Gemma’s influence over club matters? The shifting narrative of John Teller’s
death? The Galindo cartel deal? Keep watching as we get into some of the
most questionable things from "Sons of Anarchy" that we just let slide.
We're not sure any of the questionable things we've come up with really rival
the seemingly boundless loyalty that Harry "Opie" Winston shows SAMCRO.
He does five years in Chino prison after former member Kyle Hobart ditches him and tries to stay
on the straight and narrow upon his release in order to keep his wife Donna happy. Nonetheless,
it's clear Opie misses the brotherhood he enjoyed as a member of the club — as evidenced by the
way he is eventually drawn back in by best friend Jax Teller to make some extra money.
Unfortunately, repeated attempts by ATF Agent June Stahl to get Opie to turn on the club
result in president Clay Morrow believing Opie truly is a rat,
so Clay orders Alexander "Tig" Trager to kill him. As fans know, Tig mistakenly kills Donna instead.
Opie, of course, is at first unaware his own club is responsible for his wife's death.
Eventually, Tig confesses out of guilt, at which point Opie gives him a savage beating.
He still stays with the club nonetheless, seeing Stahl as the real villain; it doesn't hurt that
Clay spares his father, Piney, after the elder Winston fires a gun at him twice.
But Clay has only hit pause on eliminating members of Opie's family: he kills Piney in Season 4 over
letters Jax's father wrote, which indicate his seeming awareness that Clay and Jax's mother,
Gemma Teller, are going to kill him. Opie shoots Clay twice, but is still able to operate alongside
him and Tig up until he finally gives his own life for the club in prison in Season 5.
Jax Teller is ostensibly all about family. First, his devotion to his brothers in SAMCRO is rivaled
only by Opie's. Jax fights to maintain custody of his son Abel from his drug-addicted ex-wife Wendy.
"Please don't hate me."
"You need to get help, Wendy."
"I know, I know, I promise this time, I promise."
He drags the entire SAMCRO crew to Ireland in Season 3 to track Abel down after he's kidnapped
by True IRA bad guy Cameron Hayes. Jax actually considers leaving SAMCRO to get his wife Tara and
their two sons away from the outlaw life. And, of course, he sacrifices himself in the series finale
so that SAMCRO can remain operational, given the mayhem vote against him.
But in his travels to the old sod, Jax learns he has a half-sister, Trinity — a product of
an affair between his father John Teller and Maureen Ashby — a fact of which he learns just
in the knick of time before the two got too cozy with each other. Obviously they're both pretty
embarrassed to have almost hooked up with a blood relative and maybe that awkwardness is the reason
we never hear from Trinity and Maureen again; despite Jax being more focused on family than
the entire "Fast and Furious" saga, his long-lost sibling remains a Season 3 ghost and doesn't
surface again for the remaining four seasons of "Sons of Anarchy." The awkwardness of their
introduction notwithstanding, it doesn't make sense that we never hear from the Ashbys again.
We're thinking maybe Jax Teller needs a dictionary; could someone turn him to the
page that defines the word "legitimate"? We're all about him taking SAMCRO away from drugs and
guns and the respective precarious relationships with cartels and the Irish Republican Army that
those dealings represent. But getting into the "companion" business is no less illegal. Look,
we get that Nero Padilla is a charming guy, and if we had to pick a fictional character of shady
repute with whom our outlaw mother would hook up, it would be him. We could debate the respective
moralities of the Sons being smugglers against working in the sex trade, but at the end of the
day, there's simply no getting around the simple fact that they're both against the law. Trying
to take the club legit by leaving drugs and guns in favor of escorts is like trying to lose weight
by simply switching from full-calorie Coke to full-calorie Pepsi — it's just not going to work.
Of course, all of that being said, it's also true that Jax's first attempt to get the club to go
legit would have worked if Clay hadn't torpedoed it. Putting SAMCRO in the adult film business in
Season 2 with Luann Delaney's film studio Cara Cara was at least a legitimate business venture
operating within the law. Of course, Cara Cara also provided a source of relationship drama
between Jax and future wife Tara Knowles, but it's also where Opie met his second wife, Lyla.
Juan Carlos "Juice" Ortiz manages a lot of the non-muscle tasks
SAMCRO faces over the course of the "Sons of Anarchy" timeline. He's technologically
proficient and serves the role of an MC's version of a hacker and tech support,
but he's also prone to making his share of stupid decisions — perhaps the most
notable of which is turning against the club when Sheriff Eli Roosevelt blackmails him.
Back in the day, when the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club was first formed, the legendary
First 9 — the founding members of the Redwood Original chapter — wrote their bylaws with some
rules that would not age well. Among them was the provision that prohibited Black men as members.
Sheriff Roosevelt blackmails Juice on behalf of Season 4's primary antagonist,
Lincoln Potter, knowing that Juice's father is Black, threatening to reveal his heritage to the
club if he doesn't turn snitch. Fearing being kicked out of the club, Juice does Potter's
bidding and steals a brick of cocaine — which will provide proof that SAMCRO is mixed up with the
Galindo Cartel — and even kills Eric Miles when he's caught in the act trying to return the drugs.
"Doesn't make sense. Miles?"
The inanity we ignore is that Juice would rather risk getting caught out as a rat — for
which he'd almost certainly be killed — than potentially get kicked out of the club over an
outdated rule that it's possible no one in the modern club would even care about.
Speaking of the outdated rules written by the founding members of the Sons of Anarchy MC,
in addition to people of color, women were also prohibited from being members of the club.
So, while it's true that Gemma and Tara are not patched members of the club,
it's unlikely that any woman would be able to exert as much influence on its comings
and goings as the two of them do — and Gemma more than anyone. Biker culture has traditionally been
patriarchal in nature, and the club that's presented on "Sons of Anarchy" is no different.
Don't take our word for it; people have written scholarly articles about the
persistence of patriarchy in the world of motorcycle aficionados.
In her thesis "Making Sense Of Motorcycle Brotherhood: Women, Branding, And Construction
Of Self," Kimberly Michelle Maas notes that the number of women riders has risen over the years,
but is still down around 25% of the total biker population, with 75% being men. She concludes:
"No matter the experience used to define
or support patriarchy in motorcycles the data shows that it still does exist."
Quora user George Paczolt addressed Gemma's role in the club,
after laying out an impressive list of his MC credentials. He wrote:
"Gemma's position in the club ain't gonna happen — ever. She'd have been
taken out back and 'corrected' halfway thru the first episode in the real world.
Women do not have any decision making positions in a real M/C. Period."
The mystery and uncertainty behind John Teller's death plays a crucial role in the
early development of "Sons of Anarchy," and his figurative ghost — the narrative set forth in
his manuscript "The Life and Death of Sam Crow: How the Sons of Anarchy Lost Their Way" — also
helps set up conflict between Jax and Clay. JT makes it clear he feels the club's decision to
get into guns with the True IRA was a catalyst for SAMCRO's seeming downfall and tries more than
once to get the club out of guns and into more legitimate pursuits — sound familiar? Of course,
Jax's father died shortly after completing this manuscript, so the subtext reads that
his idea wasn't popular with a certain party who very much wants SAMCRO to continue running guns.
Initially, we're told JT died in an accident, but the circumstances change more than once. Gemma
suggests that, following the death of their second son, Thomas, JT may have taken his own life. JT's
letters to Maureen Ashby indicate he feels like Clay and Gemma are plotting to kill him. We also
find out that Wayne Unser helped cover up the fact that his bike was sabotaged, so it was murder. But
then it was neither an accident nor murder because JT's confidant Jury White insists JT would know if
his bike had been tampered with, suggesting he purposely crashed his bike into the semi in an
effort to save the club and keep SAMCRO together. Given how Jax met his own end, we assume the most
recent version of JT's death is what he chose to believe, but the shifting narrative on the matter
of John Teller's death was definitely a source of frustration for many "Sons of Anarchy" fans.
Robert "Bobby Elvis" Munson is a nuanced and important character among the "Sons
of Anarchy" cast. He serves as both a surrogate father figure and vital sounding board for Jax,
talking the volatile young man down with a skilled and steady hand on more than one occasion. In
many situations that called for a voice of reason, Bobby plays that role, knowing the tension between
Clay and Jax is bad for the club as a whole. He also initially serves as vice president of SAMCRO
when Jax takes the president's patch. Before that, Bobby Elvis serves as club treasurer, and
it's in this capacity that the character is seen acting outside his normal operating principles.
In Season 2, when reviewing the finances of the club's joint venture with Luann Delaney,
the Cara Cara adult film studio, Bobby realizes Luann is skimming and thus defrauding SAMCRO
of money. Based on the moral compass he presents throughout the rest of the show,
we'd expect Bobby to turn Luann in to face the consequences of her actions.
"By my calculations, you've been cutting us light for six years."
Instead, he gives into her advances and chooses not to disclose her theft. It's a decision that
doesn't make sense, given Bobby's tendency to do what's best for the club. Further,
Luann is Otto Delaney's old lady. Despite the fact that the prison clause — we're still not
sure if that's actually a thing in real life MC culture, but we hope
not — allows other members to have relations with an old lady while her man is in prison,
it's just wrong on so many levels and not really in keeping with the character as a whole.
Season 4 has a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes — a peculiar score considering there's
a major issue with the finale. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lincoln Potter rolls into
town as members of SAMCRO are released from prison and recruits Eli Roosevelt,
the new top dog at the San Joaquin County Sheriff Department, to be a part of his multi-agency task
force to bring down SAMCRO, the True IRA, and Russian organized crime all in one fell swoop.
Potter sows dissension in the ranks by forcing Juice to betray his club
in order to remain a member when he and Roosevelt convince the wayward Juan Carlos to steal a brick
of cocaine SAMCRO got from the Galindo Cartel — represented by Romero "Romeo" Parada and Luis
Torres Potter is an antagonist who's ambitious and cunning to boot. In fact, he's so good that it
looks like he's got all his ducks in a row and is about to clear the board with a massive RICO case.
Then the cartel shows up to make that all go away.
See, Parada and Torres are actually members of the CIA working on a black-book operation
and the American government is backing the Galindo cartel in the hopes of putting other
cartels out of business and eliminating the violence between the warring factions,
amid other political reasons. It doesn't matter that Potter succeeded where others had failed,
because this deus ex machina ending essentially undid the entire season's worth of drama.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite shows are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.