Review: Sons of Anarchy 2.04 – “Eureka”
Original Airdate: September 29, 2009
Holy crap on a biscuit. Like a soda can being shaken up, pressure is building rapidly throughout Sons of Anarchy. Last week was a slow rise in pressure, then this week it was a bit like turning the dial from 9 to 10. From the looks of next week’s preview, 10 may go to 11.
Sons does a great job of continuing a storyline (or several, in this case) and adding subplots that are both exciting and funny. This week we got a fake testicle (crystal ball), a giant piece-of-junk motorcycle, and a flatbed truck crashing through the wall of a motel. Add into that Gemma’s continuing troubles coping with her rape and the steadily building tension between Jax and Clay, and you get a very exciting episode that made me laugh out loud on several occasions.
Am I the only one that found it odd that this charity bike ride idea seems to be a workable solution for running guns up the coast? Not that I don’t think bike clubs have charity bike rides, but I find it odd that we’ve never heard anything about it until now. Seems that unless they’ve been doing it all the time without us knowing about it this might throw up a couple of red flags. Also, if bounty hunters can’t turn in a beat up person, how great is it that they actually picked up Tig of all people? Watching him piss them off to the point that they break his nose was great.
The League continues to put pressure on Gemma, sending her one of the masks they wore during her attack in a paper bag from a men’s store that used to be in the location that Zobelle is currently occupying with his cigar shop. This allows both Gemma and Chief Unser to connect Zobelle to the League and the attack and also allows Gemma to follow Weston across town with the intention of killing him, but once again her new softer side exerts itself and she refrains as he talks on the phone to his kids. The pressure that the League puts on Gemma in turn puts pressure on Clay who, poor guy, just doesn’t understand what the heck is going on. This amps up the pressure between him and Jax and also seems to show up in the decisions that Clay is making.
It’s hard to pick a side in the Clay/Jax struggle. Clay is making some bad decisions and Jax is calling him out on it. But Jax isn’t doing it in a way that is beneficial to the club and he’s making the other members uncomfortable and worried. The biggest surprise to me was to see Opie siding with Clay in the situation, although it does make some sense to turn to the leader in a time of discord. The really interesting thing is that Opie is siding with Clay while Piney (Opie’s dad) is siding with Jax. I really see this setting up for a time when Jax gives in and tells Opie about Clay and Tig’s plot to kill him. The whole thing really reaches a peak this week when Clay threatens to kill Jax. He seemed pretty damn serious about it, too.
All in all this was a solid episode after a somewhat slower episode that pushed the story along. it looks like next week is when the uh, stuff, will hit the fan and the real fun will begin. I give this episode a solid 8.5/10. It was funnier than a lot of the earlier episodes but still had a dark and dangerous side. I really wish that Gemma had run over Weston’s port-a-potty with her car, though.
