Sons of Anarchy "Playing With Monsters" Review: Jax Is Worse Than Skankenstein

Sons of Anarchy S07E03: "Playing With Monsters"

Hello, Sons of Anarchy fans! We're back with another conversational review because discussing our individual perspectives on Jax's shady dealings helps us keep them all in order. Also, Kailtin is the television industry's most prominent Juice expert, and if I wasn't here to talk about other things, she'd give you 5,000 words on naked push-ups. So here we go, let's have a pleasant little chat about this week's "Playing With Monsters."

TIM: At this point, if you're going to do business with Jax Teller, you may as well just hop into a coffin and ask someone to start covering it with dirt. Jax is orchestrating a war so massive that Charming will be on drought alert once it starts hosing away all the blood that will run in the streets. If this wasn't Sons of Anarchy's final season, I'd have some qualms with how everything is coming together—Jax keeps having meetings with people and putting his hands in the air to say, "Hey it wasn't us, but coincidentally we know everything that happened"—but since, come December, nothing will be left of this show except a smoldering crater and a pile of bones, the sheer gravity of every lie and betrayal has me rubbing my palms together in bloodthirsty anticipation. Jax has now engineered rifts between Marks' crew and the One-Niners, the Mayans and the One-Niners, and Marks' crew and the Chinese. Everyone is against everyone else, basically. How long can Jax keep causing trouble for other people before it bites him in the ass?

KAITLIN: Jax is a smart guy, but he's dumb as shit if he thinks he can pull this off. His lies are making you bloodthirsty, but they're leaving me thirsty for something different. You have to figure that, at some point, people are going to start talking to one another and noticing that SAMCRO is the only club that's not dropping in numbers. If Jax was REALLY smart, he'd start secretly staging hits against his own club to throw people off. I'm not saying that the guys Jax is setting up and knocking down are all that smart, but it feels pretty obvious to me that Jax isn't thinking things through. He's definitely not as clever as he thinks he is; his answer for everything is basically just to murder and murder some more and then when he's done, oh, more murder. Jax has become an evil dictator, and I don't know if you ever saw Mean Girls, but Regina George's schemes were eventually exposed and she totally got hit by a bus. The bus that's coming for Jax is going to be full of the people he's wronged in the past, and every week I find myself wondering whether Jax will even care when it does.

TIM: He probably won't care because he'll be attending the world premiere of Bride of Skankenstein. What's interesting about Jax's plan is that he's stacking everything up instead of operating in a more linear fashion; it's kind like, instead of lighting one firecracker, he's slowly twisting the fuses together and skipping straight to the grand finale. Obviously there's a much bigger chance that he'll blow his face off, and because this is television, the resulting tension will yield a greater dramatic effect. This multi-layered destruction and planning means that Season 7 is in danger of getting awfully convoluted awfully fast, but that's nothing new to Sons of Anarchy. I'm already confused, thanks to the series' longstanding habit of holding back information and piling on the plot points. Did I understand it correctly that SAMCRO tapped the Grim Bastards to pose as August Marks' crew and shake up a massage parlor in order to start beef with Marks and Lin? I guess everyone is coming back for the final season as Jax lights the whole place on fire!

KAITLIN: That may be the only part of this episode where I was definitely sure of what was happening. Well, besides the official end of Chibs and Juice's bromance. That message came through loud and clear when Chibs told Juice he'd be better off sticking his gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger than thinking he could ever get back in the club's good graces. That was way harsh, Chibs! You're supposed to be the understanding guy! I really do feel bad for Juice. He's staying in a hotel under Unser's name (that will certainly come back to hurt him, right?) and has nowhere to go. If you didn't tear up when Juice said the club was his only family and again when he told Chibs "I love you," then you have no heart. And I know that most people don't share my fondness for the guy, but right now his storyline is one of the few that's preventing Sons of Anarchy from truly exploding and taking everything else out in the process. This was only the third episode of the season, and I'm all good with the flashy action sequences and the violence, but the quieter stories—which used to be Tara's area of expertise—are necessary to keep the show balanced.

Anyway, we should probably discuss whatever the F that love connection was between Chibs and the new sheriff, because that was weird and I have a feeling it's not going to end well for Chibs or the club.

TIM: Ummm, yeah. The sexual tension was dripping off the screen when Chibs and Sheriff Althea met in the parking lot, and it was one of my favorite scenes because for once, Sons of Anarchy actually employed some restraint. I mean, those two are totally going to do it, and their relationship will have that much more oomph because we're seeing it develop (as opposed to the one between Rat and Brooke, who went from exchanging glances to exchanging bodily fluids in a day). We still don't know much about Althea except that she doesn't look like a sheriff, she's totally cool with bribes, she still wants to look like she's doing her job, and she loves Scottish accents and scars. But I have my doubts about her motivations. How often do sheriffs who've just arrived in town immediately asking for bribes? Either she has some gambling debts that need paying immediately, or she's not the sharpest.

And you know who else is a dummy? Sandy the whore's dad, who let Gemma come over to apologize with a pineapple upside-down cake. Was that just a throwaway story to give Jax another person to beat up? Where did Gemma find time to bake a cake? Did she bring the cake just to get the guy to open the door? Did anyone eat the cake? I want to know more about this cake.

KAITLIN: As a baker, I'm pretty sure she bought that shit from the nearest grocery store. That woman did not have time to bake that cake plus the one she left sitting on her counter! I'm calling shenanigans! But I agree, that entire storyline felt useless, and with so much else going on I'm not sure Sons of Anarchy needs—or can handle—that kind of superfluous storytelling. It felt like just another way to illustrate how volatile Jax is, which we've already seen about 10 times since the season began (and again, we're only three episodes in). I'm far more interested in how everything that's happing is going to affect Nero. He seems to be struggling with his conscience as of late.

TIM: The life is pulling Nero back in, and now it's what can he do for Brown? I don't entirely understand how he got back in or what debt he owes to the Mayans... or what the Mayans would want with a guy who is banging a grandma. But it's clear that it's wearing on him. When he hopped out of that van with a shotgun and blasted those One-Niners, he didn't look too happy about it. It's as if the joy of murdering people in broad daylight is gone. I don't know how this will affect Nero's story, but it ultimately has to come between him and the MC. I'm guessing that when the war begins between SAMCRO and the Mayans, Nero will have a tough choice to make and Jimmy Smits will be able to milk the character's internal conflict for some great career highlights. But he'll be fine. The person I'm worried about is Jury. We still have no confirmation that Gib O'Leary was his son, but those dog tags have some significance. Sons of Anarchy tends to build up stories without revealing the endings, and that's what's going on here. I was dying to see how Jury would react upon learning that SAMCRO was somehow involved in those deaths.

KAITLIN: I was hoping for a little more movement on that front myself, but it looks like the show is perfectly content to let us sit here and develop our own theories. In my mind, I think it's less about who he was to Jury, or what Jury plans to do, but rather when Jury's going to strike. I could easily see everything with Marks and the Chinese and the Mayans blowing up in Jax's face, and then Jury and whoever else he's wrangled swooping in when SAMCRO is down. I don't really know what to expect from this storyline yet, but I'm fairly excited to see what else is coming down the pike.

TIM: What other racially specific gangs are out there in Charming for Jax to mess with? Russian Mafia? Japanese Yakuza? Icelandic Hopscotch Team? Regardless, Jax will have a screw-job for them. I know I'm on a final-season high (like I said last week, no other show needs a final season more than this one), and I'm having a blast watching Jax go off the reservation. What if all all the gang stuff is just set-up for Jax's ultimate downfall, in which he betrays his own club? Surely someone wearing a SAMCRO cut has to be wondering about Jax's intentions and the fallout that will surely follow. Frankly, I'm shocked that no one (except for Bobby a little bit in this episode) has said, "Slow your roll, bro." But if Season 7 is lighting fuses for an explosive finale, I will be happy.

SKIDMARKS

– Abel's disappointed face should be a meme.

– Whoa! Charlie is finally important! It's nice to see him playing a real role in things.

– "Does my daddy do bad things?" Um, yes Abel. Yes he does. We're sorry you're living this life, and we wish Wendy would just take you and Thomas to Disneyland for a little while.

– Extra proof that Gemma is a questionable guardian of any kind: She's listing Chucky as a contact on Abel's preschool forms. CHUCKY.

– Wait a second, shouldn't the woman on the table who's brought to life with electricity be Skankenstein's Monster, and the scientist be Dr. Skankenstein? Do some research, Lyla!