TV Review: Sons of Anarchy 5.4, "Stolen Huffy"
rating: 2
I went into this season of Sons of Anarchyon the brink of giving up on the show completely. Ive touched on this before, but the reason behind the frustration lands squarely on how often the series closes in on greatness only to somehow find a way to squander it. After a fourth season that made all the right moves, only to undermine all of it in its closing moments, the show had quite a bit to do in order to win back my affection. Fortunately, season five immediately made a number of good choices. It hit the ground running right from the start. It kept obstacles in play I thought it had done away with (the RICO case immediately comes to mind.) By keeping those obstacles, and by adding multiple new ones, it retained the sense that the walls were closing in on the characters the narrative atmosphere the series has always worked best in. The death of Opie proved the series wasnt as attached to its characters as previously thought, and it was precisely what needed to happen in order to indicate that Sutter and his writers were finally heading toward some sort of end game. Most importantly, these episodes somehow managed to salvage the momentum the season four finale had seemingly destroyed, and then, brilliantly, found a way to increase that momentum exponentially. Unfortunately, Stolen Huffy halts this momentum. Like, really halts it. And while theres no indication this pause in the narrative is going to be long-lasting, its still fairly disappointing that Sutter and co. have chosen to follow-up the forward momentum of Laying Pipe with something that is essentially a dead stop. Opies funeral was well-handled in the episode. Everything else? Not so much. I havent touched on the shows treatment of Tara and Gemma at all this season, due to the substantially larger importance of every other narrative event the shows thrown at us, but given the dominance of their presence within the episode, now is as good a time as ever. Frankly, the conflict erupting between Gemma, Tara, and Wendy just isnt working. The thought that Gemma could ever side with Wendy over Tara betrays many previously established aspects of her character primarily her role as the familial guardian of the club. Lets not forget that Gemma almost killed Wendy in order to protect Jax and Abel from her. For something so definitive and so final, its more than a little hacky for the writers to decide to have them form an alliance, even if that alliance is temporary. This development also betrays Taras character. Shes proven herself far more cunning than Gemma for quite some time now more than capable of seeing through whatever ruse the woman comes up with. Her decision to get involved in the conflict between Gemma and Carla was easily the most unearned and unrealistic character moment the shows ever had. The whole thing just rings hollow a forced conflict that only exists to give these characters something to do while the rest of the narrative moves forward. All of these issues made Stolen Huffy somewhat of a chore to watch, but given the successes of the previous episodes, this isnt enough to suggest that season five is beginning to fail just as quickly as it succeeded. Every show has these placeholders its an unfortunate side-effect of having to create ten to thirteen hours of content even if a seasons narrative produces less than that. Its just a shame this dud had to follow immediately after such a landmark episode for the series a sad, barely-there whimper after such an explosive bang.