SOA Season 2 Finale! (Sorry it took so long to get up)

Let's take a second to catch our collective breath and take inventory of where we are and who we have left.

Jax and Clay are on land. The Irishman Cameron (Da') and baby Abel are at sea. And Jemma and Unser are in the wind.

The bodycount, in my estimation is as follows:
The Nazi inmate who gouged out Otto's good eye.
Henry Rollins.
A slew of Mayans.
Edmund Hayes (the young Irishman).
Polly Zobelle.
Half-Sack (Dagger. Literally.)
Did I miss anyone?

So how did we get here?

The season finale starts with Weston and Zobelle sitting in jail with SAMCRO waiting for them outside and Unser keeping tabs inside. Unser catches wind of Zobelle's imminent release and approaches Agent Stahl for answers. He tells her about Jemma's rape and explains that he needs a reason to give Clay as to why Zobelle is being released. A strange look appears on Stahl's face (the patented "I'm thinking but it also looks like I might have just sharted" look Stahl has popularized) and she proceeds to tell Unser that Zobelle is an FBI informant. At first, I suspected that Stahl was making this story up in an attempt to somehow set SAMCRO up down the line, but soon after we find out that Zobelle is indeed an informant. Weston is also released from jail once the cops find out that the witness that placed him at the scene of the arson is himself a convicted felon. Unfortunately for Weston, unlike Zobelle, he does not have the benefit of a Mayan escort out of the jail.

Sons of Anarchy has, at its core, always been a show about two things; loss and the relationship between fathers and sons. Last night's episode displayed those themes in spades.

In order to keep himself safe from the Sons, Weston (wrongly) thought it would be prudent to bring his young son with him to the tattoo parlor while he got some new ink. Jax and company ambush the pair in the bathroom. They spare the boy, but not before Weston leaves him with a last piece of fatherly advice, "never talk to the cops". Weston doesn't beg for mercy or try to delay the inevitable. He only asks that the boy never see his father's bullet riddled corpse in the bathroom stall. Jax seems content to oblige.

Upon arrival back at the club house, Jax is met by Clay and the crew who express their pride in Jax. Clay embraces him and tells him that he is a good son. Drinks are raised and a toast is made to "sons". It is implied that this toast goes for both capital S "Sons (of Anarachy)" and lowercase s "sons (Jax)".

While out shopping for supplies with Tara, Half-Sack and baby Abel, Jemma spots Polly Zobelle who is buying flowers for Eddie. (She has disobeyed her father and left the protection of the cigar shop to see her lover one last time before flying home to Budapest. Speaking of Budapest, I guess this explains the strange accent/inflection Zobelle has slipped in and out of all season.) What follows, will reverberate in Sons-of-Anarchy-land for the show's foreseeable future.

Tara sees Jemma sizing up Polly and asks her who she is. Jemma tells her that she is the one that lured her into the van and hit her over the head, leading to her rape. Jemma and Tara, with the baby in the backseat and Sack following on his bike behind pull out behind Polly as she departs the flower shop. Tara asks where they are going and Jemma responds, "We are going forward, Sweetheart." This where things get really complicated. (Please forgive the lengthy plot summary, but the next sequence of events is pretty complicated, so I figured it would be best if I told what happens first and then tried to analyze it as a whole after.)

Jemma and company follow Polly in the direction of the ATF safe house where Edmund and Stahl are waiting for the arrival of Cameron. Cameron has instructed Eddie to kill agent Stahl in order to prove his allegiance to Jimmy O. Eddie attempts to accomplish this first by trying to shoot her, only to find out his gun is loaded with blanks, then by punching her in the groin. After this fails, he tries to make a break for freedom, only to be gunned down by Stahl. Panicked, Stahl lies to her AFT partners over the radio, saying that the shots they heard were all the blanks from Edmund's gun.

A few minutes later, Polly arrives on the scene with Jemma right on her tail. Tara, sensing what Jemma has in mind, tries in vain to talk her out of it. Jemma responds with some bogus reason about having to do this because Jax and Clay are out there risking their lives for her. For good measure, she throws in a bit about God having put Polly in her path so she can "fix the part of (her) they ripped open".

Polly walks into the safehouse and sees Eddie laying on the floor in a pool of blood (Stahl is sort of hiding behind a wall in the room with Eddie's body when she walks in). Polly pulls a piece out of her purse (damn, I'm like the king of alliteration) and slowly walks toward Eddie's body. As she approaches the room with Eddie's body in it, we see a great shot of Stahl behind a wall, next to the door Polly is approaching and Jemma entering the front door right behind Polly. All three women are in the same frame and each has their weapon drawn. Stahl can't see Polly or Jemma, Polly can't see Stahl or Jemma and Jemma can't see Eddie or Stahl. But we can see them all. Jemma tells Polly to drop her gun, when she refuses and makes a move towards Jemma, Jemma shoots her. Jemma, mentally and emotionally exhausted, plops down on the coach instead of immediately leaving the scene. Big mistake. Stahl pops out from behind the wall and points her gun at Jemma. Jemma sees Eddie's body laying behind Stahl and calmly says to her, "Bloody day for both of us, huh?" Stahl asks Jemma about Polly's involvement in the rape and says she is sorry that it happened to her. Now at this point, I am thinking that it might be a possibility that Stahl would just let Jemma go out of pity over the rape and somehow make the scene look like Polly and Eddie killed each, maybe like a Phil Hartman/Steve McNair-esque murder/suicide took place. But of course Stahl had to act like the world class cunt she is and made Jemma touch the gun that she shot Eddie with, leaving her prints on it and making it seem like Jemma shot both Eddie and Polly. Then she lets Jemma walk out. When Jemma is gone, Stahl radios for back-up and says that Jemma killed Polly and Eddie. Cameron, who is enroute, overhears this on his police radio scanner and becomes overcome with rage...

Phewww, that was exhausting. Is everyone still with me? Were you able to follow all that? Well, who cares, if you're reading this, you probably saw the episode anyway.

I have several bones to pick with this series of events. First, why did Stahl have to lie to her partners about shooting Eddie? He attacked her, why wouldn't she have told them the truth? Why would she risk her career and her freedom by lying and trying to cover up the shooting when it seems like she was totally justified in her actions? Second, it seems like it is totally out of character for Jemma to decide to take revenge on Polly like that. She spent almost the entire season trying to keep the rape under wraps because she knew that the violence that would occur if it were to come out would bring her world crashing down. Also, she has wittingly made Tara an accomplice to murder by telling her what she planned on doing. Granted, these are small gripes about what could be easily considered the most exciting, suspenseful and gratifying 15 minutes in show history.

Zobelle, stilled holed up in the cigar store with Alvarez and the Mayans, gives up on waiting for Polly and decides to head out of town without her. (This is how we know Zobelle is truly evil, he abandons his own daughter. Even Weston, the Nazi rapist refused to flee without his kids. In keeping with the theme of the show, I wonder if Polly was a 'son' and not a daughter, would Zobelle have been so quick to leave her?)

On a winding road outside of Charming, the Sons ambush Zobelle and the Mayans. They spare Alvarez (incomprehensibly) and chase Zobelle into a nearby bodega. The store is filled with school children, so instead of running in guns blazing, the Sons decide to lay siege and wait for the kids to leave.

Meanwhile, at Jax's house Half-Sack tells Tara that Jemma is gone and the Feds raided the house that they saw her go into. While Tara is on the phone trying to explain the situation to Jax, Cameron bursts in, gun drawn. Jax hears her shriek before the line goes dead and is forced to leave Clay and the rest of the crew and head home to find out what it going on. (Opie goes with him. It is nice to see Jax and Opie together again and the writers really pounded this point home by having them repeatedly refer to each other as "Brother".)

Grieving, bloodthirsty, and bent on revenge ("A son for a son."), Cameron stabs Half-Sack, ties up Tara and absconds with baby Abel. This scene is tough to watch. Cameron, sobbing, holds a knife to the baby, looking like he might actually go through with it until Half-Sack jumps up, only to have the knife buried in his chest. This is a real shame, who is going to provide the show with its much needed comic relief now that the uni-balled Prospect is no longer with us? (I came across an interview with Kurt Sutter, creator of the show, and he claims that the actor who played Half-Sack wanted off the show. This may or may not be true, but if it is, what is that moron thinking? Does he think that 7th Heaven, or American Dreams or The OC is going to come back for another run?(He had small, but recurring roles in these notable shows. None of which were half as good as Sack))

Upon Jax's arrival Tara fills him in with what happened to Abel. The color drains from his face and is replaced with sheer panic. He immediately calls Clay and manages to utter the simple, yet effective, "I need you." Clay, understanding that family is more important than revenge rounds up the troops and heads back to Charming to find Abel. This is a telling and meaningful act, considering the state of the relationship between the two throughout the season as well as the personal importance killing Zobelle holds for Clay.

This monster episode ends with Zobelle boarding a charter jet (When the woman checking him into the flight asks whether his daughter will be accompanying him, he calmly says no and that he will just have to "adjust and adapt" without her. And this is after he knows that she has been killed! Cold-blooded.), Hale comforting a sobbing Tara, Unser driving his police car out of Charming with a fugitive Jemma in the passenger seat, and Jax and rest of the Sons watching Cameron speed away from the dock in a boat with Abel, all while a vastly-inferior-to-the-original cover of 'Gimme Shelter' wails in the background (This episode seemed to use background music to drive home the mood of a scene a lot more than the show had in the past. Sometimes it worked, other times...not so much).

This leads us to the obvious question: What will season 3 have in store for us?

We know for sure it will involve:
Getting Abel back.
Somehow bringing Jemma back to Charming.
Dealing with the fallout with Irish.
Stahl fucking everything up for the club.

Kurt Sutter claims it could involve:
The club going to Ireland. (Intriguing.)
Unser stepping down as Chief of Police.
Tom Arnold's Georgie could be back.
The federal charges against the club from when they raided the Aryan Church have not disappeared.
Opie will continue to struggle in his relationships with the people responsible for Donna's death (Clay/Tig).

Well, until next season......The Crow Flies Straiiighhhhttttt.