Sons of Anarchy Season 4 Episode 12 recap

I don’t have kids.   I know a lot of you do.    I don’t, yet.  I will but I don’t.   And yet I find the relationships that I pay most attention to on TV are those between parents and children – and not always from the kid’s point of view.   

I mean, nobody’s painting a picture of perfect parental love here.   But I come back to Gemma and her ‘protecting’.   She’s  protecting both Jax and Tara into complete servitude for as long as they can see in front of them.   Of course she wants them and the boys – the most human connections she has – to never leave her, and isn’t that like, the number one worst thing a parent can do? Not let go?

Instead she keeps Jax in an endless, (need I say it?) USELESS loop of believing that Tara comes first.   No wait, Clay does.  And while Jax is an idiot and we know this to be absolutely true (and don’t get on me about ‘he took care of Wendy’.   First of all, he barely did, and second of all, Wendy is like an extra-accomplished bee.   Annoying, but not that hard to dispatch),  why is everyone still protecting him from the truth about what a sh*t Clay is?  Not even as a person, but as a leader?   And then there’s Tara.   Why not just LEAVE?  It’s not like you can’t support your boys (before you wrecked your hand a second time).   Let Jax figure his sh-t out and then come to you, if it comes to that?   Huh?  Why not?

I guess my problem is that none of these people seem to have any forethought to play this stuff out.   What if Tara doesn’t give Clay the (goddamn I’m tired of hearing about these) letters?   She’ll give them to Jax, Jax comes back and kills him.  Right?   If she  even still has them, which I’m not sure she does.     Gemma keeps them in Charming, and they live a life of resentment?   Opie doesn’t kill Clay…until one day he does?

Okay, this is where my understanding – and my patience – really runs out.   Yes, I read Sasha’s column as well as some others.   I know there are ladies for whom the dude is everything, always, forever.    But this man has killed or will kill everyone you love, Gemma, including those precious babies you think are so well protected.   You know this to be true.   I know you do.   And yet you still let him be…him?   You love him?  You kiss him, hoping it will be the last time?

What I can nderstand about Gemma is that her job was, in her mind, to protect him.   To make him the center of her world so that she was connected to the center of the power.  I know that sounds ridiculously shallow, and yes, I’m sure there was some love in there at some point, but if what we’re talking about is why and how she continued to be Gemma in the face of all that is telling her that these are not people who are able to maintain real love and emotions, well, that’s what I’m trying to reconcile, in my head.

And this episode made me so grumpy, mostly because Jax threatened Opie with a gun (but couldn’t follow through) rather than stand beside him, that no, I will not damn with faint praise and join you in a round of ‘well, but at least Jax got them not to use the guns around the babies’.   So what?  He beat the sh-t out of a bunch of people who thought they were doing God’s work, and to what end? It’s not like those babies are going to be shipped off to the non-profit orphanage.   He really can never think further ahead than when he’s going to feel the unexplained pouty rage in his stomach is temporarily subdued, and that’s just not good enough.   With Bobby and Juice (sob! Poor Juice!) in custody, with Opie on a rampage, Jax feeling like stuff is a good idea to do  - and yes, protecting the leader everyone hates is right up there - is just not good enough.   

So for my vote, I wish Clay were dead but I don’t see it, he needs much more of a death speech, I think, and I also think there’s a reason we spent so much time learning that Tig wasn’t leaving the club.  

And I’m pretty much angry at all of it.