Image Credit: Prashant Gupta/FXWhen I think back to the season 3 finale of Sons of Anarchy, I’ll remember three things:
1. The moment that Jax’s face turned to a smile in the paddy wagon as he got word that the plan none of us saw coming had worked: Turns out the club knew, probably all along, about him turning rat with Agent Stahl to clear Gemma and get their sentence reduced to three years (14 months with good behavior). With Unser having no hope of saving the Charming PD after Salazar’s death last episode (is that why Jax really did it?), he was again loyal to SAMCRO and stopped Stahl and her men as they were driving off with Jimmy O (who thought he had the luck of the Irish when the Feds took him into custody from the Sons after they’d bought him from the Russians with counterfeit money). Unser sent Stahl’s men ahead to investigate a threat and said he’d wait with her. Cue members of the Sons rolling up in a school bus — Chibs stabbed Jimmy, and Opie shot Stahl. Poetic. Kozik gave Unser a punch (other cheek, he’s had bridgework done), so it’d look like he got overpowered by, I presume, IRA hitmen who left their sign on the car window in Jimmy’s blood. Kozik also tore up the deal Jax had signed naming members of the Irish kings.
2. A tiny piece of me was actually sad to see Stahl die in the end. Clearly, she had to. But while other people thought her shooting her partner/lover in the neck last episode was cartoon evil — ditto the smiling as she touched her side of the bed during the calm-before-the-storm opening montage this week — I thought it was kind of awesome. How often do you get to see a female ATF agent that sociopathic and that willing to stare down a badass like Jax? (I felt some new energy on her end when she was in Jax’s face at the cemetery. Was that just her enjoying him being her bitch, or was it… sexual tension?) Zobelle got to walk last season because in creator Kurt Sutter’s mind, he was the kind of guy who would’ve outsmarted the Sons. Being the law (however dirty) in a show about outlaws, Stahl never would get that credit. I get it. P.S. I attribute my sudden appreciation for well-played evil on SoA to the presence of Keith Szarabajka, who guested as the top Russian and also starred on the brilliant-but-canceled 1996 Fox series Profit (Adrian Pasdar played a delicious sociopath). He got me in the mood, as, I suppose, Jeff Kober (Jacob Hale) has been doing all season. (Remember Kober as the psychotic vampire Buffy had to face without her superstrength on her 18th birthday? )
3. That John Teller’s voice reminds me of Christopher Guest’s, which sort of makes it hard to take him seriously — and subsequently lessens the weight of the epic battle for Jax’s soul, which will begin again in season 4 if Tara decides to show Jax the letters John wrote to Maureen. I thought that association was crazy until I just looked up who voices John Teller: it’s Christopher Guest’s brother Nicholas Guest.
What did you think of the finale? Sound off below!
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