Focus on the family in the second episode of the season. The personal ties between the SAMCRO members and ladies make up the bulk of running time, spiced with generic darkly lit shootouts and humorous criminality. The tone shifts from light to dark with bipolar regularity, and the writer (Kurt Sutter making a guest appearance) has the skill to present characters making irrational decisions, which turn out to have deep meaning. A guest appearance by Deadwood alum Cleo King playing Neeta the Nanny, and Tom Arnold as Georgie the porn producer add a smidgen of gravitas to the proceedings. This episode is so family-oriented I got the itching sensation that this show is just a violent sitcom, complete with comic relief characters.
After being gang-raped by the white supremacists at the end of the season premiere, motherly Gemma responds by…covering up the entire affair from her biker-leader husband and second-in-command son. Pretending to be in a car crash, she takes one for the team, convinced that she can’t allow the gang to be intimidated. What good is a brood of violent protectors if you cry off right when it would do you some good? The decision makes kinda sorta sense in a retrospective way, and it does throw a wrench in the Aryan plan. Still, I have a feeling that Gemma is only postponing the inevitable confrontation (*cough* kidnap Jax’s son *cough*) between the two forces. AJ Weston (Henry Rollins) continues to show himself as a potent and patient enemy, and Rollins just eats this part up.
Well, I guess it’s par for the course to set up this episode as game-changing, and then turning out a “criminal conundrum of the week” episode. With the main season arc safely on the back burner, the camera shifts to SAMCRO’s dealing with a rival porn producer (Tom Arnold) moving in on one of their creditors. Tom Arnold is so seedy in real life that I don’t really think he’s acting. A poster for “Cumdog Millionaire” is great for a few laughs, and beating up the bodybuilding toughs is good subliminal catharsis against male inadequacy. The whole affair is wrapped up tidily by Jax, who is conspicuously taking more and more authority. Jax (Charlie Hunnam) has a special kind of charisma; he is a thug with a ridiculous loping strut, but his opaque code of honor colors his white-trash sensibilities a nice shade of rose.
The porn subplot brings up an unavoidable fact about this show, which is the rampant misogyny. The obvious degradation of a slew of near-naked women passed out in the clubhouse makes sense in a biker mentality sort of way. But the surface content isn’t as interesting as the subtext. Jax has a whole network of women to care for his son, including his mother Gemma, who does most of the footwork, and his old flame du jour Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff). Tara is a doctor who has no problem patching up bullet wounds and watching the baby while Jax is off running guns. I haven’t seen him with his newborn son once this season, and having the kid’s name tattooed on your chest doesn’t make up for it. The women in this show serve their men, and have no problem putting their own ambitions aside to do it, or, in Tara’s case, risking her job at the hospital. Well, Jax’s carefree lifestyle is all in order as long as his womenfolk know their place, and this is presented as some kind of intrinsic family values riff.
So by the end, I’ve been entertained, but the story is still simmering. Opie is all suicidal now because of his dead wife, and talking about his creepy dreams. He was such a softie last season that it’s kind of hard to picture him as a jail-hardened stone-cold killer, no matter how bushy his beard. Big violence as dark humor are great, just great, but the producers on this show really need to up the ante, and I mean every single episode, or it starts to feel like chewing a piece of food for too long. More drama, dammit, more impossible choices! I want Jax to stop a nuclear bomb from going off! Oh wait, that’s a different show. For the record, there are some nice transitions and symbolism about lost innocence (or something). A solid (if generic) episode; I hope it’s the bottom of quality and not the median.
