Sons Of Anarchy season 4 episode 3 review: Dorylus

This review contains spoilers.

4.3 Dorylus

After a very exciting season opener and second episode, things are a bit slower in the world of SAMCRO this week, with episode three being somewhat less action based and concentrating more on the politics of the club.

The two big narratives this week are both relating to the deal made with the Mexican cartel, namely the changes to the Sons’ gun running operation, and the shift into drugs. More on the drugs later.

Whilst moving guns into a truck at Happy’s grandmother’s house, Kozik gets involved in a basketball game with some of the local kids in the area, with the incentive being a cash prize. Kozik, though, ends up getting beaten up by the kids, who then steal the truck with the guns inside. 

When the rest of the Sons find out what has happened, Jax loses the plot, practically coming to blows with Kozik. After finding the two thieves and giving them a beating, it is discovered that the guns were sold to two of Vivica’s sons, rather amusingly called Luther and Vandross.  So, the Sons get their guns back, and a rather red faced Kozik may take a while to live this down.

A lot of the episode is dedicated to how the vote on the Sons moving into drugs will go. At the start of the episode, Clay decides that he will work on convincing Bobby, and Jax decides that he will work on Opie.

Clay takes Bobby aside and explains to him that in time he will have to step down, and Jax will want to leave due to family commitments, and that due to this, he would like Bobby at the helm of the club.  This contradicts what Jax and Clay talked about last week, when they said Opie would be the new club president. 

If this is just a ploy by Clay in order to get Bobby to vote ‘yes’, then it’s very cold, as it has been said time and time again that Bobby and Clay have been friends for a very long time. It could of course be the case that Clay has no intention of allowing Opie to be club president when Clay steps down. 

I think this one will certainly have repercussions. The issue of whether or not to begin transporting drugs has really divided the club as a whole, and this time it is Piney’s turn to voice his concerns about it, and it doesn’t go to well. This is probably down to Piney telling Gemma about it. When Gemma confronts Clay, he overreacts and violently grabs her. After the vote, he tells Piney that if he ever goes behind his back like that, he will kill him. 

We have seen both sides to Clay’s character. Lately it has been the warm, doting husband and father figure side that we have seen more often, but this series has been going back to the vicious, calculating side that we saw a lot more of  in series one and two.

Back to the vote, which turns out in favour of drug dealing by 6-5.  Most of the reasons for various club member’s decisions are fairly obvious, but I can’t figure out why Happy apologised and voted against it.  He’s such a fringe character that it is often hard to figure him out.

Elsewhere in Charming, Roosevelt and Potter are trying to figure out new ways to get at the Sons. This week, they’ve decided to work on Juice. Roosevelt takes Juice in to the station and sort of threatens him, saying that he will tell the Sons that Juice has a black father. I couldn’t really figure out why this would make any difference, to be honest, as the Sons have worked with the Niners and the Mayans in the past, so they’re clearly not a racist organisation. 

Also, Gemma finally confronts Tara about the letters, explaining how it will hurt Jax to know the truth about his father. I really doubt that we’ve heard the last of this arc, as it has been running through the show since day one, and we still don’t know what happened to John Teller. We do know that Jax knows far more than his mother thinks, and his hero worship for has father seemed to fade at the end of the last season when he found out about his affair with Maureen Ashby in Belfast.

So, all in all, a far slower episode than the two preceding it, but still perfectly serviceable.  The ‘bigger picture’ is looking good for this series, and I’m really feeling good about the direction that it is taking.

You can read our review of Sons Of Anarchy season 4 episode 3, Booster, here.

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