Sons of Anarchy "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" Review: Wheelin' and Dealin' (and Not Much Else)

Sons of Anarchy S07E06: "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em"

We've almost reached the halfway point of Sons of Anarchy's final season, so you've got about a month and a half to go before it's time to shave the knee-length beard you've been growing in honor of the biker drama's swan song. Here at TV.com, we're holding an interoffice beard-off to determine the truest SOA fan, and based on the current standings, Kaitlin will have to get a few more testosterone injections and pound a case of Miller Lite to even have a chance of catching up. But until the final results come in, we've agreed to stay civil long enough to discuss this week's episode, "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em." Here we go!

TIM: Kaitlin, this episode confused me so hard. Maybe "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" wasn't just a title, but a command from Kurt Sutter himself? Because I think I could've used some kine buds—either to get into the right headspace to follow along, or to get so high that I just didn't care what was happening. After five episodes of tense action and whore-slaughtering, this hour focused on... complicated negotiations that were hampered by biker jargon (six-and-a-half seasons in, my biker vocab is still stuck at a second-grade level). Seriously, understanding this episode required an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of gang relations in Charming and Stockton. I feel like a putz for saying this, but less talky, more shooty, Sons of Anarchy!

KAITLIN: Even though I generally enjoy Sons of Anarchy's quieter episodes and the way they tend to balance out the series' patented bloody shootouts, by the 30-minute mark, I found myself itching to see someone—anyone at all—take a bullet (preferably Lea Michele's pointless waitress Gertie). The fight between Jax and Tully's men somewhere in the middle of the episode wasn't enough to quench my thirst for blood; when SAMCRO and the Grim Bastards finally ambushed those randos in the final act, it was too little, too late.

In the series' early years, it was more adept at weaving together these complicated storylines and making the reveals feel clever, but now they just feel convoluted, like Sutter thinks the more elements he introduces, the better. In reality, it's just a mess. "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" felt like 90 minutes of the writers trying to be clever while simultaneously paying off an arc that was introduced in the season premiere (the Grim Bastards seeing their numbers dwindle)—an arc, I should mention, that no one actually cares about. I understand and even applaud the show's continued attempts to take a stance on race, but I also feel like, "Who gives a damn?"

TIM: To me, the most interesting part of "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em" was Jax floating the idea of adding some brothers to SAMCRO. I was like, "WHAT?!?" That is so rad. I approve of colorblind biker gangs and I'm actively rooting for all the gangs to come together to form one supergang UN comprised of different ethnicities, where everyone holds hands and skips into the sunset. However, barring that, I also want everyone to kill each other. Sorry for the mixed messages, but hey, mixed messages are what I'm getting from Sons of Anarchy. Because for all the progress Jax was making with regard to race relations between SAMCRO and the Grim Bastards, he also showed up to a white supremacist drug deal with a van full of dead African-American guys to earn their skinhead trust. I get that it was a "two birds, one stone" deal (at least, I think it was; like I said, me so confusey) designed to eliminate some enemies while also facilitating the deal with Leland, but I just don't know what to make of it. And that van full of "trust" was emblematic of an episode that I found very difficult to get through. "Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em " reminded me of those complicated four-team NBA trades where people are shipped in all different directions in an attempt to meet everyone's needs, and in the end you don't know who went where or why. Jax did a lot of negotiating, offering bits and pieces of various criminal enterprises to different gangs, including Tyler's crew, the Mayans, and Tully's band of neo-Nazis. The heroin business was being split, the gun trade was being shifted, some prison pipelines were being redirected, and I couldn't keep track of a damn thing. It's difficult to understand how these important business deals fit into the story without understanding their weight, and by the end of the episode, I felt like I was being forced to sign on the dotted line and just accept what transpired. That's how I ended up with 28 credit cards.

KAITLIN: And that right there is the biggest problem plaguing Sons of Anarchy right now. We're halfway through the final season and I still don't have a firm grasp on what the real endgame is. Not to sound like someone's grandmother, but there are too many effin' cooks in this effin' kitchen. I need a damn flowchart just to keep track of all the action, and I'm sorry, but I don't have time for flowcharts. I'm hoping that in the wake of SAMCRO's truce with the Mayans and the conclusion the Grim Bastards' lingering story, the will finally be able to get to work. I know there are still seven episodes left, which probably equates to roughly 19 hours of footage, but it does feel like the extraneous plots are slowly being dealt with. And now that Alvarez has handed Juice over to the club and that van of dead bodies is chillin' in front of one of Pope's businesses, it feels like Act II has begun.

TIM: While I appreciate this episode getting a bunch of things out of the way, I wonder why it overlooked another important thing: that crazy ending from last week! Juice was out in the middle of nowhere and had a gun on Gemma after realizing that she might kill him, and then this week we flashed forward to Gemma walking alone on a dirt road and Juice robbing liquor stores for lollipops. EXCUSE ME, MR. SUTTER, but I think all of us were entitled to see how that conversation went down. Instead, we got another silly conversation between Gemma and the ghost of Tara or whoever. Surely there are better ways to portray Gemma's guilt than by making it look like she's having a senior moment. Putting us through without revealing what happened with Gemma and Juice is inexcusable. Surely you are as upset as I am, right Kaitlin?

KAITLIN: I'm more than upset, because not only did the show deprive us of what could've been a great character moment for each of them, it gave us, like, the ninth next best thing in return. While I find it delightful to picture Gemma wandering 12 miles in spiked heels—that's basically the equivalent of torture—the duration of Gemma's scenes is way out of proportion to my interest in them. Katey Sagal is a talented actress, but Sons of Anarchy is giving Gemma far more screen time than she deserves. We know she's a horrible person, we know that she's screwed up, and we know that the only reason she feels guilty is that she knows that Jax is eventually going to find out what she's done, so all of those scenes in the diner were superfluous. Move it along, sister! What's more, Juice's involvement in all of this is far more interesting, because he's holding all the cards! He could tell Jax the truth at any moment. So pardon my french, but GTFO, Gemma.

TIM: And GTFO Lea Michele as Gertie, the diner waitress who served very little purpose. Sons of Anarchy is in love with stunt-casting, but rarely does anything good with it (Walton Goggins as Venus is an exception). Michele now rivals Joel McHale for the title of Most Pointless Sons of Anarchy Guest Star.

What I am excited for is the Juice storyline. Last week, we talked about how knowledge is power on Sons of Anarchy, and now that he's back in SAMCRO's hands and definitely not friends with Gemma, will he finally tell Jax the truth about Tara's murder? Were you as excited as I was to see Gemma squirming uncomfortably when Nero told her about Juice?

KAITLIN: I really thought she was going to shit her pants in that scene. She knows it's all over, man! But part of me worries that Juice will hesitate before ratting on Gemma—his previous betrayals are the reason he's in this mess, so I could see a potential storyline in which Sons of Anarchy drags out Juice's crisis of conscience in an effort to maximize the drama. However, thee way I see it, he has nothing left to live for, so why wouldn't he use the information he has to try to save his own ass? He's a coward, but he doesn't want to die, and he's got an ace up his sleeve. If I were Juice, I'd have barfed up the dirt I had on Gemma the second the Mayans handed me over to Jax. The question I have now is this: How is Nero going to react once the truth comes out? I get the impression that the dude is finally beginning to tire of the web of deceit that Gemma and the club are spinning.

TIM: It's all about to unravel, but the question I have is whether Sons of Anarchy will hold everything back for one big, explosive finale, or if it will dole things out over several episodes in order to give every story the room it needs to breathe. I'm hoping for the latter, personally, since there are plenty of plots to go around.

SKIDMARKS

– WTF is up with the show continuously pointing out that Wendy still loves Jax?

– What's going to happen when hospitalized Lady Cop tells Unser that SAMCRO was on the scene when she and that other cop got shot?

– Abel was absent this week. We are thoroughly disappointed.

– It took 52 minutes of ad-free runtime for someone to die; way to show some restraint, SOA!

– How does the "because she needed some feminine products" excuse still actually work when two women want to get together without any men around?