Sons Of Anarchy season 4 episode 4 review: Una Venta

This review contains spoilers.

4.4 Una Venta

In this week’s Sons Of Anarchy, we’re introduced to another chapter of the club – the Arizona chapter known as SAMTAZ – and lots of new faces and names. Most of which you need to not remember, since the way things are going, I doubt they’ll be around with long.

The episode starts with a very long montage to some mariachi music – the tune reminded me of The Times Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan, and also the traditional Irish song, The Wild Rover. I only mention this because it was all I could really think about during this scene. The scenes show the Sons gearing up and riding to Arizona, there’s a great scene where we see Jax injecting something into Clay’s hands, which is most likely for his arthritis, something that has become apparent this series.

Sons Of Anarchy has always had these montages, with some sort of country infused rock playing over it, but they seem to be getting longer and longer as the series goes on. I wouldn’t be surprised if a future episode features nothing but the Sons silently riding about, occasionally getting off their bikes to punch people, while some loud slide guitar plays and some Chad Kroeger soundalike moans over the top of it.

But I digress.

When SAMCRO get to Arizona, they are immediately faced with a problem: SAMTAZ have quietly been dealing crack for four months, after it was voted in. This is an issue for a number of reasons, namely because SAMCRO were purely in to drug muling, not dealing. Clay tries to justify this and says they are two different things, but Bobby agrees with SAMTAZ, and says that it’s all dealing drugs. Another issue is that Clay is concerned that SAMTAZ’s drug dealing could affect SAMCRO’s new relationship with Romeo and the cartel.

To be honest, SAMTAZ are a disaster, and an absolutely liability as well. And it is probably something of wake up call to SAMCRO, as they could end up in the same sort of mess by the end of this series. The final scene shows SAMCRO looking at bags and bags of uncut Colombian cocaine, with a look of sheer terror in their eyes.

In the initial part of picking up their new merchandise, Romeo points out that the Sons have a tail, which Clay immediately thinks SAMTAZ are responsible for, but he doesn’t know that Lincoln Potter has put the tail on them. They manage to get rid of the tail by blowing up some barrels of petrol, which releases a huge explosion and blocks the road. Lincoln Potter is showing himself to be a worthy adversary, even if the Sons don’t know it yet. This is furthered when he visits Otto in prison, shows photos of his wife’s dead body and also asks him about Bobby’s relationship with his wife.

Back to SAMTAZ, it is later discovered that they voted in the drugs on a lie. One of the members was already dealing drugs and the only person who knew was sleeping with another member’s wife. As a result, the whole thing was brought in on blackmail, so they vote again, and this time it is unanimous. SAMTAZ have seen the money that comes in with the drugs and can’t refuse to let go of it now.

I think that the whole drugs narrative might bring about the death of Piney this series. He was definitely my favourite character in this episode, and he is so staunchly against bringing drugs into the club. He even goes as far to speak to Tara to exchange information from what she might have had in the letters.

The only annoying thing about this arc (and any other scene from the hospital, actually) is that Gemma keeps appearing like some sort of poltergeist, every time someone does so much as whisper “John Teller”. Piney collapses due to lack of oxygen, and Gemma issues a very concise threat of “Leave it alone, before it kills you”, but I kind of get the impression that Piney would rather die than have his beloved club flooded with drugs.

Surprisingly, the episode doesn’t end with another montage, it ends with the deal. Romeo (Danny Trejo, reprising his excellent role from a few episodes ago) and a lot of tooled up cartel members deliver a huge amount of cocaine to the Sons, while the Sons’ eyes shine with terror.This week’s episode was definitely another good one, with a lot going on. While the drug thing does seem to be the big narrative going throughout the series, I can’t help but feel that the Sons should be more worried about someone like Lincoln Potter destroying the club than anything else.

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

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