The Televangelist: ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Season 4, Ep. 4

The Sons are visited by the Ghost of SAMCRO Future, a bleak prospect.

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  • FX.com
  • ”¢”Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge Clay liked it.”


Disclaimer: FX did not send me the screener for this week’s episode in advance (i.e. before I went to visit my parents), so I had to watch last night’s episode live on a low-res TV, taking notes with a series of pens that seemed to work fine during commercials and not at all during the actual show, and am sitting now at the Columbus Public Library typing up my offerings. These notes may not match up exactly to the bizarre fever dream I later had where I mentally rewatched the episode as a mashup with “Downton Abbey,” the entirety of which was narrated by Kurt Sutter, but hey, just so you know!

Now on to the meat — “SOA” often sets the tone of the episode with a song montage to kick things off, and a Spanish version of Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changing” is about as on the nose as one could get. In the midst of gun running and coke muling for the Gallindo cartel, SAMCRO had a parley with their sister club in Tuscon, SAMTAZ, whose current state is like the Ghost of SAMCRO Future come a-haunting. SAMTAZ is not just drug running, they’re drug dealing. As SAMTAZ’s VP Huff says, “crank, coke, what’s the difference?” It’s a sentiment Bobby also shares, though to make the opposite point, and he doesn’t hesitate to let Clay and the others know it. But as the Sons spend more time with their Arizona cousins they start to see other ghosts coming through the walls — the memory of slain club member Little Paul, and Reggie, who left and blacked out his tattoos shortly after. The Charming Club engages in some light detective work, and in short order (thanks to a little fuzzy bunny who nearly gave up his life) discovered that Reggie had been blackmailed for sleeping with Little Paul’s wife … Little Paul who was killed by members of the club for not wanting to vote in the crank. As an act of chivalry, Reggie left the club and now spends his days tending bunnies. The point of this has nothing to do with SAMTAZ, it has to do with Linc Potter simultaneously visiting Otto in solitary and, in a very Stahl-like move, lays bare before him the facts: Bobby had been sleeping with Otto’s late wife Luann just before she was murdered. The tears in Otto’s eyes after Linc leaves were surely less about him believing Bobby had anything to do with the murder, and more about the complete betrayal by one of his club brothers, for whom he has given up his eye sight, his future and his life.