Sons of Anarchy Recap ‘Playing with Monsters’: The Spoils of War

In the latest Sons of Anarchy recap, Jax tries to find an ally in his new war brewing with August Marks and Gemma deals with some daddy issues at Diosa…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

In a war there are always casualties. No matter how smart or how tactical things are laid out, soldiers get caught in the middle and usually a few innocent bystanders as well. British politician Neville Chamberlain is famous for saying “In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”

Jax is building up his machines of war to go after the Chinese led by Henry Lin — the people he believes are responsible for the death of his wife Tara. Last week, Jax started his quiet battle by slaughtering four of Lin’s men, stealing a shipment of guns and a briefcase full of heroin. Now that doesn’t sound very quiet, but Jax took out the Chinese contingent in stealth mode without any witnesses and he even sacrificed two local thug hired to help take down the crew while setting them up as patsies so the heat wouldn’t fall on the club.

In the latest episode of Sons of Anarchy titled ‘Playing with Monsters’, Jax starts to put together a new ally made out of necessity while an old club member makes one last play to get back into the fold.

Black Day

The club’s day starts out in perfect harmony as they sit on the sidelines as Lyla directs the first feature under the new Red Woody Productions banner titled ‘Skankenstein’ (starring adult film legend Jenna Jameson no less). Like all men claim to do, the Sons watch the dialogue for a good laugh and leave when the sex actually happens, but they have an excuse — it’s time to sell off the rest of the heroin from the Chinese shipment and they need Aryan leader Ron Tully to help them with the distribution. Before they can make it to Stockton, however, August Marks shows up unannounced to have a little discussion with his ‘business partner’.

August heard about the hit on the Chinese shipment and he’s pointing his finger directly at Jax and the Sons as the culprits. Jax plays dumb at first and August calls him on it immediately.

“This doesn’t work if we don’t trust each other. Trust can’t live in the same space as secrets and lies. You agree?” ~August Marks

Jax cops to knowing about the hit but puts the onus back on the ‘two local peckerwoods’ who got brave and decided to take out the shipment to make some fast cash. It’s clear August isn’t buying it and he’s the last person Jax needs as an enemy right now. August is still relatively new to the leadership compared to his mentor Damon Pope, but the best way for him to sharpen his sword is to cut down a few people so the others get in line. Jax definitely doesn’t want to be cannon fodder, but he’s more than willing to play with fire. August reminds him, however, of the reputation he had long before taking over Pope Industries.

“You know the biggest difference between me and Mr. Pope — Damon made his bones being the smartest guy on the street. I made mine being the deadliest. Don’t cross me, Jackson. I have no remorse killing you or any of the Sons.”
~ August Marks

The not so veiled threat from August puts Jax on the offensive to find a new friend in the war against the Chinese and the Mayans and maybe even a shot caller from Oakland as well. Jax intended for today to be about moving heroin with white, but instead he dedicates his full efforts to dealing with black.

His first stop is to talk to Tyler, the leader of the One-Niners gang out of Oakland. The longtime crew and part time friend to the Sons over the years is in disarray right now after the Mayans took out a few of their members (the gun buy in the season 6 finale when they handed the One-Niners bags filled with rice before shooting them dead and stealing the weapons). They want revenge — August Marks wants peace.

In retaliation to nothing being done, a new crew has sprung up led by a One-Niner named Chester. He wants new leadership and a crew of his own far away from Tyler and the main gang out of Oakland. He’s willing to challenge the throne and that’s not going to be good for the power base. It’s the perfect opening for Jax to make his move to find a new ally in the ongoing war with the Chinese and now August Marks.

Jax tells Tyler that he’s willing to back the One-Niners, stymie the revolt and help him firm up his leadership. In return, Tyler will break the One-Niners apart from August’s organizations and help out the Sons in their war against the Chinese.

“Any divide hurts me. You help me squash that I’ll make sure the Niners land with the Outlaws”
~ Tyler

It’s a pretty brilliant plan actually, although Jax might do well to remember what happened the last time he went up against a businessman bred on the streets. Damon Pope burned Tig’s daughter alive, he murdered Opie and nearly tore the club apart at the seams. Jax got his revenge and killed Pope in the end, but where his head once sat, a new leader was implanted and he’s still got the same kinds of troubles. Maybe going head to head with August isn’t the best play, but Jax believes he’s got backup now if the battle begins.

I Want to Go Home

With over $4000 in cash, a car and a place to stay well outside the Charming city limits, Juice had the perfect escape plan ready to go last week. He also had the ultimate motivation — the club wants him dead and the cops want him for questions he certainly doesn’t want to answer. Instead of bolting as quick as he could, Juice opts for plan B as he tries to find a way back to the only family he’s ever known.

Unser said he was willing to help, but it’s going to cost Juice more than just a handshake and a smile. He wants the information Juice is holding onto about Tara’s murder and in exchange he’ll help with whatever the wayward Son needs.

Juice lays it all out for him — the ‘truth’ according to Gemma anyways — and Unser reports back to Sheriff Althea Jarry. He tells her that the best way to investigate is to look into the Chinese after an ongoing beef caused them to lash out at Jax’s family. To payback Juice, Unser has to make a call to Chibs to set up a meeting.

Chibs goes to a cop diner next to the courthouse to meet with his parole officer, but when he sits down, he’s quickly ransacked when Juice appears from behind and lands in the booth right across from him. He claims to have taken Unser hostage from his trailer and forced him to make the call to set this up. Juice is in a need to know position — he needs to know if the club voted for him to meet Mr. Mayhem (a death sentence) or if this is all predicated on Jax’s thirst for vengeance.

Despite years of friendship and brotherhood, Chibs wants nothing to do with Juice because in his eyes, this is an infected person looking to spread disease. There’s no lower form of life in the outlaw circle than a rat and while he didn’t run to the police (although he was quietly an informant), Juice gave up the goods on Jax and the club and nearly ruined the relationship they had with Nero.

Juice isn’t ready to give up yet, however, and he’s reaching out to the one person who was always there for him no questions asked. It seems that the olive branch Chibs once offered has now broken apart and dissipated after his brother became a turncoat. No matter how many crocodile tears well up in Juice’s big brown eyes, Chibs isn’t going to help him find a way back into the club. He does offer up some advice — although not really the encouraging kind.

Juice: “I need to know if there’s something I can do to earn my way back. I’ll do anything. Please”
Chibs: “If I were you, I’d take that gun, put it in my mouth and pull the trigger.”

Juice, heartbroken, slinks away and out of the diner left in despair. Unser and Wendy have to check him into a hotel outside of town to finally get him off the club’s radar, but you have to wonder where does he go from here? He couldn’t run because this is the only life he knows. He can’t get back into the house he called home and judging by the previews we’ve already seen for this season, it looks like Juice turns to a former enemy to help him find a new friend.

Daddy’s Home

When Jax teamed up with Nero a couple of seasons ago to build Diosa North, it was with the intention of going legitimate and finding an income stream that had nothing to do with running guns. There’s no denying that peddling the flesh trade can be a very lucrative business but it’s still on the fringe area when you think about what’s inside and outside the law. Things can get especially dicey when sex is involved. Things get even worse when family starts intervening in some way, shape or form.

On this week’s episode, Sandy, one of the girls from Diosa, is dealing with daddy issues, but not the kind you might think of when addressing a high-end escort. No, her problem is daddy wants all of her money and he’s going to call and even drop by to get it from her if she’s not willing to volunteer the cash. Of course, showing up and smacking around one of the girls is going to land on the radar of the people running the club or in this instance, the woman in charge — Gemma Teller-Morrow.

When Gemma sees what daddy dearest did to his little girl, she wastes no time slugging him right in the jaw and he in turn fires back a harsh slap that lands right on her face. Fortunately, Nero is nearby and he launches the guy across the room and begins beating him relentlessly until somebody finally pulls him off. When Nero and Gemma turn around, they spot Abel in the doorway. Because all children should grow up around whorehouses right?

Gemma does her best to explain what happened to the little boy, but his line of questioning might be the hardest thing she’s ever had to answer (you know, outside of ‘what do you know about Tara’s death?). She tells him that the girl’s dad did a bad thing by hurting her.

Gemma: “He did a bad thing”
Abel: “Does my daddy do bad things?”

Gemma tries to quell the little boy’s fears that his daddy is a bad man. Jax shows up and tries to make sure his son is doing alright with everything he’s witnessed today. He also has to meet the new sheriff in town for the first time because in the midst of the fight, somebody called the cops. The father wants to press charges and Nero is firing back just as hard. Jax would prefer neither of those things happen. It appears, however, that Sheriff Althea Jarry is more than willing to play ball with the outlaws, much more so than her predecessor.

“I’m sure we can all work together to keep Charming safe and profitable — for everyone”
~ Althea Jarry

Later that same day, Jax sends Chibs to meet with Sheriff Jarry to deliver a couple of messages. He first hands her an envelope filled with $2000 as her initial payment to make sure the sheriff sees this as a profitable relationship. Second, Chibs ensures her that the relationship between the club and the Chinese is solid — there are no problems there. And finally, she doesn’t need to search for Juice any longer — he’s off the radar and doesn’t know anything about Tara’s murder. She can’t promise to squash the looming APB, but she can slow things down for a few days.  She takes the cash but also appears to take a liking to the Scotsman in the process. While she’s off duty she likes to be called Ally and it seems like she wants Chibs to call her sometime soon.

A Taste of Payback

While Jax is quietly unraveling Lin’s organization from the inside out, he’s got an internal problem brewing from his hit last week. As noted in our previous recap, Jax set up the two local thugs that helped the Sons take down the Chinese gun deal and used them as patsies so Lin wouldn’t suspect the club for the crime. They were just two random locals with no affiliations so no one was going to miss them, right?

Wrong.

It seems one of the guys was Jury’s son — Jury the head of the Indian Hills charter of the Sons of Anarchy — and that’s a major problem. Things start to come together when one of Lin’s guys reports back to Jax to tell him that they found the local problem, some of their heroin, and a dead body with a shotgun blast through the chest.

Only one body.

Jax obviously knows there were two guys dead when they left the place so what happened to the other body? Bobby calls on Jury to get some information and he plays things cool, calm and collected over the phone. He gives them intel on the one person who was still in the house, but he doesn’t seem to know much about the other guy. At the same time he’s talking to Bobby, Jury is quietly staring at the shotgun used to kill his son and it’s hard to tell how long it’s going to take him to finally exact his revenge on the mother charter for taking his kid away from him and lying about it the entire time.

Jax has his eyes focused on the Chinese but soon enough he’s going to have to watch his back as well.

The Past Repeated

When we first met Brooke Putner last season, she was bashing Tig’s motorcyle with a wrench before chucking through the window of the ice cream shop as an act of revenge against the Sons of Anarchy for some unknown reason. Eventually, Jax tracks the girl down and finds out that she’s the daughter of Emily Putner — who just happened to be on the road at the same time of John Teller during his accident more than a decade ago. When he careened into a tractor trailer and it jack knifed, her mother was taken out in the melee (her mother is also the homeless lady that pops up randomly in some episodes like the season six finale after Juice dumps the carving fork in the trash).

Jax and the crew finally make things right with her and now Brooke is basically living with Gemma and helping her take care of the boys. Taking car is a relative term this week because when Wendy comes home to deliver some laundry to the baby’s room, she walks in while Brooke is having sex with Rat. Oh and the baby was asleep in his crib while this was all going on.

Wendy promises to not tell Gemma what’s going on, but she knows things are only going to get worse when Brooke confesses that she loves Rat and he loves her too. Brooke says that Wendy must be able to sympathize because once upon a time she fell in love with Jax.

It’s almost like Wendy can see her life flashing before her eyes as she stares back at Brooke making the same mistakes she made all those years ago when she first ran into the pretty blonde guy with a rough edge who loved riding motorcycles fast and women even faster. She tries to warn both Brooke and Rat, but her words don’t seem to make much of an impact.

One more note about Gemma’s house — the matriarch of the family is still talking to her dearly departed daughter-in-law in her quiet moments. It’s clear the guilt is ripping at Gemma and talking to Tara as if she’s still around is maybe the only way she can deal with the internal strife she’s facing right now.

“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you didn’t come back. If Wendy hadn’t been such a mess. But then I look at them and I realize, it all happened the way it was supposed to happen. Everything.”
~ Gemma

Is Gemma trying to justify her own wicked actions? It seems that way.

The Plot Thickens

To find an ally against August Marks, Jax has to weave an intricate plan to make sure he eliminates Tyler’s opposition within the One-Niners while quietly turning the Mayans and the Chinese towards a new target far away from the Sons. Here’s how he does it….

Jax meets with Chester and the splinter group of One-Niners, thirsty for revenge against the Mayans who stole their guns and shot their friends two weeks ago. He leads them to the docks where the Mayans have their weapons stashed. They break in along with the Sons and just when it appears as if Chester is getting exactly what he’s been wanting, they are gunned down from behind. The Sons have eliminated the splinter party but that’s just the first step in this master plan.

Next up is Barosky’s part in this plot. He sends the donut patrol over the warehouse to make it look like they caught the One-Niners breaking in and they shot and killed them as part of the protection order the Mayans are currently paying him to do for the small sum of $5000 a week. The cops will deal with the dead bodies, but there are more rogue One-Niners that have to be dispatched before this situation is finished.

You see, Jax told Tyler to let word leak out through his crew that anybody who was interested in a change in leadership should go to this old abandoned club in Stockton where Chester would meet with them to solidify a planned coup to take over. It just so happens, Barosky feeds this info to the Mayans and now the club gets to kill two birds with one stone. The Mayans show up with Nero as part of the crew and blast through all the rogue members of the One-Niners, thus eliminating Tyler’s competition while also exacting revenge for the crew who tried to steal their guns from the warehouse.

At the same time this is happening, one of Henry Lin’s ‘massage’ parlors gets raided by a group of four masked men. In the middle of the beatdown — in a not so subtle message — they tell the woman running the place that August Marks doesn’t give a shit who owns this club. When the masked men make it outside, we find the Sons acting as drivers and the culprits responsible for the beat down are the Grim Bastards. Some dark faces that claimed to be part of Marks’ crew, which will undoubtedly spark rage inside Lin when he finds out about this happening.

And the best part about this entire situation unfolding? When Marks finds out about the splinter group and everything that’s been going down, he gives his permission to take them out by any means necessary. Just hours after he asked for peace, he’s already promoting a war.

“I hate to tell you Mr. Marks but the war is already on — and you’re losing it.”
~ Jax

Jax now has the One-Niners on his side, the Mayans believe they’ve eliminated their opposition, the Chinese are about to turn on August Marks, and he doesn’t know a thing about any of this happening. So far Jax’s plans are coming together quite nicely.

So far being the operative words.

A Better Day

Jax’s day comes to a close and for the most part, things went really well. He is working to get out from under August’s thumb, rebuilding the bridge with the One-Niners and his plot against the Chinese is coming together quite nicely. Sure, he’d like to know what the hell happened to that other dead body from the slaughter a few days ago, but other than that he doesn’t have much to complain about — except some guy took a swing at his mother earlier in the day and not only does it look like he’s going to get away with it, but he’s pressing charges as well.

Gemma: “Rough day?”
Jax: “Yeah, but this’ll help”

Gemma and Jax are at the house where the guy who smacked her resides. She knocks on the door offering a pineapple upside down cake, an apology for getting in his business and flirts just enough to get invited inside for a drink. When he turns around to see what she’s thirsty for, he finds a seething Jax waiting to pounce. Jax punches, kicks and pummels the guy as he takes his frustrations out on the man who dared to slap his mother.

A Son’s work is never done.

Notes of Anarchy:

The main song featured in the episode towards the end is titled ‘Paper Prince’ by Foy Vance. You can hear the track below:

On the next Sons of Anarchy titled ‘Poor Little Lambs’ – Jax continues to go after the Chinese but it looks like they are going after the One Niners….