Sons of Anarchy Recap “Some Strange Eruption”: State of Love and Trust

In the latest Sons of Anarchy recap, Jax seeks revenge on the Chinese for the Diosa massacre and Juice finally sees Gemma for who she truly is…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

No matter how hard Jax tried to calculate his every move this season to dismantle Henry Lin’s organization after learning that he was responsible for Tara’s death, there was little chance that emotions wouldn’t eventually boil over and spill out in a blood war on the streets. The grand design was for Jax to take Lin apart piece by piece and then in the end when he was all alone with nowhere to turn, he would offer him a hand before using the other one to kill him dead.

It all changed last week when the Chinese found out that Jax and his crew were responsible for the hijacking that took place a few weeks back that saw four Triad members and some highly valuable customers killed and four bricks of heroin stolen. Their retaliation resulted in 16 people being shot dead at Diosa as payback and now the Sons know that they’ve been betrayed but more importantly they can no longer hide in the shadows. This is a war and all the masks are off, let the killing begin.

The Outlaw Code

The episode opens this week with Jax simmering on a couch at Diosa, surrounded by dead women, gunned down by the Chinese as revenge for the Sons taking out one of their gun shipments. All Jax can do is take long draws off his cigarette with his eyes fixed on Collette laying motionless on the ground, bullet in her head, echoing an eerily similar scenario as the day he walked in to find his wife Tara butchered and bleeding out on the kitchen floor. A few minutes later more bad news pours in as the gun warehouse where the club was storing weapons was also hit and West was killed in the process. Now the Chinese have taken out SAMCRO’s business, their ’employees’ and even murdered a member. This certainly isn’t going to end well.

The calls start going out to the other members who weren’t around last night to hear the news. Chibs finds out after showering with his new bedmate, Sheriff Althea Jarry, and while he can’t explain what’s going on he warns her to get ready because she’s going to receive a call of her own soon enough. Gemma gets a call as well to come back because everybody from family to Crow Eaters are getting locked down at Red Woody for safety. The move forces Gemma to once again abandon Juice, who is in a shaky state at best living in a hotel room by himself. She doesn’t tell him what’s going on, but promises she’ll be back to get him ready and packed so he can relocate to her father’s place in Oregon.

Back at Diosa, the club agrees on a plan of action while Nero opts to head to Stockton to let Barosky know what happened to Collette. When Jarry shows up a few moments later she lays it all out on the line for Jax and the club. In the last two weeks during her first days on the job, Charming has witnessed the biggest mass murder the town has ever known and no matter how much she wants to stay in control, if these kinds of crimes happen, state police, Federal Agents and basically anyone with a gun and a badge is going to show up in town ready to knock heads.

“The only way this doesn’t crush both of us is if you bend with me. I don’t give a shit what that looks like. I don’t care how the intel is delivered. But if I don’t get some cooperation, this all cracks wide open and none of us walk away whole.”
~ Jarry

The new sheriff also issues a direct message to Unser that he needs to start picking sides because playing both ends against the middle isn’t getting anyone, anywhere quickly or safely for that matter.

Jarry is further conflicted by her new relationship with Chibs because he’s standing on one side of the fence bound by outlaw code where talking to the cops just doesn’t work and she needs to produce some results before she’s either pulled off the job or Federal Agents stomp in and takeover making her nothing more than a local figurehead with a badge. She explains to Chibs that the money she takes from the club is her way of working with the bad guys — they aren’t going away, she isn’t going away — but by finding a way to work together, they both stay profitable and no innocent people get gunned down in the process. Right now there are 16 dead people in Charming town limits among the innocents already paying for SAMCRO’s crimes.

This One Time At Band Camp

Before the club can exact revenge they first need to find out who ratted them to the Chinese. The only people that knew about the hit were SAMCRO and the Indian Hills charter so the leak had to come from outside the circle (reminder it was Jury from Indian Hills). Nero breaks the news to Barosky about Collette being one of the victims at Diosa although he already heard about it from the police scanner. There’s bigger problems brewing outside, however, as the Chinese have been waiting for either Nero or the Sons to show up to share the news with Barosky.

Seconds later, Nero is trying to understand why the Chinese hit back without proof that the Sons actually took down their gun shipment. Lin’s crew isn’t worried about providing concrete information any longer, they just want answers and they want payback. Nero will cooperate and deliver Jax to Lin or they will send in the guards they have posted outside of his son’s home to exact another measure of revenge.

Before Jax and his crew can get to Stockton to join Nero, they first stop by Red Woody to check on the other girls and the rest of the families to make sure everyone is safe. Wendy is taking are of the boys, Gemma’s minding after Lyla, who is a mess after even more people she cared about died, and even little Abel isn’t dealing with this entire situation very well. Jax finally takes time out of his day to spend about two minutes with the little boy to explain why they are staying there.

“Daddy’s responsible for everyone here. It’s my job to keep them safe.”
~ Jax

Jax’s words run a little too deep for the poor kid because later in the episode he’s wielding a ball-peen hammer standing in front of his brother so he can protect him the same way his daddy is protecting everybody else. With each passing hour the damage being done to this kid is just heartbreaking.

At chapel, Jax ignores the fact that August Marks has called twice and moves onto the business of finding the rat who sold them out to the Chinese. They head off to Barosky’s, convinced that it was him or one of his people that gave the Chinese the location on their gun warehouse. When they arrive, Nero is waiting for them and hand delivers a big punch right to Jax’s jaw. Once they get done scuffling, Nero explodes at Jax for lying to him this entire time while he was systematically going after Lin behind his back. Nero’s doing his best to play Switzerland, but there’s no more neutral in this war.

Jax finally confesses the reason why he’s been going after Lin — he killed Tara. Nero doesn’t buy it at first until Jax says that Gemma saw Lin’s guys leaving his house the night Tara was killed. She was an eyewitness to the crime and now Lin has to pay. Nero is torn up by everything that’s happened in this last 24 hours. He saw a once thriving business cut down in a bloody massacre that would make Kill Bill jealous. His son is being threatened for nothing more than having the last name Padilla. And now he finds out that the people he’s been working with for months were responsible for the death of an innocent woman like Tara. Maybe it’s finally time to retire to that ranch. Nero might be ready to walk away and Jax is fine with whatever decision he makes so long as he at least gives him a heads up before he does it.

Meanwhile, Barosky provides the information for the night guard that would have been watching their gun warehouse the previous evening when the guns were jacked and West was killed. It’s an off duty police officer who also owns a local pawn shop, so the club goes to visit him to get some answers. He’s not ready to break at first, but Tig’s particular method of interrogation warms him up to the idea of giving some answers.

Tig: “I’m gonna shove this flute right up his ass.”
Happy: “You are so gay”
Tig: “Just gay enough”

Barosky’s guy gives up part of the information they were looking for — he was contacted on his personal cell the night before and offered $2000 to stop patrolling the warehouse for a few hours. He picked up the cash and moved on, but something still doesn’t sit right about this whole situation. Barosky snaps and kills the guy for making him look bad. I started to wonder in that moment if Barosky wasn’t possibly covering up his own tracks? He’s a money hungry opportunist and much like Nero since he’s come to know Jax and the Sons, Barosky has seen a lot of death and destruction around his town. Maybe this was a payoff to finally rid Stockton of the Sons once and for all? He was awfully quick to pull that trigger.

Waging War

The club doesn’t get much information out of Barosky’s guy (obviously) so they head back to Red Woody for one final pow-wow session before laying out the plan that will see them go after Lin and finally close the door on this rivalry. Nero is ahead of them and he speaks to Gemma about Tara’s murder. She reveals that the Chinese were responsible, but he couldn’t know because it was Jax’s business. Nero is still conflicted about where to turn, especially with his boy in extreme danger right now.

“I’m here trying to keep the peace while Jax is out there waging war. Cause this war has coming to Charming now and it’s going get a whole lot bloodier.”
~Nero

Before Jax and the crew can leave, he has to okay Gemma to drive to Oregon because her father isn’t doing well and may not make it through the night. Of course like always, Gemma is uttering nothing but lies — she needs to escape the club escort so she can get Juice out of town in a hurry so she pulls Unser into the fold as well as her ‘backup’ until she gets out of San Joaquin. With Gemma heading up north, Jax then concentrates on the real business at hand. Like a master chess player, Jax puts all of the pieces in place, positioning his rooks and bishops in just the right spots and now he’s ready to call checkmate on Lin, the Chinese Triad, and anyone that had anything to do with Tara’s murder.

The Stockton Showdown

The big reveal this week with Jax’s plan to sabotage the Chinese wasn’t as slick as it appeared on the surface, but it all played out with one major exception. Here’s out it played out — Jax called Lin offering to settle up with them and call a truce by offering to return their heroin in a small exchange between two Sons and the Chinese crew. Nero shows up at Lin’s place 10 minutes later telling him that Jax is setting him up for a downfall and when they arrive at the meet, his entire crew will be slaughtered by the Sons waiting for them inside a warehouse nearby. Nero tells Lin to bring an army with him so he can combat the Sons.

When Lin shows up, Jax and Chibs are there alone offering the heroin they stole in the raid a few weeks back. Lin plays his hand and the men blow the warehouse apart with bullets only to find a satchel waiting inside with three bricks of uncut heroin awaiting them. Jax then plays the second part of his plan. He tells Lin that he was acting on orders of August Marks to hit the gun trade as well as the massage parlors that got taken out. He’s offering to hand over Marks so long as the war between the Triad and the Sons can come to an end.

Lin didn’t get ambushed so he takes Jax at his word at least temporary so they can get some answers. They drive off from ports, but quickly get stopped by local police. This is part three of Jax’s maniacal plan. He paid off Barosky’s dirty cops to stop the convoy, tie up all of Lin’s crew and hold them at gunpoint while he finally had it out with the man responsible for killing his wife and now slaughtering 16 people at Diosa. Lin clearly looks confused when he’s being taunted about Tara’s death, but no amount of explanation is going to calm Jax down at this point.

“We’re going to wipe out every trace of you and your organization Henry. You’re done. Just a dirty Oakland memory.”
~Jax

Jax and Lin throw down and while the Chinese Triad leader gets in a few shots, ultimately the street fight know how of the SAMCRO president pays off as he gets the upper hand and starts landing punch after punch after punch, each one fueling the anger and rage inside of him. The plan is to finish off Lin, kill his crew and then dump them somewhere outside of Stockton. Lin brought his army, which means there’s no one else minding the shop, so when everybody is dead that’s the end of the Chinese Triad in Oakland.

Before Jax can kill Lin, Chibs gets a call from his new lady warning him that the real Stockton cops are on their way with the SWAT team. You see, Wendy happened to mention to Unser that when she was riding around with Nero that day looking at Abel’s new school that he was pulled over and questioned about Jax hijacking the gun deal and she’s pretty sure the guy’s name was Henry. It doesn’t take long for Unser to put it all together and he makes the call to Jarry to let her know that it was the Chinese who took out the hit on Diosa. So in response, Jarry had the cops trailing Lin and while he might be close to execution, the cops swooping in to arrest everybody is certainly better than death.

Jax has to cut his revenge trip short after finding out that the cops are closing in. Chibs reminds him ‘we’ll get to him inside’, which makes me believe that the club will be calling on a favor from Ron Tully and the Aryan Brotherhood to get rid of their Asian problem once they arrive at county jail. Lin lays on the ground bleeding as the cops arrive and he mutters ‘what the hell was that?’ — notating once again that he’s completely clueless as to why Jax came after him, not to mention the accusation that he somehow had Tara murdered.

State of Love and Trust

Juice is walking a razor’s edge just waiting to get out of town and away from any place where the Sons could find and kill him. In the brief moment this episode where he steps outside to get some candy while also finding out about the massacre at Diosa thanks to a local newspaper, he spots an Asian man lurking around the corner and when he sees Juice he quickly gives chase. Juice gets back inside and grabs his gun, but the persistant man isn’t going away.

A few hours later with Juice asleep on the bed, the man returns and lets himself into the room. Juice hides before he walks inside and then clubs him with the gun. Juice knows deep down that this is blowback from the Chinese threat coming down on the Sons and when the man wakes up and tries to escape, he buries a bullet in the back of his head. The man falls dead to the ground while still staring up at Juice. “Don’t look at me” he shouts as Juice rattles off a few more rounds to really kill this guy dead.

When Unser and Gemma show up to get Juice out of there, they find the dead body, a whole lot of blood and Juice holding onto his gun.

“We did this!” Juice yells at Gemma, which confuses Unser to no end although something tells me he’s going to be the one to put all these pieces together. Gemma finally tells Unser about the Chinese going after Tara and that’s why the club is embroiled in a war with them. Unser also has to be the bearer of bad tidings about this murder — the guy who ‘broke’ into the room wasn’t a Triad member hunting for Sons — he was the hotel manager coming after Juice because the room was only paid up for a few days, which expired last night. While Juice is clearly not all the way stable, even he can’t help but feel horrible for taking an innocent man’s life. The last time he did that was when he blew away Miles when he found out about Juice working with the cops. The next episode he hung himself. It seems this time, however, that the murder wakes Juice up because his car ride with Gemma is about to get very interesting.

She gets him into the car and they start driving towards Oregon. Juice passes out in the passenger seat, but when they come to the fork in the road, Gemma opts to go south instead of north, clearly far away from the path that would take them to her father’s house in duck country. When Juice finally wakes up, he sees a sign that’s clearly nowhere near Oregon and he questions why Gemma is taking him this way?

She tells him a pile of lies about the club sending a charter to meet them and she’s using Nero to help him escape. Nero can be trusted. Except Juice knows Nero would never help him — he finally reveals to Gemma why the club wants him dead. It’s because he killed Darvany on Jax’s orders and then told the secret to Nero, which sent him into a rage about an innocent woman being killed for the sake of SAMCRO. He betrayed his king and now the club wants him dead. By killing Darvany he also knows for a fact that Nero would never, ever help him escape.

Juice finds the gun waiting for him in Gemma’s handbag and as they struggle, the car crashes into a tree. Gemma tries to escape, but Juice pins her down with a few shots before he confronts the woman who was supposed to be his savior, who quickly turned into his executioner

Juice: “I saved you. I trusted you.”
Gemma: “I couldn’t trust you. I’m sorry”

The scene ends with Gemma in tears begging for her life in a kind of delicious irony considering Tara never even got a chance to say her final words because she was choking on dirty dishwater while her vile mother-in-law was burying a carving fork into her skull. In theory this was a terrifying cliffhanger, but previews have already shown both Juice and Gemma alive in future episodes. Juice finally has his meeting with Alvarez and the Mayans next week where he offers to betray the club, but something about this entire situation doesn’t sit well with me. I’m beginning to think Juice allows Gemma to stay alive if she can find a way for him to get back into the club. Maybe that’s the card he plays and he’s sent into Alvarez as a mole to help burn the Mayans alive as well?

Kurt Sutter rarely puts anything on a straight line so if there’s a scene already being shown where Juice is offering to turn on SAMCRO, you can almost bet there’s a curve coming soon and I’m beginning to think saving the guy who was so universally chosen to die this season might be the kind of plot twist he would just love to unleash.

One More Shot

With Lin and his crew headed to jail on gun and drug charges, Jarry has the win she needed to keep the Federal heat off her town. Unser is stuck picking up the pieces of Juice’s murder scene, Wendy and Nero are hanging out at Red Woody with their kids playing and laughing (I really hope they cleaned up all the props from filming Skankenstein). And Jax and the crew have one final job for the day as they drive by one of Lin’s businesses and gun down all of his soldiers waiting outside.

Somebody was going to die today, Jax was going to make sure of it.

Notes of Anarchy:

— The main song featured in the close of tonight’s episode was Joshua James, The Forest Rangers and Billy Valentine with a cover of the classic song ‘Age of Aquarius’ as well as a rendition of ‘Let the Sun Shine In’. You can pick up the track on iTunes.

— I noticed Jax has not only warmed up to Wendy lately with her care giving to the boys, but she even got a kiss on the cheek from him in tonight’s episode. Maybe these old drinking buddies are about to reunite? I was personally rooting for a Jax/Lyla connection but maybe that would be too weird? Then again, Jax did make out with his half sister once upon a time and discuss mommy fetishes with his actual mother last week so nothing’s really off limits on this show is it?

— How adorable was it when Chucky told Jax that they were his family? To think this guy showed up as a strange little, over masturbating accountant a few years back and now he’s like family.

Next week’s episode of Sons of Anarchy titled ‘Smoke Em If You Got Em’ will showcase Jax and SAMCRO trying to bring their war with the Mayans to an end as Juice offers to sacrifice the club for protection from their wrath.