This season of Sons of Anarchy has been hit or miss for a lot of fans. For a show that’s been running for as long as SOA, it’s easy for audiences to fall into familiar patterns. Season 6 has metaphorically pulled the rug out from under our feet, and turned a lot of preconceived notions upside down. Characters that you counted on to act, and react, in predictable ways are switching it up, and plot tangents are popping up all over the place. Plus, the growing list of people conspiring against the MC is headache worthy – not because it doesn’t make for good television, but because it seems like impossible odds to beat, and that can become exhausting in large doses.
Fans of the Sons of Anarchy series are just as invested in the survival of SAMCRO as the actual club members, and although I’m still loving all the drama that Kurt Sutter throws at us every week, I have to admit that there are some things, especially about this latest episode, that are upsetting to say the least.
While I have a great deal of respect for story arcs that showcase a considerable amount of character development, I unfortunately don’t have any tolerance for the downward spiral that Tara (Maggie Siff) has attached herself wholeheartedly to. Until late in season 5, I was a big fan of this character. She was blissfully naive at times, but always stood by the decisions that built for her life in Charming, despite the consistent string of complications that arose as a side effect.
She’s clearly broken out of the ‘for-the-good-of-the-club’ mold, which is understandable. It’s unfortunate for the characters that she’s intertwined with, but understandable all the same. For the first time, we’re seeing Tara step out on her own and root her own storyline. Previously, we’ve experienced her as an accessory to Jax’s life. She was the one thing that wasn’t inherently tied to his MC lifestyle. As the series progressed and her relationship with him became more entwined with other aspects of his life, we saw a sharp turn in her role.
Now that she is facing the reality of her own decisions (I repeat, her own), she has come to a point where she is no longer in a position to be comfortable with them, and is willing to resort to desperate measures to get what she wants. In fact, her form of extreme makes anything that Gemma (Katey Sagal) has done in the past look tame.
I’d like to point out that desperation is not particularly a good look on Tara. She may be dishing it out like Gemma 2.0, but she lacks the je ne se qua that makes Gemma, Gemma.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20-20, but instead of owning up to her mistakes and admitting her resolve to all parties involved, Tara is choosing to create a situation that isn’t going to end well for anyone. Wouldn’t it be an ironic twist if the same woman Jax couldn’t fancy himself living without became the same person that is too much of a liability to let live at all?
The offense of consorting with Wendy (Drea De Matteo) by itself is reason enough to facilitate trust issues between the couple. Jax’s ex-wife nearly killed their son before he was born with her drug use, and now Tara has jotted down her name next to ‘back-up mom.’
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