that come with that and are forced to fall into the same traps of their predecessors because it’s the nature of the beast.”

All season long, Clay Morrow has been riding his motorcycle on the highway to hell. Never a good guy, no one—not viewers and maybe not even Perlman himself—could foresee the character would take such a desperate, dark turn. But with his hands ravaged by arthritis and his financial future at risk, Clay makes a deal with the devil that sets in motion all of the complications with the Irish, the Galindo cartel, the U.S. Attorney’s office that is investigating the club, and the CIA. If it was difficult to see him shoot Piney in the chest, and unbelievable to hear him coldly order the murder of Tara, it was nerve-racking to watch him savagely beat his wife, Gemma—all irrevocable actions that have left the audience, like Jax, feeling that Clay must die.

But Sutter didn’t let him.

“How could there be any credible way for him not to die?” FX president John Landgraf said. “And it’s just mind-blowing when you find out these guys who you’ve totally accepted as cartel guys for the entire season are undercover CIA agents, and this guy you’ve seen as all-powerful puppet master, the Assistant U.S. Attorney, totally gets trumped over and screwed over. And no matter how you feel about Clay, if he’s not in the mix and he’s not dealing with the Irish and the thing isn’t moving forward for the CIA the way they need, then they all go to jail. It’s a perfectly constructed no-win situation that keeps this intense pressure cooker going forward. And that’s all Kurt.”

When Landgraf learned what Clay would resort to this season, he talked to Perlman about how he felt about unmasking the character in such an unrepentant way. The actor was crazy about the idea, and it has shown in his relentlessly piercing performance. After Jax told Clay in the finale that he won’t kill him because he needs him but that he no longer rules the club, Clay responded: “You may as well kill me.” Now, after losing it all, Landgraf wonders whether it’s possible viewers might eventually sympathize with Clay.

“You’d think it would be impossible for anybody to have empathy for the character, but I wouldn’t bet against Ron,” Landgraf said. “I don’t think he’s going to be anybody’s favorite or I don’t think anybody’s going to root for him, but I bet Ron and Kurt will always find ways to bend the character in ways that give you at least some level of understanding or compassion for him. I don’t have very much right now. I think there’s a lot of people that were looking forward to him dying, but it’s a much more interesting choice, I think, that he doesn’t.”

From the beginning of developing the season, Sutter and the writers crafted the RICO storyline, with the idea that Lincoln Potter’s (Ray McKinnon) investigation would be undermined by the CIA, allowing Clay to stay alive and in the game. Romeo (Danny Trejo) and Luis Torres (Benito Martinez) were designed as CIA operatives from the onset, but making sure their undercover status was kept from the motorcycle club as well as from viewers proved to be one of the season’s biggest challenges, because if it didn’t track, no one would buy it.

“My struggle was not giving away too much that people know they’re undercover or they’re feds but to give you enough so that when you get that information you don’t turn around and you go, ‘Bullshit!’" Sutter said. “Some of this is based on actual historical facts. It’s basically what the CIA did with [Pablo] Escobar. We go in there and empower these regimes to ultimately take control, and for the good of the cause, you get behind one to have a controlling voice in the political and economical flow of the territory or a country. It’s the idea that it’s ultimately the machine that undermines some of these law enforcement-dynamics more so than the bad guys. As Link points out in the last episode, ‘The bad guys won.’ And he’s not talking about the club. He’s talking about the powers that be. To me, that’s an interesting dynamic and very true.”

Jackson’s forced change of heart and the domino effect it creates will dominate next season’s storylines. Clay will interact with his club as a member, not the leader. Opie will have to decide whether to trust Jackson again and be his vice president. With Tara now in First Old Lady position, Gemma will have to adjust to not being in control. Tara and Jackson’s relationship, strengthened by their new no-secrets policy, could be threatened if Jackson learns that Tara knows his mother also had a hand in his father’s death.

“Jax has committed to the club; he doesn’t want the club to die, but you’re not sure the depths to which he is committed,” Sutter said. “And, quite honestly, I did that on purpose because I want to give myself flexibility in terms of where I continue to take the story. Jax is a guy who, like in real life, commits to things and gets pushed in directions based always on more than one reason.”

Sutter hopes FX will grant him three more seasons to finish the SAMCRO story. With 5.5 million viewers, Sons of Anarchy is registering its highest-rated season and stands as basic cable’s No. 2 drama. The unprecedented extra episode Landgraf ordered, at Sutter’s request, to finish out the season indicates the network’s strong support of the show.

“I can’t guarantee it at this point, but if that’s what Kurt believes he needs and what he wants, I will do everything in my power to make it available to him,” Landgraf said. “I know some of the details of where he wants to go next season, and I have a sense of the end season, but I need a better sense of what the penultimate season would be. That’s what we’ll be talking about in the near future.”

For now, Charming’s Hamlet has chosen to be. And that’s a good thing.

[Zetanio]

Perfectly constructed no-win?

How about a fucking farce. They built a WHOLE SEASON of drama and then just wasted it with 5 minutes of bullshit covering up. What a douche. Time to find a new show.

[Trichocyst]

They made Clay a total monster. They had to kill him and they didn't. I love Ron Pearlman, but he had to die. That whole episode was just one cop out after another.

[vagus]

Hey, if it's any consolation Jax running SamCro is pretty badass.

[Doombear]

That fact alone is the teeny tiny frayed string that is keeping me tied to this show. I have to see how it starts with him in charge.

[Kerberoz]

That was fucking weak. I agree with the Dexter comparison. Whole lot of useless nothing so they can stretch the series out until no one cares anymore.

[Nem0]

Sorry for being slightly off topic but does anyone have a working link to the 1st episode of this season would be appreciated.

[Tajin]

Eh on the really bright side, there's white collar :>

Edit: Wait fuck its Jan-17 -_- well there's Leverage or.. idk drugs.

[Trichocyst]

I think I'm at a loss until Mad Men in March. Thank God for Adventure Time and Regular Show.

[Nem0]

Thanks for link now time to catch up on this season 8-)

[Qalbert]

...

[Zetanio]

Over it.

[Kerberoz]

Meh... kinda starting to look like it'll go the way of Dexter and overstay its welcome/lose all tension due to too many seasons.