So here we are, at the end of a bloody, grim, meandering, occasionally thrilling season of Sons of Anarchy. The whole season – really, the whole show – has been building to this episode, which, now that I’ve typed it, seems like a stupid thing to say about a series finale. Of fucking course the show has been building towards its finale, but that doesn’t answer the bigger question – how does it end? I don’t mean “what happens,” I mean how does it end. Is it perfect like Breaking Bad, shitty like Dexter, or frustratingly inconclusive like Deadwood?
The answer is probably somewhere in between. “Papa’s Goods” was definitely an episode of Sons of Anarchy‘s seventh season – it was bleak, bloody, and stuffed with subplots that the viewer had long since stopped caring about. In the waning minutes of the series, I didn’t find myself caring about who was going to be distributing guns in Stockton. NOBODY DID. But showrunner Kurt Sutter – who wrote and directed the episode – can’t help himself, so we have multiple scenes devoted to double-crossing the Irish, and the only good thing to come out of this plotline is that we can finally put those rumors about Chibs to bed. You know the ones I mean, where he’s secretly been in league with the IRA this whole time? Yeah, not the case. Granted, it was an interesting theory at first, but who really thought we were going to get that kind of a twist this close to the end? We want to see Jax’s death, goddamnit!
To be fair, this entire episode is about Jax’s death (if you’re complaining about spoilers right now, I am very sorry about your SCUBA diving accident). He spends the majority of “Papa’s Goods” tying up loose ends. He deeds the garage and the houses to Wendy; he leaves rings on the graves of Opie and Tara; he asks Nero to take care of his boys. In one of the most powerful scenes of the night, he explains what he wants: “I want my boys to grow up hating me,” he tells Nero, as he makes him promise to tell his sons the truth. Jax doesn’t want this life for Abel and Thomas, and even though Thomas is a nonentity and Abel is the worst child actor in history, the moment lands, simply because Charlie Hunnam has been playing Jax for seven fucking years, and has been working arguably his entire career to land these monologues. The work shows, and it pays off. The performances are one of the highlights of “Papa’s Goods,” specifically those by Hunnam and Tommy Flanagan as Chibs.
But for as good as most of “Papa’s Goods” was – and it was pretty damn good – there is one thing that can’t be ignored, a glaring mistake made not only by this episode but by this entire show: the homeless woman, or (as I’m sure Kurt Sutter would prefer me to write) the Homeless Woman. She’s been popping up since season three, and in the Sons of Anarchy Afterword, Sutter was asked what he story was. “Her story is whatever you want it to be,” he replied, prompting my brother to turn to me and say, “I think I hate this show.” She adds a metaphysical, surreal aspect to the show that is completely out of tune with the universe that Sutter has created.
That being said, I enjoyed “Papa’s Goods” overall. If you’re looking for a representative episode of Sons of Anarchy, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one. There have been better episodes, and there have been worse episodes, but this was a pretty good showcase for the best and worst tendencies of Kurt Sutter. For better or worse, the show was him in a fucking nutshell – violent, over the top, funny, sentimental, and bleak, all in equal doses. Like its creator, SoA played by its own rules, and compromised with no one. It was a singular creation, and while it wasn’t perfect, we can thank it for, if nothing else, consistently pushing the boundaries of sex and violence on network TV. It put us face to face with human ugliness, and while the show certainly stopped being fun in its later years, I think it will be a long time before we see another like it.
A Few Thoughts
- The way Jax killed Barosky and Marks was pretty badass. Especially when he was waiting for Marks, hooded like Mr. Mayhem
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Montez finally got a line! I imagine his mom was very excited.
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Glad the club finally patched in a black guy. Imagine how much different (and better) the show would have been from day one if they were allowed to do that
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Chibs will make a good president
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Thanks for coming on this ride with me, guys (no pun intended). It’s been fun, frustrating, but ultimately addictive, just like the show. Your readership means the world to us, and I wish I could have been recapping this show for you from the beginning
“Papa’s Goods” score: 4/5 stars
Series score: 4/5 stars
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