Quick Take: Sons of Anarchy, "Brick"
Review: Sons of Anarchy, "Brick"
(S0405) I was really excited when it was announced that the fourth season of Sons of Anarchy would be returning to its roots, exploring the internal conflicts of the motorcycle club. The hope was that if the show went back to what worked so well in the first and, especially, in the second season, that the quality would return to those peaks as well. While the first three episodes hinted that we might be heading for an SOA resurgence, the last two have been a bit disappointing.
I appreciate that SOA is revisiting interesting things from the first couple of seasons (Jax's desire to leave the club, J.T.'s letters, etc.). However, this week they decided to bring back a plot point that wasn't particularly interesting the first time around: Bobby's (Mark Boone Jr.) tryst with Luanne (Dendrie Taylor). The story line made such a small impact, that I had forgotten it even happened.
The only silver lining in the Bobby/Luanne/Otto (Kurt Sutter) love triangle is that it brought one of the show's most outrageous characters, Georgie (Tom Arnold), back into the fold. Georgie’s return precipitates our introduction to Dondo, a male porn star played by David Hasselhoff. It goes without saying that a male porn star named Dondo is a welcome addition to any show, and SOA is no exception. Dondo lures Georgie out of hiding, so the Sons can exact their revenge for Luanne's murder. Georgie pleads for his life and promises that he can hook SAMCRO up with some wealthy Asian businessmen. Clay (Ron Perlman) decides to keep Georgie alive and use the Asians' capital to temporarily fund the Charming Heights development, only to pull the funding at the last minute and doom the project.
A lot of "Brick" is devoted to the contents of J.T.'s letters. Unser (Dayton Callie) finds the letters in Tara's (Maggie Siff) office and discovers that he has been lied to by Clay for years. "J.T. wasn't weak, he was conflicted. He wanted to end guns, go legit. That's why you killed him," he tells Clay.
And just like that, one of the show's biggest mysteries is solved; Clay killed J.T. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Sure, we had pretty much known this to be the case for a long time now, but for the show to drop a bombshell of this magnitude so unceremoniously was a bizzare and questionable decision.
I hesitate to even bring up "Brick"'s other storyline, the one that gives the episode its title, because of just how absurd it is. Roosevelt (Rockmond Dunbar) pulls Juice (Theo Rossi) into the police station again to threaten him about his secret racial identity. He demands that Juice steal a sample of the cartel's coke in order to trace its origin and solidify Juice's loyalty. And, astoundingly, Juice agrees. "The risk of getting outed for color is greater than the risk of working with us," Potter surmises.
Juice agreeing to work with the police isn't the absurd part. The absurd part happens when Juice steals an entire brick, when all he needed was a couple of grams, then falls asleep outside next to a tree with the brick sitting right to him. Who does that? I know Juice loves the weed, but I've never smoked a strain that was so potent it made me fall asleep outside, especially if I had a brick of coke stuffed into the front of my undies.
Man, between Tom Arnold, Henry Rollins, and Stephen King, SOA has added quite a litany of quirky guest stars to its ranks !