Heh, heh. Stuff like that is funny considering where you are in the show. BTW, if you still like it, considering you are in the midst one the period least liked by long-time fans of the show, that's rather promising.
I'm into season 4 now, and I think you're right, season 3 was probably the weakest of the ones I've seen so far. But the finale greatly redeemed it in my eyes, so see why you found my comments amusing, lol.
Not even Opie? 
' /> I don't think you are supposed to though. This is like the Sopranos - it's about a gang of criminals, and there are no good guys. In season 4, IMO, they get an upgrade as far as the law goes, with some law enforcement people you can sympathize with, even if they are trying to take down SAMCRO, and who aren't compromised by local loyalties the way Deputy Chief Hale is.
' /> I don't think you are supposed to though. This is like the Sopranos - it's about a gang of criminals, and there are no good guys. In season 4, IMO, they get an upgrade as far as the law goes, with some law enforcement people you can sympathize with, even if they are trying to take down SAMCRO, and who aren't compromised by local loyalties the way Deputy Chief Hale is. Opie is one of the pretty good characters, but despite that he's kind of a non-entity type of character, and can practically be summed up as Jax's occasional side-kick. If anything, my favorite character would have to be Tig, because his character has actually undergone noticeable and sensible changes over the course of the show. Plus he's just so entertaining!
I am thinking you are thinking here of the delightful agent Stahl? Because that's the only one I can think of from the point in the show where you are, and all I have to say to that, is ROFLMAO. You haven't seen NOTHING when it comes to hateful & frustratingly powerful villains.
Stahl, definitely, but she's not the only one. Zoebel certainly deserved to die, but I'd be totally fine with him staying alive if only it had made sense. Instead they just abandoned him when something more urgent came up. Why didn't they leave one person behind to take care of him? Or just enter the store, shoot him, and leave?
The best parts of the show, as far as I'm concerned, were two scenes involving Jax. One was Jax shooting Kohn in the head, and the other was Jax telling Clay, "We kill them all." Obviously they can't kill every enemy that appears, but it seems like too many opportunities are missed. Stahl could have been killed in season 1. The whole point of season 1's finale was setting up an epic confrontation between Jax and Clay that would tear apart the group, but instead it got delayed until it was eventually sidelined and forgotten, only for it to start creeping up again now because of some ancient soap opera "history."
Yeah, but I think that's the point. The evil bad guys of one season might be business partners the next. I don't want to give away specifics, but that happens with at least one group from the early seasons, while allies of those seasons become enemies in the current season.
True, the Mayans at the very least. But that goes back to my earlier point, they could have killed off a large portion of the Mayans, their leader definitely, at the end of season 2 when they pulled off the truck maneuver. Instead they stopped the battle, when they clearly had the advantage. They had no reason to suspect that they would become allies soon, so the only reason for stopping is cowardice under the guise of pragmatism. Cowardice rather than pragmatism because all throughout the show the Sons had been equal with the Mayans, so why stop short of landing them a critical blow, that would have set them back years?
And awesome as the first episode of season 4 was, the Russians were the first group that the Sons came after that hard, and at the same time they were the one that least deserved it. All they did was stab Jax off-screen, and if anything can be called "just business," it's that, considering they were cheated out of 2 million in the previous episode. Sure there are good reasons for this being the case, but my only accusation about the show is that it's frustrating, not unreasonable.
Zoebel is just about the only one I can think of in the early years who did that. There are the rival gangs, but gangs just don't get wiped out. They might take hits, but a new group of jerks fills the ranks eventually. I think Zoebel might be like The Greek in "The Wire," the one who represents the money, and the guy who does business with anyone and has no real ideology or code beyond his own profit. The guy like that always gets away on shows like this, that are trying to say something about power and institutions. Granted, SoA is hardly in The Wire's class when it comes to that, but there were a lot of nods to those sort of notions in the first season, in JT's manuscript, to give credence to the idea that this is the background ideology of the show.
Gangs can't be destroyed entirely, they'll simply regroup or get assimilated into a different gang, but they can be stalled, or forced to contract and lose territory, so it's not like fighting is entirely pointless. Never seen the wire, so I can't comment too much on that. And while I like the idea of someone like Zoebel, unbound by any rules, succeeding (as indeed someone like him should), I don't like him getting away when it seems like there is no reason for him to. Winning is fine, winning by deus ex machina isn't.
In someways, the show is like the club itself, in that it has stated for itself a higher ideology and purpose, but keeps getting distracted with being badass and sick and profitable.
Too meta for me.
You may be disappointed, but most people seem to think the way Season 3 played out was acceptable, and the Season 4 opener moves right where it left off into a pretty good resolution of some issues.
I liked the finale, and the start of season 4 overall. My complaints are just minor irks, that sometimes get the best of me as they build up. Overall I do like the show and will continue watching it.
I am not sure which characters' lack of deaths you are so frustrated with (Clay, for instance, is almost too big a character and central to the mythology of the show to die before the end, so expecting justice for Donna would be too much, and as I said, the utility of some other characters gives a good reason for forgoing deaths), but aside from Zoebel getting away at the end of last season (although Weston, the actual racist & rapist did not), I think most of the non-killings are fairly well-served in the long term.
I guess I'm just frustrated in general, because the show does such a good job of making characters hateful that I sort of just want it to be a revenge fantasy. Which I recognize would make the show worse overall if overdone, but the feeling persists. I just can't help feeling that characters get their comeuppance with too much of a delay.
Started watching Sons of Anarchy, and I'm having a love-hate relationship
- 19/11/2012 10:05:32 PM
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They do string out the deaths, but things also change, especially in seasons 4-5
- 20/11/2012 04:40:00 PM
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Let me attempt to clarify
- 20/11/2012 07:29:02 PM
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There weren't any loveable characters in Oz, either, and that show was great *NM*
- 20/11/2012 07:04:49 PM
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