Sons of Anarchy S07E12: "Red Rose"

WOW. Let's just get straight to it. Tim and Kaitlin, what'd you think of "Red Rose"?

TIM: I believe "ZOMG!" is what the kids would say in response to this episode. Look, I think I've been pretty open about what I want from this final season of Sons of Anarchy, and that's for series creator Kurt Sutter to level everything and everyone by the time the show ends. And the real demolition began in the penultimate episode, "Red Rose," which featured THREE totally major deaths. Juice, dead. Unser, dead. Gemma, dead. This was Sons of Anarchy's Red Wedding. So yeah, I got the deaths that I've been craving, but was the episode any good? I'd put it in the "pretty good" category, but it wasn't without its problems. Kaitlin, I expect you to jump into this conversation hotter than a Harley engine after a cross-country ride. What did YOU think?



KAITLIN: I'd like to take several parts of "Red Rose" and light them on fire—not because it wasn't a worthy penultimate episode of Sons of Anarchy, but because it reopened old wounds and hurt my insides. And while you may be excited to see the show spill some blood, I was holding out hope that the writers would take the unexpected route with at least one of those deaths. Despite the episode's feature-length running time and several frustrating scenes in which characters just reiterated what we already knew, "Red Rose" was an emotional and highly effective installment that wrapped up several ongoing storylines and set up what will surely be some epic finale showdowns.

TIM: And yet I have reservations about saying it was great. "Suits of Woe" was a great episode; "Red Rose" felt like Sons of Anarchy was trying to mop things up as the timer ran down. Case in point... JUICE! NOOOOOOOOOOO! No no no no no no no.

Of course, it's not like there was any other possible outcome for him, right? He was marked for mayhem a looooong time ago. And you were spot-on in saying this episode reopened old wounds. Theo Rossi was fantastic and Juice has always been one of my favorite characters, but thinking about how the last several seasons have gone for him is super depressing; seeing his run end at the hands of Marilyn Manson made me wonder if he got hosed. However, Sons of Anarchy is a tragedy in a leather vest, and Juice's run exemplified just how awful the outlaw life can be. I just cared for the guy so much, it was sad to see him bleed out on the floor of the prison cafeteria. At least it was Cherry Pie from a Can Day.







KAITLIN: I think we all know how I feel about Juice by now, and so I will spare you my heartfelt tears. Many fans will argue that Juice should've died a long time ago, but there's a reason he didn't and it boils down to Rossi's subtle and understated performance in the role. We've often talked about Charlie Hunnam, Maggie Siff, and Katey Sagal when discussing the show's finest performances, but Rossi was a consistently underrated player on this series for years. He brought a quiet sadness to a character who was also extremely volatile when backed into a corner. After his suicide attempt, Juice spent several seasons desperately trying to avoid the reaper's ax, only to eventually walk willingly to his death. His downward spiral, while incredibly sad to watch, is what ultimately allowed Rossi to fully utilize his skill set. For that, I'll be forever grateful that Sutter allowed to him live to see the penultimate episode. Did Juice deserve a better death scene? Probably. But Rossi gets an A+.



TIM: Okay, next death: Unser. His was the only demise of the episode that cause me to audibly gasp and jump up from my chair (my wife heard me from the other room and nearly called 911). You got me here, Sutter! I didn't expect Jax to pull the trigger on old man Unser just because Unser was doing his job/protecting his friend. Surely there was another way this could have gone down, but obviously Jax didn't see it that way. I know Jax has been treating Unser like trash for a while now, but killing him can only mean that Jax always intended on killing Gemma, and Unser became an unfortunate witness who couldn't be left behind. Just like Juice's death, Unser's inspired me to think about how he's been used in recent seasons, and again, I felt nothing but sadness. This will be an unpopular opinion for many Sons of Anarchy fans, but to me, Unser's death was the least deserved of the episode, and therefore the most tragic and powerful. And his blood is unfortunately on Nero's hands, because it was Nero who sent Unser to bring Gemma back in the first place.

KAITLIN: Unser's death marks the third "unnecessary" offing on TV in as many days (see also: The Walking Dead and Sleepy Hollow), and it was the one death in "Red Rose" that truly pissed me off, because it flies in the face of everything Jax said he was going to do after learning the truth. After all the talk about the needless pain caused by Gemma's lie, Jax shooting Unser because Unser was standing in Jax's way made zero sense from a storytelling standpoint. It didn't happen in the heat of the moment—that house was eerily quiet as Unser tried to talk Jax down—and it wasn't self-defense, so I ask you, what did Sons of Anarchy have to gain from this development? Sure, Unser would've been a loose end after Jax killed Gemma, but haven't enough innocent people died because of Gemma? Didn't Jax learn ANYTHING? He sat at the table with the other charter presidents and implied that he was willing to die for what he'd done because of her lie, and then he turned around hours later and murdered Unser because Unser had the audacity to try to save Jax from doing something that would probably destroy him. As Nero said, this wasn't about saving Gemma, it was about saving Jax. And now Jax has done the unthinkable; not only did he pointlessly murder Unser, he also murdered his mother in the garden, and I'm not sure there's any coming back from that.

TIM: This is where I will give Sutter all the credit in the world. Years of watching television has conditioned me to expect most showrunners to fail when it comes to making tough choices and killing off characters they're obviously attached to, but Sutter didn't waver. He was three for three in "Red Rose," building up the tension of expected deaths and then following through with them. And this time, he killed his own real-life wife on-screen! The scene with Gemma in the garden (look at the flowers, Gemma!) wonderfully emphasized exactly what was going on: Jax was about to kill his own mother. Her calling him "my baby boy" was a doozy, and Jax's temporary hesitation illustrated that he understood exactly what a fucked-up situation he was in. To wit: HE KILLED HIS MOM EXECUTION-STYLE. As usual, I'll note my hesitation by saying that I believe Jax had other options, but in the world of Sons of Anarchy, there are no half measures. This is a melodramatic soap opera slathered in gun powder and whiskey, so of course Jax killed the woman who brought him into the world in the penultimate episode of the series, and Gemma never even tried to convince him to do otherwise.





KAITLIN: Wait, you're praising Sutter for making the tough call to kill a character he was attached to? This is the same man who let Clay live well past his expiration date because he wasn't ready to say goodbye to Ron Perlman! The decision to have Jax kill Gemma couldn't've been that difficult to make after what she did to Tara, and I'm going to be so bold as to say that NOT killing Gemma would have been the tougher decision here. Everyone expected her to die Jax's hand—hell, everyone WANTED her to die by Jax's hand—and she did. It was as predictable as it was poetic. Letting her live would have been a bold choice and one that I think would have had more people talking.

Don't get me wrong, I see why her death was necessary—there were times this season where I was ready to pull the trigger myself—but I also stand by my previous statements that living would have been a harsher punishment for Gemma (and Katey Sagal agrees with me!). Knowing she was languishing away in a prison cell and being forced to live with the knowledge that she'd failed her son, that he hated her and would never forgive her, would've been a more satisfying conclusion to me. All she ever wanted was to protect Jax, and in the end she couldn't save him.

Right before Jax pulled the trigger, Gemma said, "I love you, Jackson, from the deepest, purest part of my heart. You have to do this. It's who we are, sweetheart." My interpretation of that statement is that, until her dying breath, Gemma was manipulating her son. Jax hesitated in the garden, and that hesitation spoke volumes. Had he let her talk him into this horrific act, or was he finally cutting the puppet strings?

At any rate, I think we have an answer for the question we posed in "Suits of Woe," about whether Sons of Anarchy is a story of demise or a story of redemption. I think it's clear that Jax won't survive the series finale, because I don't see him living with the guilt of murdering his mother. Even if he could carry the weight of his actions, the other charters are out there conducting a mayhem vote, which makes that scene where Jax and Wendy got it on a goodbye rather than a reconciliation.

TIM: Whoa whoa whoa! You and I are on two totally different pages here. I don't think Jax sought to punish Gemma, I think he just wanted it to be over. His options were to forgive her or to get her out of his life, and he chose the latter. And I have a hunch that Jax isn't going to die in finale. I think he's going to be the one who suffers. He's going to be the one living with guilt. Maybe it's on Nero's farm, maybe it's somewhere else. But I think Sutter wants Sons of Anarchy to be a cautionary tale, with Jax and Wendy getting out of the life (maybe Jax will be banished for life by the charters?) and concentrating on raising their two little monsters. Sutter fancies himself an outlaw doing good, and all TV showrunners pour a lot of themselves into their protagonists. I'm just glad that the Gemma situation was handled in this episode so that the finale can be all about Jax's future (or lack thereof). Hopefully he'll be able to bequeath JT's manuscript to someone else in hopes they'll make the club a happier place.





KAITLIN: Despite our different takes on the events of "Red Rose," I agree that now was the right time to wrap up Gemma's storyline. I also hope you're right about Jax surviving with Wendy and the boys and getting the hell out of Charming. I still want Jax to win—and the reference to the manuscript really brought the show full circle and reminded us of why Jax started this journey in the first place—but I just don't have that sense of optimism after Unser's needless death and Jax committing matricide. I can still picture Sutter blowing up the Teller family tree for good, to ensure that Jax can't ever return to Charming later in life. Let's hope he has a little bit of a heart left.

TIM: Going into the finale, the thing I'm most excited for is that I don't know what to expect. Jax could live, Jax could die. It could be a bittersweet ending, it could be the most depressing thing ever. It could be 70 minutes long, it could 700 minutes long. "Red Rose" was the perfect set-up for a series-ender that focuses on Jax, just as it should. Sure, the first 50 minutes of "Red Rose" were devoted to boring table discussions about which gang gets what, resulting in an oddly paced 80-minute episode, but the last half-hour delivered the moments we've come to expect from Sons of Anarchy for, for better or for worse. We've got one more episode left, Kaitlin. Are you ready for it?



KAITLIN: Despite everything that's happened, despite all the bloodshed, I still don't feel like Sons of Anarchy is really ending, and I think you've already explained why: I don't know what to expect in the final hour. I'm sure when the credits roll on the series finale I'll be in mourning in more ways than one, but right now I'm very excited to see what Sutter has in store.





SKIDMARKS

– Hey, Michael Chiklis finally got his Sons of Anarchy cameo! Now that he's dropped by Charming, just about every major cast member from The Shield, Sutter's old show, has visited Sons. It's not quite clear what the point of Chiklis's appearance was, but hey, he made it just in time!

– That was Charisma Carpenter guest-starring as the receptionist at Gemma's father's nursing home who indirectly told Jax where to find Gemma. It was weird to see her on Sons of Anarchy, but apparently she's a big fan of the show.



– We finally spotted the homeless woman who's been popping up throughout the series. But we still have no idea what she means. Anyone care to speculate?

– "Have at it," Juice said, right before he was gang-raped by Lin's men in the infirmary. And then in the next scene, he was sitting on his bum like nothing had happened! What a champ.

– We didn't talk much about the first 50 minutes of the episode, but the gist was that SAMCRO helped Tyler take out the Chinese so that Tyler would go along with SAMCRO's plan to take down Connor to appease the Irish. Yes, the Irish are back. And they returned in the penultimate episode of the entire series. Yeesh, we were hoping we were done with those guys.





What'd you think of "Red Rose"? What are your predictions for the series finale?



