After last week’s drive-by shooting, the last thing the Sons needed at the moment was another distraction, but they can’t very well ignore the attack either. All signs point to the Mayans, but since none of the shooters have any gang affiliations, the Sons decide to drop by the hospital to have a little chat with the lone survivor. (On a side note, it was nice to see that the cops actually threw Jax in lock-up for interfering with the arrest, though he was eventually let go due to the “circumstances.”) The shooter can’t actually say much because his mouth is wired shut, but Jax discovers a tattoo inside his lip that proves he belongs to a Mayan proxy club, leading Clay to believe that the drive-by might have been some sort of initiation.
Worried that Alvarez is planning to bolster his MC before going after the Sons, they track down the proxy club’s president to find out what’s really going on. After getting roughed up by Jax a little (the guy’s been on a mean streak lately, even head-butting the guy’s volatile girlfriend when she attacks him), the Sons bury their new hostage up to his head and then torture him by playing chicken with their bikes. It’s enough to finally make him confess that the Mayans’ are trying to secure safe passage through Charming in order to keep up their end of the deal that they made with Zobelle last season. Though this would normally mean war for the Sons, Clay decides that they’re already busy enough to get involved, hoping that by showing mercy, Alvarez will be forced to rethink his beef with SAMCRO.
Somehow in the middle of all that, Clay finds time to meet with Jimmy O in order to clear Gemma’s name. Though Jimmy already knows that Cameron has arrived in Belfast, he informs the Sons that he hasn’t left the country, presumably in order to protect the IRA from further conflict. The Sons later find out that isn’t true when they receive photographic evidence of Cameron purchasing train tickets to Vancouver, but all that means is that SAMCRO is headed to Canada on a wild goose chase, because Cameron isn’t there. In fact, he’s not even alive after the IRA council decides that they need to distance themselves from his actions as quickly as possible, which includes erasing any proof that Cameron was ever even there.
That doesn’t stop his cousin Maureen from hanging on to baby Abel, however, and I have to imagine that that’s going to have serious repercussions further down the line. For the time being, though, I’m really enjoying this Belfast subplot – particularly the Father Ashby character, who seems to have loyalties to both the IRA and the Sons of Anarchy, or at least the club as it existed under John Teller, whom he refers to as a good friend. I can only imagine we’ll be learning more about that relationship, as well as the one between SAMCRO and the IRA, as the season progresses.
Unfortunately, Gemma’s storyline is not as interesting, and is in fact already starting to bore me. There were some funny moments involving Tig (his fear of porcelain figurines, his seduction of Amelia the nurse), but the whole subplot involving Nate’s dementia feels too much like Emmy bait for Katey Sagal and Hal Holbrook. The whole scene involving Nate shooting Tig seemed a bit preposterous, but since I’ve never dealt with anyone who suffers from dementia before, I’m not exactly the best judge of its validity. Still, even a blind man could have seen Amelia’s eventual betrayal coming from a mile away, though it’s hard to blame her. If I had the chance to turn a complete stranger over to the FBI for $25,000, I probably would to.
Amelia is bound to get free at some point, although it probably won’t happen until after Tara arrives so that she’s dragged into it as well. They didn’t stage that scene between her and Jax for nothing, after all, and while Jax’s attempts to scare her away from Charming haven’t worked yet, you can bet she’ll be rethinking that decision when she’s suddenly wanted by the FBI for aiding and abetting a fugitive. I just hope they don’t go down that route, because up until now, “Sons of Anarchy” has been really good about delivering the unexpected, and that would be too predictable.
