The Televangelist: ‘Sons of Anarchy’ Season 4, Ep. 8

• FX
• “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”

?The debate has been raging on with fans of “Sons” about the racial policies of the club and also the apparently escalating misogyny. In his lambasting of bloggers and everyone in general on Twitter, Kurt Sutter (creator and showrunner) has said “people are disappointed when they find out bad things about the guys they love to hate.” But that’s the opposite reaction that I, and most of my fellow fans, feel. We hate to love SAMCRO, but love we do. Yet these are seriously bad guys. None of them are 100% evil: we’ve seen darker depths on the show with the White Supremacists and now the cartel, and compared to that SAMCRO doesn’t look particularly devilish. Is it that we’re just of course in favor of supporting a gang of guys who have some kind of humanity rather than none? That’s a rather low bar. In this game of cops and robbers, why are we so drawn to the robbers? Is it a set up? They are trafficking in guns and now drugs. How many of us are really ok with the outcome of those endeavors? And the bodies that pile up because of it? Maybe it’s because, for the most part, those caught up in the bloodshed are themselves criminals - like Chicago in the 30s, gangsters and killing gangsters and leaving innocents out of it. So perhaps our skewed hero worship comes from this: they’re the best of the bad? I’m interested to know, readers — who are your favorite characters, and why? And do you see them as anti-heroes or just entertaining thugs?

?That’s enough musing on our collective neuroses for now — onto “Family Recipe.” Yes, Shakespeare’s influence is still felt in all corners of our media, including an episode of “Sons of Anarchy”! The nod to “Titus Andronicus” was a nasty one, but in tune with “Sons” particular brand of black humor. It also illustrated just how dark this season has become. The introduction of the Lobos cartel has taken the violence to a new level - “they target families,” Juice whispers. We see three heads in a duffel bag (and then one extra - Armando’s - which escaped), and then the corpses they belong to later on. The Gallindo cartel members ask Happy if he had cut out the rat’s tongue yet. “No, but I’m running out of ideas,” he replies, genuinely bewildered. The violence has become so casual that not cutting someone’s tongue out is see as a surprise (another nod to “Titus” there, intentional or not).