Sons of Anarchy Recap ‘Toil and Till’: The Killing Fields

Jax continues to plot against the Chinese in his war of retribution but what happens when his betrayal hits a little too close to home….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

There are no lengths to which Jax Teller will not travel to avenge the death of his wife Tara, and in his own mind he’s been as calculating as possible as he begins to tear away at his enemy’s supply line and soldiers. Sun Tzu said it best in the ‘The Art of War’ when he he stated, “All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

Last week on the season premiere of ‘Sons of Anarchy’, Jax revealed the person behind his wife’s death to be Henry Lin, the leader of the Chinese Triad mob operating in Northern California. It was of course a lie spawned by his murderous and treacherous mother Gemma, who actually committed the act, but the only way she knew how to give her son a target to go after that didn’t have her name on it was to feed him an enemy that was already on the tip of his tongue. Jax cut down Lin’s uncle and several of his men last season so the nephew striking back at his family seemed plausible.

Revenge was inevitable.

So after executing the soldier he believed to be responsible for burying that carving fork into the back of his wife’s head, Jax is now systematically dismantling Lin’s operation piece by piece while operating under the guise of secrecy. He needs to twist and turn every limb of Lin’s organization until they are broken or severed, and when he’s out of options with nowhere to turn, Jax will be the one left standing on the ashes of his once powerful empire.

How did we get to that point this week? Let’s start out with the plot to take down Lin.

Blood on the Streets

Before Jax can fully go after Lin, he has to meet with August Marks, who still controls the biggest gang and the full gun trade in Northern California after he handed over the reigns to the operation last season. Jax isn’t about to let on that Lin is the one he believes killed his wife so he has to keep a stone face when dealing with Marks, who has a strong stance on his thirst for revenge.

Marks is trying to build out of the shadow of Damon Pope and taking over the gun selling in this part of the state is a huge start to his overall business plan. What he doesn’t need, however, is for motorcycle clubs and street gangs to start spilling over into the street with blood washing down the drainpipes every night. Sure, he’ll make a few gun sales locally, but what’s a case full of weapons sold versus truckloads full he can sell if he’s not constantly looking over his back for Federal law enforcement.

He lays it out to Jax pretty simply and truth be told, Marks has some wise words of advice. Too bad Jax has no intention of following them.

“The greatest lesson Mr. Pope taught me is patience – in business or in the street, don’t matter. If your emotions say now, your head’s gotta say later. Clarity settles all scores, pays back all debts”
— August Marks

Jax agrees but what Marks doesn’t know is at the same time they are shaking hands, Tig and Rat are over by a Chinese warehouse staking out Lin’s trucks getting ready to hand off a shipment of guns. They got the intel from Connor the Irishman, and the plan is to hijack the gun buy and knock off a few of Lin’s best men along the way. Once again, no one can know it’s the Sons so everything has to be off the radar — even when Tig forces poor Rat to look like he’s giving him some back alley head when the Chinese trucks roll by with their weapons.

Even in the face of chaos, Kurt Sutter still has a sense of humor although you wonder if Niko Nicotera got at least a bonus for sitting face first in Kim Coates’ lap for at least a couple of shots. Or maybe that was his bonus? No judgment here.

The plan is soon revealed as Jax calls in help from the Indian Hills charter of SOA in Nevada led by his old pal Jury. If you don’t remember Jury, he’s popped up a few times during the series most notably in season one when his MC called ‘The Devil’s Tribe’ is running dangerously close to Mayan borders and he’s having a hard time holding his charter together without being overrun. Jury was in Vietnam with Jax’s father John, so when the club comes to help out they ultimately decide to patch over his MC and make it a Sons of Anarchy charter. He popped up again last season during Jax’s big meeting to reveal that his club was getting out of the gun trade and moving in a more legitimate direction.

Jax lays it all out for Jury in plain English while plotting his course of revenge against Lin and the Triad.

“I’m going to wait till Lin’s vulnerable, out of allies and I’m going to reach out, offer him a helping hand. Once I’m inside, got his total trust, I’m going to let him know that I was the one that ruined him. Then I’m going to look around his table at his men, his family, ask him who he wants spared. The first person he points to, that’s who I’m killing and then everyone else he cares about. I’m going to let him live in the agony of that for a little while and then I’m going to end him. As slowly and painfully as possible.”
— Jax Teller

Obviously, Jury notes this is a far cry from the declaration Jax made they last time they were together, but the SAMCRO president tells him in no uncertain terms that the direction he was headed is far off course after finding out that the Chinese are responsible for the slaughter of the mother of his children.

Jury calls in a couple of local thugs to help out with the plan in action that day. Jax and the boys will raid Lin’s gun trade that day, stealing the weapons and taking out all of his men so no one has time to report back to the Triad leader. It’s the first real strike they’ll make in this silent war against the Chinese.

Cut Loose

When we last left Unser, he was bound and gagged and sitting in Wendy’s bathtub as a prisoner after he discovered Juice was hiding out in her place to escape the wrath of the club. Thankfully as we pick up this week, Juice has come to his senses and decides to cut Unser free and let him go. At the heart of it all, Juice isn’t a killer, he never has been. He’s not built for the mercenary lifestyle. He’s either killed under orders or out of necessity. Neither of those situations fit when it comes to the former Charming chief of police.

Unser doesn’t run away, however, and instead sits to listen to Juice’s woes despite his pleas to just get lost. When Unser asks if he’s on the run because of what happened to Tara, he quickly answers back by telling him it’s ‘old sins’.

When he does finally leave the apartment, he makes a beeline over to the police station where he meets the new sheriff in town — Althea Jarry. She’s a former leader of a gang task force out of Stockton and now she’s got a new consulting investigator on her payroll as well — his name is Wayne Unser.

Unser accepts the offer first laid at his feet last week by Patterson and opts to team up with the local law enforcement instead of battling against it. He also knows this is the best possible way to get answers about Tara’s death without running into the police. Why not work with them to find the person responsible instead of fighting the tides? She hands over the files and immediately looks to get a lay of the land when dealing with the Sons of Anarchy. She quickly dismisses them as a bunch of leather-clad rednecks who enjoy motorcycles and bad facial hair a little too much.

Unser quickly corrects her misconceptions about who she’s dealing with.

“Jax Teller is formidable. He’s as smart as he is dangerous”
— Wayne Unser

After landing his new job, Unser heads back to the garage to share his latest news with Gemma. Not the part about working with the cops, but instead the fact that he knows Juice is hidden in Wendy’s apartment and it’s Gemma that put him there. He’s not asking too many questions about why, but he’s not going to say anything either because he’s tired of counting bodies just like everybody else.

Gemma offers to get him some tea to calm his tired nerves after spending the night tied up in a bathtub, but when she goes inside his trailer she finds Unser asleep and a file marked from the San Joaquin Sheriff’s department. When she peaks inside, all she finds are the horrific reminders of the crime she committed less than two weeks ago. Tara laying lifeless on the ground, blood scattered about from the struggle and a sink stained with the awful reminder of what she did in the act of ‘protecting her son’.

Time To Go

Gemma hightails it over to Wendy’s because now there are three people who know where Juice is hiding out and that’s at least two too many. She hands him some cash, a new burner phone and the address to her father’s place a couple of hours away. Nate is still in an adult care facility and the house is up for sale, but it’s far enough away with nobody around that Juice can escape and it’s not likely anyone will find him there.

Before he leaves, Juice asks Gemma about the plan they set in motion by telling Jax that it was the Chinese who killed Tara. She admits to setting up one of Lin’s guys and while she didn’t stick around to see the action, Gemma knows Jax killed him. A lot.

“He needed it…closure”
— Gemma

The Payback Begins

Out at the exchange, Jax and his guys show up in a series of trucks while the Chinese are making their deal. Within seconds, a dozen members are piling out of the vehicles, brandishing automatic weapons and plowing down gang member after gang member before know what hit them. While the shootout is ensuing, the lead Triad general is able to grab a briefcase and make it to a panel truck to try and get away.

Jax and Chibs go in hot pursuit and eventually run him off the road. When they catch up, they find out the briefcase was filled with pure, uncut heroin. Lin’s business is trading guns for drugs and this plays right into Jax’s hands. He kills the last member of the gang and heads back to settle the spoils of the day.

With the Chinese gangsters dead, the Sons load up all the guns and stash the heroin while piling all of the weapons they used into a bag. Jury puts his shotgun in last as Jax thanks him for the help in taking out Lin’s army. He also apologizes to the two local thugs Jury hired after he smashed their truck in the pursuit of the final Triad general who tried to get away. He offers to get them some extra cash as payback, but when they hand over their home address, you immediately get a sense of dead as Jax smiles straight back at them.

Jax doesn’t smile much these days so you know something bad is happening soon.

Let’s Go to School

While the madness is happening in a field somewhere outside of Modesto, Nero is making a new friend in Wendy. She’s playing mom today because it’s time to check out pre-schools for Abel, but Gemma wants no part in the process. She instead stays behind with the boys while poor little Able just keeps asking about his mommy and daddy. It’s a heartbreaking scene when he questions his grandmother about his mom going to heaven, and if you don’t at least well up a little bit watching this poor innocent kid deal with the reality of death, you might want to check to make sure you still have a pulse.

“Your mommy was an angel and all angels go to heaven”
— Gemma

While the gravity of her actions continue to slap Gemma in the face, Nero and Wendy commiserate on the way to Abel’s new school. Nero shares with her the pains of his own addiction to heroin and the rehab he underwent at a special facility called Chino. He spent over 3000 days there during one stretch and when his heroin habit spiraled out of control, Nero found himself on the floor covered in piss and blood knowing there was only one direction go from here and that was up.

Now years later he’s reminded of the actions he took in those days whenever he looks at his son Lucius, who is still suffering from his own mother who was a junkie. Of course the story hits home for Wendy, who was also a user when Abel was born and she nearly cost him his life before he ever even had a chance to breathe.

Once they finally arrive at the school, Wendy convinces Nero to be her sidekick for the day, but in exchange she’s going to have to go to Stockton with him while he conducts a little business.

The meeting Nero has is at Barosky’s bakery where he’s brokered a meeting between the president of the Stockton chapter of the Mayans (Oscar) and the former police officer who now runs the ports in town. It’s a machismo contest almost immediately as Oscar and Barosky are both looking to tug at each other’s capes, but Nero intervenes and tries his best to get things back to business. Long story short, the Mayans want to keep their drugs in a warehouse by the port. They need Barosky’s guys to protect it and also look the other way when they need to bring in the shipments and have access to the building a few times a week. Barosky offers up his terms and Oscar immediately balks before telling him he’ll take it to the table for a vote.

The tension is high and this is one relationship that probably won’t end well when it’s all said and done.

On the way back from Stockton, Nero gets run down by Lin and his crew, who are there to find out answers about the bloodbath that happened just minutes ago. Lin believes it’s the Sons going after his shipment, but Nero backs him off and promises to bring Jax in so they can get to the bottom of what happened. The lies just keep touching more and more people and now Nero has been drawn into the web of deceipt as well.

The Killing Fields

When Jax and his boys arrive to meet Lin, they know nothing about the slaughter that happened to his men and know even less about the guns or the heroin now missing from the scene. Lin is not in the mood for games and he makes a promise to Jax and all of SAMCRO if they cross him. The battle won’t just be fought on the streets of Oakland and Stockton. It’s going to land at their front doorsteps. Something tells me Lin isn’t kidding one bit.

“I will turn Mayberry into a goddamn killing field”
— Lin

To cover their tracks, Jax and his boys go back to the address where the two local thugs are living so they can ‘deliver’ some pay off cash. Instead they deliver a couple of shotgun blasts to the head while dropping off a brick of the Chinese heroin. These guys unknowingly just became the Lee Harvey Oswalds of Jax’s war against the Triads — just a bunch of patsies.

Bobby makes the call to let Lin know that they found out who hit his shipment and all is right with the world again. Tig, Happy and the crew are getting rid of the Chinese gangsters by burying them in the woods, although after taking care of the church group last week they are starting to run out of spaces. Thankfully, SAMCRO has Happy and he’s always got a line of the week just waiting to be unleashed.

Happy: “I know a thousand places to bury bodies”
Tig: “Of course you do”

Jax finally heads home so he can be with his boys. He kisses his mother goodnight and crawls into bed with Abel, pulled close so he can feel his heartbeat. It’s the first time since Tara’s death that Jax has been able to see his sons although it’s hard to imagine he’s not doing so with a mountain of guilt just crushing his heart. Jax believes it was his ongoing war with the Chinese that cost Tara her life. As much as he’s gaining vengeance right now, the pain of knowing that he played a part in her death is likely ripping him up inside.

Choices. It’s all about choices.

Same for Juice, who has a clear escape out of town but instead calls Chibs from his burner phone before finally hanging up when hearing his old friend’s voice. He can’t let go of the life even though the life let go of him. Instead of going to Gemma’s father’s house, he goes back to Wendy’s and sits on the floor, haunted by the reality of where he is and the wish of where he wants to be.

Choices. It’s all about choices.

Jax needed a fall guy for his plot to unravel against the Chinese and the two local thugs Jury hired were the perfect foil for his plan. The choice he made cost those two young men their lives, but in the process kept SAMCRO protected from the Chinese realizing who was really pulling the strings. The only problem is Jury shows up at the house just minutes after the men were killed and when he sees them laid out on the ground, gunshots to both of them, he immediately runs and clasps one close to his breast.

It’s clear this was either Jury’s son or some kind of relative and when he got them involved in this plot, he had no idea the full depth of Jax’s plan. Before he can process what’s just happened, he spots the shotgun he used earlier in the day to help take out the Chinese gangsters. In Jury’s mourning, he realizes that the club he loves and the charter he just protected turned on him in the worst way possible. They took away his blood and that runs much thicker than leather.

Thanks to Jax’s unquenchable thirst for revenge, retribution is coming and little does he know it’s coming from within.

Notes of Anarchy:

The two featured tracks from the show this week — the first came during the chase scene when Jax and Chibs are in the truck going after the Chinese leader making a getaway. The song is ‘Right to Left’ by The Chimpz

The second song, which accompanies the final minutes of the show comes from an artist named Yelawolf and the track is called ‘Till It’s Gone’. You can pick the song up on Amazon (the version on iTunes is not explicit).

The next episode will air on Tuesday, September 23 titled ‘Playing with Monsters’ where Jax looks to cause a further rift in the war with the Chinese while Juice tries to find the answers that will give him back the life he once had.