After waiting an entire season in anticipation for the big payback, we got a Mexican stand-off – without the Mayans – zing! Kurt Sutter and Dave Erickson’s script delivered another curve with the arrest of Polly, Zobelle, and Weston; making the Sons’ revenge against LOAN a bit more complicated than just putting one in the back of Zobelle’s head in the cigar shoppe. Unser seems prepared to let SAMCRO wipe Charming’s ass with LOAN once and for all, which is awesome because Hale has been a pain in the dick lately.

“No. That’s assault.” – With those words and the right hook to Margaret’s face, Tara went full SAMCRO and embraced the methodology Jax has been working all season to extinguish. Granted, the reveal of Gemma’s rape has given Jax’s conscious carte blanche, but Tara can no longer act as his anchor after that assault. The show has done an incredible job of existing in this gray moral area (much like The Shield), and losing Jax and Tara to the violent side flips the entire show into the fatalistic affirmation that “violence begets violence” and that’s all there is. SOA has always been more than that, but this particular episode just seemed to ignore the moral complexities of previous episodes. I’m not bashing it, I care about Charming and am always rooting for SAMCRO, but after Tara socks Margaret, who’s left with the gray hat on? When we saw SAMCRO going to the mattresses and bringing in all their children and spouses for protection, that at least reaffirmed what all this is for.

Show of hands, who smiled when Lem showed up? We got plenty of Dutch last season, so the brief cameo of another Shield regular was really cool.

Next week is the “90 minute” finale!!! We’re not saps, FX. We know that actually means 55 minutes. Set those DVRs and skip the ridiculously extended commercial breaks!!!

The prominent song this episode was a cover of CCR’s “Someday Never Comes,” a personal favorite of mine. Like this episode, it also has this sort of fatalist attitude.