Sitdown With SONS OF ANARCHY – Series Finale, Smits and Perrineau

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Another highly anticipated sit-down at the Television Critics Association summer press tour hit this weekend, as FX’s segment featured a revealing palaver with Kurt Sutter. Also in attendance were guest stars from the upcoming Sons of Anarchy season 5 Jimmy Smits and Harold Perrineau. It all amounted to a grab bag of spoilers, some of which weren’t the usual throwaway smoke and mirrors.

Between the three of them, Smits, Sutter and Perrineau talked about the destiny of their respective roles in Sons of Anarchy. Smits repeated that his role would be as an original gangster, in town to mentor some of the SAMCRO hooligans and to generally mix things up. Perrineau gave strong evidence that he’s getting typecast, but is plenty happy with that.

And as for Sutter, he laid down some ground rules for the closing of his show, the Sons of Anarchy series finale that will be hitting screens two seasons hence, in Sons of Anarchy season 7.

Smits’ role has been well covered, as he’s the first outside talent revealed to be taking center stage in the drama of season 5. He is, as we’ve noted before, slated to play an old-school gangster who’ll be “a mentor figure” for the bikers. We also know that he’ll be hooking up with Gemma, brood mother of the SAMCRO, in some hot-and-heavy fashion. The additional details we can glean from Smits are just crumbs: That his character comes from “a different environment” than the Sons of Anarchy hometown of Charming, and that he, Smits, is “happy I don’t have to wear a suit.”

My money is that he’ll be a Latino gangster in some form or fashion. It’d be a fitting role for Smits and it’d fit the narrative trend of setting SAMCRO apart from the typical white-power-style bikers.

Speaking of fitting roles, Harold Perrineau will be featured in another Dad Gone Mad role. Best known as Walt’s father from Lost, who went crazy with lust for vengeance against his son’s abductors, Perrineau will now be going crazy with lust for vengeance against the Sons of Anarchy, who killed his daughter. Perhaps being sarcastic, Perrineau’s comment at the TCA talk was that he “was worried whether he could pull it off.”

My only worry is that he’d slip up and call his dead daughter ‘Walt.’ Awkward.

Kurt Sutter has much of his series locked in, though – especially the finale. He doesn’t know the specifics of who will perish and who will prosper, but he knows some names are on the list of victims.

As he noted at the press conference, “The show is the prince’s journey, so there is no show without Jax,” Sutter told reporters. “My sense of where the show will end up definitely includes Jax, and perhaps Gemma (Katey Sagal) and Clay (Ron Perlman).”

Now, granted, there are lots of ways that the prince might end his journey. Several of them are family-safe and satisfying to Jax fans. But I’d like think that, just like Sutter knows he’s steering a retelling of Hamlet, he knows that you can’t end Hamlet without killing the prince off.  Heck, waste the whole Danish court while you’re at it.

Sons of Anarchy season 5 premieres September 11th, 2012 on FX.