Finished the first draft of the WIP last night. Came in at about 4400 words and 14 pages. Did some extensive revision to the first five pages this morning, but didn’t cut more than a hundred words or so. Did get it down to 13 pages. I expect this first pass will mostly address organization, logic, continuity and flow. Then it will be time for a fine tuning job on the writing and any subtext that decides to show its face along the way. I like the idea I came up with for the last sentence, but I’m not terribly fond of the way it’s expressed at the moment. It needs to have more punch.
A dramatic ending to the third season of Sons of Anarchy. It started out with some tender together moments for the SAMCRO families, and a crazy moment for Stahl, lounging in bed and laughing about the lover she murdered last week to cover her ass. That’s one major breakfast buffet they put together. No wonder Unser (bad pun of the episode, Tig calling him Chemo Sabe) was eager to attend. Of course, we know that dreamy scenes like this presage terrible things ahead, which is one reason I was so jittery throughout much of the episode. I expected…the unexpected. All the time.
Poor Chucky has been trying to show “something important” to anyone he could corner for weeks, and everyone kept blowing him off. They shoulda listened sooner. Things might have gone differently with the whole Salazar ransom thing. Tig’s reaction to the news that they were sitting on $5 million in counterfeit money was hilarious, offering to lend him his hand so he could do what caused him his severe shortage of fingers in the first place.
When they bought Jimmy O from the Russians, I kept expecting the deal to go south in the worst possible way. The phone calls Victor kept getting during the transaction made me even more nervous, but they had to wait for him to figure out how he’d been duped. “Looks like Victor did a little accounting.”
I lost count. Did they double-cross, triple-cross or quadruple-cross Stahl? In the parlance of Sawyer from Lost, this was one long con. It’s not exactly clear when Jax brought everyone up to speed, but it must have been a while ago. They totally sold the moment in the garage yard when Stahl sold Jax out. I mused to myself that that was going to be one of the longest, most uncomfortable rides in the back of a van ever, with Jax on one side and his former buddies on the other side, all glaring at him. The ultimate “are we there yet?” Then came the ultimate switcheroo. Piney and Chibs and Kozik driving up in the big yellow bus. I got a kick out of Unser trying to give Stahl a hit off his joint. “You really should have some.” He knew what was about to happen to her.
But first, Jimmy O got his due. I would assume from the first slashes that Jimmy was responsible for the scars on Chibs’ face. He hung tough at the end (“Take care of our girls”) but man that looked like a painful way to go. Dig in the knives and then twist them. Owie. The luck of the Irish he was so smug about earlier ran its course.
Odd detail: I was intrigued by Unser’s shirt when he took off his badge. It had holes for the pin to go through instead of making new holes in the fabric every time he put it on. Makes sense—I’ve just never seen that before. I thought he was resigning his position, and maybe he was, but more than that, I think he was making a clear distinction to himself that he was acting as Unser, not as the sheriff of Charming. He gets some great “dry” witty lines, like when he told Kozik to hit him on the left side of the face. “I had bridge work done on the right.”
And then there was Opie, who finally got his revenge for what happened to Donna. Walker was very good in her final scenes, pleading for mercy. We all know that she was merciless to others, so it was no surprise that the newly engaged Opie didn’t offer any. “This is what she felt,” he says before putting three in the back of her head. A very definite end to that chapter in his life—not to mention Stahl’s.
And we get to see what Maureen was up to when she put those letters in the suitcase before SAMCRO left Ireland. The first one Tara choses has Jax’s father predicting his own death at the hands of his wife and best friend. The guys are off for a short hiatus in prison, but things will probably be very different around Charming when they get back out. Maybe Unser will join up and get patched in.
