Sons of anarchy finale

[GOBB]

Was weak. But great show nonetheless. Last weeks episode was more climatic than this weak.

[guy]

Last week was clearly better. Its almost like they purposefully didn't try to top it with this week's episode. Kinda funny how Vick Mackey ends up killing him though :oldlol:

[jazz873]

What a terrible way to end the show. How about those terrible special effects at the end. :facepalm

[ZeN]

I hated those f*cking clowns.

[Smoke117]

Show was subpar the last two season and fell off considerably after season 4 in general. FX seems to have that problem...Rescue Me fell off like no show ever...Justified is slipping...

[dkmwise]

Show was subpar the last two season and fell off considerably after season 4 in general. FX seems to have that problem...Rescue Me fell off like no show ever...Justified is slipping...

Agree with every word you said there

[dkmwise]

Love this show but after season 3 has been going downhill a little every year. This season I really didn't even look forward to it each week and felt more like lets just get this done. The finale left me really not feeling anything at all.

[outbreak]

The show was a joke since the end of around season 3. Became a soap opera full of implausible situations and with no motivation for the characters. The finale was terrible too.

[Patrick Chewing]

Stupid show after Season 4. It became a show about how many people can be killed this season versus the previous.


Sutter is a horrible writer IMO.

[outbreak]

Stupid show after Season 4. It became a show about how many people can be killed this season versus the previous.


Sutter is a horrible writer IMO.

He actually tweeted about poor reviews saying the show is a soap opera and not a big drama or something. It really went from being one of the best shows on tv to a total joke. Let's kill 15 people an episode in a few small towns and yet the police don't do shit because every now and then there's a few lines about keeping the violence out of their own town.

[johndeeregreen]

Agree with most of the posts in this tread. This show got more absurd than Nip/Tuck, which is really, really saying something.

[Myth]

I liked it :confusedshrug:

[Tarik One]

They had completely abandoned his father's manuscripts which were a huge part of what the show was about.

Plus, the seemingly nonstop pretentious action scenes "Aww, they look so badass" and convoluted gang/club politics left me fast-forwarding through a lot of scenes.

[Thorpesaurous]

The show really did just get progressively worse. And a little like Dexter, and Homeland, I think the slippage wasn't as noticeable in the moment because they were able to save it periodically with some really great individual moments. Like last year for example wasn't very good, but they always had the ace up their sleeve of killing Clay. Gemma was similar this season.

I do think they ****ed up not separating Unser and Gemma's murders. I do think they should've figured out a way to do all the bookkeeping stuff last episode and ended the show on Gemma's death, with Jax somehow dieing on the escape or something. Somehow Gemma needed to be the apex of the finale.

The show definitely got too expository as the seasons went on. I think part of that was Sutter's inability to write himself out of what had become a totally untenable series of plot devices. And the show hadn't developed enough characters to carry it beyond them actually sitting down and nearly looking at the camera while explaining what the hell was going on.

The show also suffered immensely I think from having killed off both it's best actors, and probably not coincidentally, it's most fleshed out characters. Once Opie went, Clay carried the show. Then Clay went, and while Gemma is a great character, the next most realized character was probably Bobby? Unser maybe? Tara was gone. The black sherriff was gone. And the truth is Jax (and I'm not sure how much of it was that Charlie Hunman didn't have the chops, seeing as I've pretty much only seen him in this and the giant robot movie) just wasn't a good enough character to hold it together. He was more of a plot device than a full fledged character. It was mostly him with pouty attitude explaining the overtly complex plot and the various schemes required to remedy it. Once the more well rounded characters died, they were asking way too much of Jax to do the heavy lifting. And put too much pressure on Tig and Chibs, who are really good characters as your 7th and 8th, but just couldn't hold up as 2s and 3s.

I'm not unhappy with the overall resolution. The checked all the boxes. I do think he had to die. I wasn't thrilled with how they got there. But that's ok.

When the show started, there was an almost on the nose Hamlet thing going on. It's no surprise to me that the show ended with a Hamlet quote. But the show got too popular, they had to extend the main bullet points of the Shakespearian plot, and in that process added all manner of plot that just didn't play that well, then they had to spend too much time cleaning up said plot. If you edited the show down to the 25 episodes focused most on the family, you'd have a really tight little two season Netflix type release.

All in all still a pleasurable show to have been in on on the ground floor.

[Patrick Chewing]

The show also suffered immensely I think from having killed off both it's best actors, and probably not coincidentally, it's most fleshed out characters. Once Opie went, Clay carried the show. Then Clay went, and while Gemma is a great character, the next most realized character was probably Bobby? Unser maybe? Tara was gone. The black sherriff was gone. And the truth is Jax (and I'm not sure how much of it was that Charlie Hunman didn't have the chops, seeing as I've pretty much only seen him in this and the giant robot movie) just wasn't a good enough character to hold it together.


Two points to agree with you:

1. Sutter hamstrung himself by killing off likeable characters. First it was Chief Hale which I thought was the perfect antagonist to go against Jax and the club. Then, at one point in the show, I thought that Clay would eventually expose Gemma to Jax for the Black Widow that she is and Clay would cement himself back in the show and within the good graces of the club. For being Jax's mother, Gemma sure had a lot of pull within that MC and it was hard to like Jax for always letting his mother interfere in their lives. Sutter continued to kill off likeable characters in Opie, Tara, and eventually Unser. So all you had left were guys you couldn't root for cause they were just bad people all around.

2. Hunnam is an awful actor and if you watch the first few seasons over, his voice is completely different than in the last couple of seasons. It's almost as if they let him go back to his English accent towards the end. Just as you said, I thought Clay carried that show in the beginning, and Sutter struggled drastically to force us Jax to carry it towards the end, and I think it just didn't work out.

[Tarik One]

Hunnam is an awful actor and if you watch the first few seasons over, his voice is completely different than in the last couple of seasons. It's almost as if they let him go back to his English accent towards the end. Just as you said, I thought Clay carried that show in the beginning, and Sutter struggled drastically to force us Jax to carry it towards the end, and I think it just didn't work out.

I think that has more to do with awareness. The fact that Hunnam's English origin is more known to the audience now than when the show first started, viewer tend to notice it more. I'm certain there are instances in the earlier season where his accent would slip. Same happened in "The Wire". People would make a big deal out of Idris Elba's (Stringer Bell) and Dominic West's (Jimmy McNulty) accents in the later seasons even though they were apparent when the show began.

[Myth]

I do think they should've figured out a way to do all the bookkeeping stuff last episode and ended the show on Gemma's death, with Jax somehow dieing on the escape or something. Somehow Gemma needed to be the apex of the finale.


I agree with much of your points, but I disagree with this one. It made sense to have 1 episode dedicated to the death of Gemma, and 1 episode dedicated to the death of Jax. You don't want the death of 1 to overshadow the death of another in a single episode, because then you don't get to chew over their deaths. I agree that Unser's death should have been separate from Gemma's, because Gemma's death overshadowed Unser's, which is the same reason Gemma and Jax couldn't die in the same episode.

[Thorpesaurous]

I agree with much of your points, but I disagree with this one. It made sense to have 1 episode dedicated to the death of Gemma, and 1 episode dedicated to the death of Jax. You don't want the death of 1 to overshadow the death of another in a single episode, because then you don't get to chew over their deaths. I agree that Unser's death should have been separate from Gemma's, because Gemma's death overshadowed Unser's, which is the same reason Gemma and Jax couldn't die in the same episode.


That's fair, I just felt like the killing of Robocop and the poor man's Stringer Bell just lost a lot of impact after seeing Unser and Gemma go last time. It felt like housekeeping to start another season less than the emotional pivot the other killing was. But you're right, they were hoping that the Jax scene would cover be that moment I'm sure.

They could've done something like Gemma goes, then Unser turns on Jax and finishes it. And still have taken care of the housekeeping in the episode prior to this.


I'd also point out that one of the things the show did well pretty consistently was the music. And while it was good again in it's couple spots in this episode, I felt it was weirdly missing in the scene where the club sets up Jax's getaway.

[dkmwise]

I'd also point out that one of the things the show did well pretty consistently was the music. And while it was good again in it's couple spots in this episode, I felt it was weirdly missing in the scene where the club sets up Jax's getaway.

I think season finales and music on those closing scenes have been the strongest part of the show even in the later seasons, and with the series finale I didn't love the ending or the music going along with it.