The Televangelist: ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ Season 4, Ep. 11

When you can’t register a cast member’s death because too many other things are going on, it gives new meaning to “Men of Mayhem”

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  • FX
  • Sorry bro, but it’s just not realistic if EVERYONE survives!



My eyes kept flickering nervously to the DVD clock while I watched the screener for last night’s “Call of Duty.” I knew that the season had been mercifully extended by one episode (to total 14), but I wasn’t expecting the episodes leading up to it to be expanded in their length as well. At around 43 minutes - usually the time when the show wraps up, or is given a few more minutes to do so - I was about to jump off of the couch. “It can’t end now” I kept thinking, hoping really, because the amount of chaos had me so amped up I was praying there would be some kind of episodic revelation at least so I would stop shaking from nervous tension (blessedly, there was).

Meanwhile I was thinking back to everything that had already happened. Kurt Sutter has never shied away from complicated plots but when the gruesome death of a regular character is barely able to register because you’re being flung hither and yon emotionally, there may be too much at stake. But let’s break it down as painlessly as possible (because Lord knows there was plenty of pain being inflicted all over “Call of Duty”).

I know that the alliance with the Gallindo cartel is what has brought SAMCRO to the brink because of the amount of violence “which no one saw coming, not even me,” Clays says to the Sons - to which Bobby rolls his eyes so far up to the heavens I thought they might fall out - but the shootout scene seemed extraneous to me. There was already so much emotionally at stake. In the wake of Clay’s battle with Gemma, Tig attempts to reopen the channels of their friendship, which Clay shuts down. Tig tells Clay he’s lost the club because he goes into the meeting room, shuts the door, and shuts everyone out. In doing so he has alienated the entire club, most especially Tig and Bobby, his former right hand men. And even if Bobby wasn’t always on Clay’s side on things, Tig was unfailingly so. Later in the episode, Clay retreats to the meeting room and slams the door once again, causing a grimace of pain to flicker across Tig’s face. And with this, after the shocking and unnecessary death of Kozik, and after seeing Gemma’s busted face, Tig did the unthinkable - turned in his badge to Clay, and rode off. Nothing, not the fight with Gemma, not the thought of accidentally killing Jax or his grandsons when he sent the bounty hunters after Tara, seemed to affect Clay more than that moment. The vulnerability on his face, his realization that he has lost everything, was telling. These are Clay’s last days. Is anyone sad to see him go?