Eleven down, two to go friends. The season finale is on December 4 and then we get to wait and see what happens next season. I thought it might be fun to review some of where we are with the show and how we got here. Here is the big picture of what has happened this season.

The storyline last season was these letters that Maureen Ashbey sent back with Jax from Ireland. She is the woman that John Teller, Jax’s dad, had an affair with years ago. The letters were the letters he had written to her from the US. Tara finds them, Gemma finds out and is shitting a brick about them, determined, that Jax never see these letters but, Gemma and Clay find out she has them. In their desperation to keep Jax from reading the letters (which are hidden in the club’s storage unit), Clay attempts to have her kidnapped and murdered. The plan is foiled when Jax rescues her from her would be killers. Gemma finds out what Clay has done and confronts him about it. His answer is to beat the hell out of her. Her answer to that? Tell Jax what Clay has done. Meanwhile, Clay has killed Opie’s father, Piney, and Opie puts two bullets in Clay’s chest as revenge. Jax learns that these Cartel members (Luis and Romeo) they’ve been working with are actually federal agents trying to take down both the Irish, and the Cartel. They need Clay alive to make these deals between the Irish and Cartel happen. So Clay has to stay alive. At the end of season 4, Jax has ripped the President’s patch off of Clay’s cut and named himself, the president.

Some houses got broke into and a sheriff’s wife was killed in the process. We later find out that it was the Nomads, Greg the Peg, Frankie Diamonds, and Gogo doing Clay’s bidding. The goal I guess is to make Jax look weak and unable to keep the members in line. Where this line of script ends up is with three dead members (the Nomads), Clay on the move to get back in the present’s chair, Juice being outed as a rat and Jax using him to find information on Clay, just as he’s using Gemma. Ex Chief Wayne Unser is in the end stages of cancer but will probably last another season. Clay tried to have him killed but it was a plot to kill the Nomads when they crashed into Unser’s airstream. Everyone knows that Clay is behind the Nomads but no one can prove it. Will Juice survive the season?

Gemma turned into a she – Barfly and has been kept at arms length from her grandkids partly because of that. Add to it all of her other attempts at manipulating her son while thinking she is still the queen bee around the club has pushed them further away. The topper was when she crashed her SUV  with the kids in the car while driving high on weed. Other things include convincing Wendy to go after Tara threatening a custody fight for Abel. Other things come to mind but she is just a meddling general pain in the ass. So much so that Jax has told Nero, who we were introduced to slamming a drunken Gemma from behind in the first episode, if he wants her so bad, he can have her and she is his problem now. I don’t blame Jax one bit for that. I feel sorry for anyone who has a mother like that. Some may say better that one than none, I disagree. You can probably tell, I don’t like Gemma very much. Truthfully, I never have. She has been the cause of at least half the problems this club has had. Most notably, the Irish kidnapping Abel and taking him to Belfast Ireland where he was put up for adoption by some holier than thou priest (season 3). She looks at her husband Clay with great disdain in part because of what he’s become (or always was) when in fact, She’s become the exact same thing. Pot Kettle Black, you snarling stoned drunken hyena.

One of the first things we got to witness this season was Tig’s daughter, Dawn, being turned into a crispy critter in some pit in a train yard (burned alive in front of Tig). The result of Tig flying off of the handle and taking matters into his own hands and killing Pope’s daughter in the process. Eye for an eye. Pope isn’t done though, he also wants a dead son. This is achieved by getting Jax, Tig, and Chibs locked up for manslaughter due to an incident after Tig ran over Pope’s daughter. Opie, who had been questioning his place in the club, decided to insure that he was in and went to jail with Jax and the others after slugging Sheriff Roosevelt. That, cost him his life as he was beaten to death in a jailhouse beat down with pipes, while the others were forced to watch. This of course has sent Jax on the revenge path and to date, he’s taken his revenge on two of the people involved. A prison guard and one of the inmates responsible for Opie’s death. Tig has been the cause of a lot of the other problems within the club.. The deal Jax makes with Pope is that he is allowed to take Tig out of jail with him, for leverage against whoever is behind the break ins (Clay), and at the time Jax has what he needs, Pope can do the same thing to Tig, that he did to Dawn (Tig’s daughter). Will Tig survive the season? For that matter, will Jax? I’ve been told that Clay will as on the show, he’s still needed to make these deals with the Irish so he can provide guns for the Cartel.

Kurt Sutter plays the character of Otto Delany. One of the club’s First 9 members. At this point, I think he and Clay are the only ones remaining from that group. At least three of the dead ones, by Clay’s hands (McGee in Ireland, Piney, and JT). So much for brotherhood. Is Bobby Elvis first 9? I gave a little synopsis of Otto several weeks back so I won’t go much into it here. Otto has lost both of his eyes to this club, his wife, and now awaits execution on Death Row. He’s decided to exact his own revenge by giving the Feds a RICO case against the club. In her attempt to get him to change his mind about that, Tara had been visiting Otto as a doctor for the prison. The last thing she snuck in for him was his dead wife’s crucifix. Before that, she brought him some of her perfume to which we got to witness two rather odd scenes. Him whacking himself and her doing the same to herself later. I still don’t know what that was all about. Anyway, Otto’s intent all along, was to hurt Jax SAMCRO and use Tara to do it. He used the crucifix to stab the floor nurse in the neck, the crucifix that Tara brought in, making her an accessory. She’s no stranger to that of course, there was an ATF agent she was running from that she had a hand in his death and she also killed Gemma’s father’s caretaker. Now, she seems just as stoned as she’s accused Gemma of being. Anyway, How will this all play out? Your guess is as good as mine.

There of course is a lot more to all of these stories but that’s the general long and short of it. In reviewing the show this weekend, one thing became very clear (as if it hadn’t been already).. Anyone who gets involved with an organization like Sons of Anarchy, eventually ends up taking it up the ass. Either dead or rotting in a prison cell fighting for what is left of their lives every day. That, my friends, is the big picture end game. It cannot end any other way for any of them.

I would like to get some sleep tonight and doing so doesn’t include staying up to recap a television show. I’ll have the actual recap up by Thursday morning so you can read and discuss if you like while you’re basting your turkeys and baking your pies. If you’ve missed the show(s) you can watch them here. For instructions on how to do so, see last week’s blog comments.

UPDATE * Recap coming soon, likely by noon  today.