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Sons of Anarchy Recap: 'Authority Vested' Sees Resourceful White Boys Hit A Wall

By April MacIntyre Sep 19, 2012, 3:18 GMT

We see the wheels turning in Bobby\'s (Mark Boone Junior) head, and the groundwork for a breakthrough with Unser (Dayton Callie) whose police DNA is fired up over the home invasion swarm going on in Charming

First comes love, then a few babies... and finally Jax (Charlie Hunnam) does right by Tara (Maggie Siff) and marries his high school sweetheart, an act of love still rubbing Gemma (Katey Sagal) the wrong way.

Gemma sucked it up tonight in "Authority Vested," after playing nurse maid to a broken Tig, sifting through her jacked up house from the invasion and weighing her next move with Nero Padilla (Jimmy Smits), a charismatic cat who did right by Jax while on the partial lam, and still sleeping with mama G.

Padilla has king-sized huevos, so don't have a Mexican stand-off with this one, he'll win.

Peter Weller (actor in classic film RoboCop, noir TV series Dexter, Italian Renaissance art history professor and all-around badass) did a fabulous job directing this episode.

We see the wheels turning in Bobby's (Mark Boone Junior) head, and the groundwork for a breakthrough with Unser (Dayton Callie), whose police DNA is fired up over the home invasion swarm going on in Charming. 

Unser's conversation with Roosevelt was pointed and real from a cop perspective; it was not typical black retaliation, says Unser. "It felt more white to me, sloppy, clumsy, the beatdown was obligatory not angry."  I love Unser's buoyancy as a character. You cannot dislike him. Even Roosevelt (Rockmond Dunbar) has a soft spot for the old lion who held his job prior.

Damon Pope (Harold Perrineau) is at the slow boil point right now as Tig (Kim Coates) escapes his clutches and the boys are MIA, these "resourceful white boys" are a major thorn in his side, and what comes next most likely will be an orchestrated move inside the walls of a prison.  

Jax, Chibs (Tommy Flanagan) and Tig are joined by Opie (Ryan Hurst) who is making sure his boys are not outnumbered as they are seen on their way to lock up by the episode end.

We already know that there is a rat or three inside SAMCRO, as the home invasion drama has a certain PegLeg Pete stink to it.

"Authority Vested" presents our Gemma lust-crush Nero as a complex dude, businessman, reformed junkie, devoted father to a kid with Spina Bifida, who sees a bigger picture with his newfound SAMCRO alliance.  So far so good.

The tide is coming up again on Gemma and Tara and their fragile friendship. Gemma always has to Alpha bitch the family situation, she can't help it.

Tara is emboldened by Jax's love, her educational accomplishments and position as a doctor and the juicy delicious dirt she has on Gemma, all of which keep her side-eyeing her mother-in-law and butting heads. Good stuff there.

Last but not least, our tortured Tig, his daughter Dawn's smoldering remains in his arms at the beginning of the episode, to his daughter Fawn (Lexi Sakowitz) getting it on rough and tumble with her black boyfriend (Amin Joseph), a double gut-punch for him, this broken old biker with no love lost for the brothers.

Race and all its twisty stigmatizing, marginalizing moments are a-plenty this season.  Black, Brown, White. Just what we all need to talk openly and face it versus the whistling past the graveyard tactics most employ to deal.

"Sons" always challenges us to think past the cuts.

See you next week.