I'm fairly certain most blog readers either don't care about this show or have seen through the fifth season, so the following post is just laden with spoilers. You've been warned!
The groan-inducing ending to what had otherwise been a fantastic fourth season was a real tipping point for Sons of Anarchy. By leaving Clay Morrow alive and revealing that the club's cartel partners were actually undercover CIA agents, the show had grabbed a pot that had been building to a boil all season long and just kind of took it off the stove as it had started to simmer. Season 4's big loss was Season 5's small gain, however, as one of the most compelling plots this time around was Jax's ability or lack thereof to lead his club while Clay stewed on the sidelines.
Elsewhere? This was just a messy slew of "big moments" with no thematic linkage. Opie was brutally murdered when a few members of the club went to prison for a few episodes. Gemma got stoned and ran her SUV off the road, severely injuring her two grandkids. Tara spent the season neither shitting nor getting off the pot, unable to commit to getting the hell out of Dodge with or without Jax, and then ultimately she got arrested in the season finale. So did Clay. Boyd from Justified showed up to play a transexual for one episode. Jimmy Smits joined the cast as Nero, and spent the year nailing Gemma and supporting SAMCRO with a prostitution ring side business. Three new members of the club turned out to be home invaders and they meet a pretty quick demise about midway through the year. Otto murders a nurse in prison and then bits his own tongue off to avoid testifying about any of it. Donal Logue arrives late in the season to avenge that nurse, who was his sister. Joel McHale shows up at some point to sleep with Gemma and then rob her blind and then get the living shit kicked out of him. The season kicks off with Tig watching his daughter get burned alive and ends with him shooting the man responsible for it - Michael, from Lost - in the head.
That may have been the biggest disappointment of the season. Sons has never gone all in on casting big names or even established character actors for their yearly "big bads," but Harold Perrineau just felt like a horrible casting call in all kinds of ways. No disrespect to the actor himself; I think he did just fine with the material he was given. But given every black actor out there - take the entire cast of The Wire for starters - this show had to opt for the guy notorious for screaming, "Waaalt!" for a few years on network television.
Having said all of that... this was an enjoyable and fairly entertaining season of television. Sprawling plot messes aside, it was able to cram a whole lot of action and tension and character scheming into thirteen episodes. And unlike the colossal ball drop that ended Season 4, Season 5 wrapped itself up with a neat little bow. Instead of trailing off with a big fat ellipsis or two, this season ended with appropriate periods, commas, and question marks. No exclamation points, really, but that's okay; Season 5 never promised them the way Season 4 did, and thus its conclusion was far more gratifying.
I'll get to Season 6 soon enough, I'm sure. That one... that one just kind of sucked. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
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