Welcome back SAMCRO Fans. A lot has happened in the last week since I last wrote for all of you. Sandy paid a long visit to the east coast and some of it even blew through here or caused the wind here to be quite strong for the last couple days. We’ve received mostly good news so far from all that we’ve gotten to know over the last couple years so I’m thankful for that. Add to that good news, Our DesignDiva is home from the hospital. Get well soon my friend. Last week when we left off, Gemma had just crashed her SUV, I think, as a result of being high while driving. We saw blood dripping on to the floorboard and Able, Jax’s son, not making any noise like his baby brother. We learned that it was in fact, Clay who is behind the home invasions with the help of the Nomads. Greg The Peg, and Gogo are now dead after attempting to kill Unser, and Frankie Diamonds is MIA. Jax is on to Clay but Clay still insists, that Pope is behind the invasions. Also, Somebody tried to take out Jax and Chibs on the road. He shot one of them in a gun fight, and it turns out, the guy is black.

This episode should be called Memories because there’s a lot of old stuff that gets brought up. This week, we open at the scene of the accident. The baby is fine it appears, and as the rescue worker tries to wake Gemma, we see Able strapped to a stretcher and being carried away. She wakes at that point, sees him, and screams OMG, Able! I knew her lifestyle was going to continue to hurt this kid. Meanwhile, I guess Jax called Tara and Tig, who were up at the cabin waiting for Jax. They are loading the dead black guy into the back of the car, I assume to try and see if Pope can ID the guy.

Clay returns home to find Juice (somehow I get the feeling he’s one of the few who actually cares about putting the club first) who tells Juice that he’s not answering any questions. Don’t ask. Juice tells him that Gemma has had an accident and is in the hospital. Cut to the cabin where Jax and Tara are discussing the evening’s events. Tara reminds Jax, that these guys causing all the trouble are members, part of SAMCRO, she says this isn’t supposed to happen. She asks if Frankie Diamonds set up the attempted hit, Jax doesn’t know. Jax tells Tara to stay in the room, he has to take care of the dead black guy. Jax, with an ax, chops both of the guys hands off. He wants one to go to Unser for a positive ID and one to go to Pope to see if he’s going to lie about who the guy is. Tara comes into the room and says they have to go, she’s been notified of the accident (theme song here).

At the hospital, Able is on the operating table. For the most part, I guess, he’s okay but he has an irregular heartbeat and they need to do a small procedure (ablation) to correct it. They are running a wire through his leg up to his heart. Tara says this is on Gemma.. If she was drunk or high, she will never see the kids again. Gemma wakes in her hospital bed with Clay sitting by her side. He tells her where she is and that the kids are going to be fine. She tells Clay that she was smoking with Unser when she was called to come and get the kids. Meanwhile, Happy, Juice, Chucky, and Filthy Phil come off the elevator and meet up with Chibs, Bobby, and Tig. Jax will shortly bring everyone up to speed. In Able’s room, Jax and Tara are there and the administrator lady brings Thomas in. Everybody did great (the kids). Jax asks if his mother is awake, admin lady says she’ll find out. Bobby walks into the room to tell him that Unser has arrived. Unser tells the guys who the black guy was, doesn’t look local, he’s from San Diego or Lone Beach. The guy’s name is Charles Turner. Black Nation in Chino but no apparent ties on the outside.

Gemma is awake, Jax goes to see her. He asks her if she was drunk point blank. Reasonable question to ask.. Sidebar here. Maybe it’s just me but every time I’ve been in the hospital, they’ve taken blood. With an accident like this, wouldn’t some foreign substance be looked into? Wouldn’t someone have asked for such tests? End sidebar. Before Gemma can answer, Clay pipes in to tell Jax that she was run off the road, likely by the same guys who did it to him and Chibs. He asks if she got a look at them, she says no, it happened real fast. So she went along with the lie. Does Gemma have any idea what the truth looks like? We’ll see. For now, Jax buys the story and says this is all his fault. Some of the guys walk into the room and they all go out into the hallway. Clay says, Only one guy we know gets off on dead kids. He’s still trying to sell the idea that Pope is behind all this. Pope wants to meet at the train yard. They tell Tig to stay behind (wise move). He and Bobby are left behind to keep an eye on the family. Clay walks back into the room to Gemma’s disgust, and says he didn’t know what else to do, can’t have Jax hating her too.

Out in the waiting room, Sheriff Eli walks in and Clay addresses him to apologize for the club and tells him they know it’s the Nomads who took out his wife. He says the detectives will be contacting him to get whatever info they have on the Nomads. Bobby says it won’t be much, they’ve only been in the club for a heartbeat. Juice says he’ll pull whatever they have on them and Eli calls him aside for a private chat. Remember when Bobby was in prison for taking out Georgie (Tom Arnold) and Juice was being held as they were trying to get a RICO built against the club. Eli had info that showed Juice was half black and Juice has been shitting a brick about it ever since. Clay has of course noticed that Juice is getting special attention from Eli. Eli wants to know where Frankie is. He notes the ‘blood’ bond between the two of them, the black thing, Juice tells Eli that he’s going to get him killed. Eli says that concern left him when he watched his wife die.

Cut to the railyard. Jax, Chibs, and Happy pull up to meet with Pope. The gist of this meeting is to cross Pope off of the list of folks who want Jax to be taken down, before he can blame anyone in the club for pulling the strings (Clay). Pope tells him who the shooter was and suggests that sending him the hand was done under duress. Jax says maybe he ought to get a goon squad to protect himself, Pope tells him to stay close and he won’t need one. He has info on the second shooter and directs his Niner’s guy to share the info and help out tracking him down. They all leave to go find second shooter.

Over in Gemma’s room, Chucky is arranging some flowers and she awakens. Nero walks in and asks Chucky to excuse himelf. He inquires about the fingers and Gemma tells him that the Chinese cut them off because he couldn’t stop playing with himself. I seem to remember him also being injured when the garage was torched a couple seasons ago. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, She tells Nero what happened, that she was high, has driven that way many times, and that Clay lied for her. He tells her she has to get in front of this and tell Jax and Tara the truth. I guess Nero believes that Gemma never being forgiven is a chance she’ll have to take. Chucky walks in to let them know that Clay is coming. Clay follows Nero out of the room and tells Nero if he gets in the way with Gemma, he will kill him (Clay to Nero). Don’t make the mistake of getting in the way. Nero’s parting shot is to tell Clay, he doesn’t make mistakes, not like Clay.

We’re on the street with SAMCRO and Popes guy who is taking them to the location where the white van is. They locate the van and there are a few guys around it. Chibs asks, of Jax, which ‘brother’ was driving it. They decide to find out by walking into the yard and one of them opens fire on the boys. Must be the one. They give chase and corner the guy on the roof of a building when he tries to escape via the ladder fire escape, and it falls off the building. Ummm, Okay…. WHY do these foot chases always end up on the roof of some building. I guess in nearly a hundred years of film making, they’re out of fresh ideas. The guy spills about being hired by Frankie Diamonds to take them out and swears he knows nothing about running Gemma and the kids off of the road (Now Jax knows his mother lied to him, again). He shoots the guy 3 times in the gut and lets him fall off of the roof. Clunk, bounce, splat. Both of them who tried to kill Jax, are dead. Frankie, who they knew from Chino, gave up his custom chopper to pay them.

Over in the clubhouse apartment / office, Juice is looking for info on the Nomads when Clay walks in. All they have on them is dues payment records which won’t tell anyone anything. Clay wants to know why Sheriff Roosevelt is so interested in Juice. Juice after some prodding, tells Clay about the RICO, Otto flipping, the missing cocaine and the cartel, and that he, Juice, is half black. The feds wanted evidence of the Irish and the Cartel (that’s when he admits to stealing the cocain). Clay tells him about the Nomads scheme and his own involvement in the attempt on Unser. The two of them are now bound by each other’s secrets. Everyone, Clay says, at that table has done something that puts them outside of the reaper.

Gemma has been released from the hospital. Jax has told Tara what happened and Tara thanks Gemma for keeping the boys safe. Jax comes in and plays as he’s still looking into what happened. He asks Gemma if she remembers the van. She says not, he asks her about the color, she should have just said no but she says dark, brown maybe. Jax’s phone rings, it’s Nero.. Gemma asks Tara to see Able. Over at Nero’s place, Jax, Chibs, and Bobby walk in to find Frankie holding a gun in Lila’s mouth. Nero is tied up in a chair. Frankie demands $200k from Jax, Nero says he has $130k and a couple expensive watches in his safe. Frankie accepts that as the ransom He sends ‘Elvis’ to go get it, Nero gives him the combo to the safe, and Frankie spills the beans about what was going on. He also says, he had nothing to do with Gemma being run off the road. Frankie gets Nero’s truck keys from him, takes Chibs as a hostage, and shoots Lila in the leg on the way out. Nero calls a doctor ‘client’ for Lila.. The two of them, Jax and Nero, have a chat. What Jax promised Nero isn’t happening. Nero wants to know what’s going to become of Gemma. For some reason he’s concerned about her. Jax tells him to be with her if he wants but she’s now his problem.

At the hospital Gemma is holding the baby while talking to admin lady and Tara when Jax walks in. He takes the baby from Gemma saying he has some new information. He asks Gemma who is going to tell Tara, him or her. She tells Tara that she was smoking with Unser when Tara called her to get the kids. States that she didn’t want to miss her chance to be with the kids. Tara delivers a pretty good right cross to Gemma, with her bad hand, and tells Gemma that as far as the kids are concerned, Gemma is dead. She is never to come near them or see them again. Back at the garage, Jax and Bobby arrive and they decide not to mention anything that puts Clay in mind that they know what’s going on. Only tell the club, for now, about Frankie and Chibs (who by the way was left by the side of the road bleeding from the head after Frankie cold conked him with the gun, shot the tire on Nero’s truck, and was driven away by a couple other guys who were waiting for him.. WHO were they?). Eli pulls up and Jax tells him that the detectives have been given whatever they had on the Nomads. Eli asks Jax about his sons and then tells him that Rita was 7 weeks along with his kid, who he doesn’t even know if it it was a boy or girl. The DNA under Rita’s nails was inconclusive so her death cannot be tied to the MC. Eli is now back at square one but, I’m sure he knows but not for certain. He eludes to the question of why Bobby was released from the feds, Killing the RICO case against the club. Jax plays dumb, stating that Bobby was in jail for killing Georgie (yeah right, Feds caring about the death of a porn producer). Jax denies any knowledge of RICO against the club. He asks Eli what he wants who says, THAT RICO wasn’t the only one existing against the club. He says Frankie Diamonds and anyone else responsible for the death of his wife and unborn child. He tells Jax to give him those people and he will reveal The Rat at the table who is cooperating in this other RICO (Juice?). Jax knows about Otto… I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Tara’s meetings with him.

Back at Jax and Tara’s house, they are discussing the recent events. He asks her if she regrets ever coming back to Charming. She says no and in fact wonders what would have happened if she never left. Jax wonders the same and has been thinking about all the choices made. He then tells her that he’s caught up with Frankie and is certain that Clay is the one behind all of the recent events. He says he has to prove it in order to gut him out and kill him. It has to be a club call. Tara asks how to do that. Jax says he has a plan she may not like. Next we see this plan being put into motion (so I assume Tara is on board) when we see Jax arrive at the garage where Clay is doing some paperwork in the office. He tells Clay he knows the truth about Gemma and the kids. He tells Clay that Gemma is dead to his family and that he’s concerned about her. She doesn’t do well without family (which is what Nero told him). He says that Gemma needs Clay to which he responds ‘she doesn’t want me’. Gemma instead of going home, has gone to Nero’s. Jax shows up there next where he lays out a plan to get in good with Tara again (never going to happen). Jax tells her that in order to get back, she has to hand them Clay who has been behind all the chaos. She needs to get him to admit it to her and the way she is to do that, is to take him back. Make him feel like a king. Sleep with him so that when he’s busting one off, he spills. (sorry, it’s late and I can’t think in word for word terms). She asks, ‘what if I can’t do that?’.. He answers, ‘then get use to living in a brothel. Because hookers and bangers are going to be your only family’. Fade to the Reaper.

That’s all folks.

Catch up on SAMCRO here.

Til next week, Peace.