Hopefully if you're joining me for the final season of FX's hit series SONS OF ANARCHY, you've already gone through the first six seasons of family feuds, friendly (and not-so-friendly) fire, guns, drugs, murder and betrayal. This is not a show you should leap into mid-season. It is a finely crafted, leather clad, loosely Shakespearean tale that uses six seasons to show the evolution of the inhabitants of a small town named Charming, and its tormented leader, Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam).
If you're daring to start near the end (again, don't! Start at the beginning!), or have somehow forgotten the layout of the show, here's a bare bones explanation using the Bard's Hamlet as a drawing board.
[SPOILERS!] [SPOILERS!] [SPOILERS!] [DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU] [SPOILERS!] [SPOILERS!]
The kingdom in this case is a blend of Charming, California and its resident motorcycle club, the
SONS OF ANARCHY (SAMCRO). Ron Perlman plays Clay (think King Claudius), who orchestrates the murder of club president, Jon Teller (Hamlet's father) to win the "throne." He marries Gemma Teller (played by Katey Sagal aka Gertrude). Jax "speaks" with the ghost of his father by reading his journal. His father's concerns about the future of the club, mirror Jax's own, and help to spark both internal and external conflicts that lead to much drama on the show.
Over the course of the show, Jax marries, divorces, and has a child with Wendy (Drea de Matteo); marries and has another child with his high school sweetheart, Tara Knowles (Ophelia, played by Maggie Siff); discovers the truth behind his father's death; leaves the club, comes back to the club, thinks about leaving the club again; goes to jail, gets out of jail; and gets involved in a variety of complicated circumstances, including one involving a lively transsexual prostitute named Venus Van Damme (Walton Goggins).
This is only a handful of plot elements in the critically acclaimed drama created by Kurt Sutter, who - along with his team - is known for penning storylines pregnant with insanity.
The Season Six finale earlier this year, involves Jax taking a deal that would lead him back to jail, and allow his wife to leave town with his children. After hearing that Jax would be imprisoned, and that Tara would be leaving with her grandchildren, Grandma Gemma took her snippets of information, and barrel of rage, to Tara's house. After an altercation, Gemma murders Tara in a most gruesome way. A police officer comes and finds the aftermath, but before he can arrest Gemma, a SOA member named Juice (Theo Rossi) who is tangled in his own struggles with club, kills the officer in an attempt to protect Gemma. The two of them vanish into the night, and then cue Jax, who is distraught when he finds the bleeding corpse of his beloved. The District Attorney (C.C.H. Pounder) arrives shortly afterward, finds the wreckage and fade to black.
So we're left with tons of questions: Who will go down for the murders of Gemma and the police officer? When will Jax find out it was his mother's hand that did the deeds? What will happen to sensitive Juice? Will he stop calling himself Juice? What will happen to SAMCRO?
The new season promises the return of fan favorites, like the aforementioned hooker with a heart, Venus Van Damme, and Jimmy Smits, who played Gemma's on again/off again novio, Nero. We'll see some new faces, too. Lea Michele, Courtney Love, and Marilyn Manson are all slated to appear. Michele plays a waitress/single mother, Love is a preschool teacher, and Manson stars as a white supremacist.
I binge watched the first five season in a matter of days. I didn't sleep and my nails became nonexistent. It was a beautiful week. A final season is often carte blanche for writers and creators to take big risks with their stories. SOA has been pretty insane from the start, so this season should be filled with all sorts of motorcycle madness. I'm wildly excited and I hope you all come along for the ride.
Starting with tomorrow night's Season 7 Premiere at 10pm on FX, I will be recapping every episode of SONS OF ANARCHY here at BroadwayWorld TV. Check out the official Season 7 preview video:
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