Sons of Anarchy, "The Culling": I love it when a plan comes together

Spoilers for tonight's "Sons of Anarchy" coming up just as soon as I play with the siren...

"I love all of ya." -Clay

The previous two episodes of "Sons of Anarchy," "Balm" and "Service," took the show to a new creative level. Based on those two shows, and the general momentum of a cable drama season - where the dramatic peak is often in the penultimate episode - I had high hopes for "The Culling."

Instead, I found myself oddly disappointed by it.

I wrote last week that part of what made "Service" so powerful was that all these big moments and revelations were coming from the characters. There was a story there, but everything that happened - whether it was Tig confessing to Opie, or Opie confronting Stahl, or Clay letting Chibs and Piney slide on their crimes against the club - clearly started off with a question of, "How would this character, given his personality and recent events, react to this?"

There was a visceral quality to it all that I found lacking in "The Culling," which felt more like a chess game than a street fight. Kurt Sutter and Dave Erickson's script efficiently moved all the pieces into place, then blew up the board a few times with the arrests of Weston, Zobelle and Polly. Some of it was fun, particularly the club getting over on Stahl (and Ally Walker's performance as Stahl epically lost her cool), and perhaps at an earlier stage in the series' lifespan I would have loved watching all the tumblers click into place. But after the richness of the last two episodes, the sheer plot-intensiveness of "The Culling" felt a bit empty. Necessary, given all that had happened this season, but not nearly as deep as what had come immediately before.

I guess I find the internal struggles of the club more compelling than wars with external enemies like the Mayans and LOAN. "Service" focused entirely on the former, then healed the club to the point where SAMCRO as one could deal with the latter in "The Culling."

And for an episode that was so plot-y, I'm still not sure I understand exactly what SAMCRO's plan was. If, as Clay and Jax decided last week, they intended to "kill 'em all," then why bother with the brawl at the timberlands? Is that really what they were going to use their manpower advantage created by their alliance with the Niners and the Triad just to pick a fistfight with Weston and his best goons? A fight that, even with the various levels of badassery at hand in the combined Charming and Tacoma chapters of the club, they weren't guaranteed to win? Why not lure them out there, disarm them and then put a bullet into everyone's shaved head?

Now, some of this can be ascribed to the ongoing tension between Hale and Unser, and Unser's conflict between serving his friends and serving the law. Perhaps the plan involved a righteous beating and then a cold execution, whether SAMCRO won or lost the fight itself, followed by a trip into town to use Polly to lure Zobelle out of hiding. But while the move to screw over Stahl, get the guns and save Chibs from Jimmy O's retribution worked like clockwork, I'm having to contort myself to figure out how the LOAN half of the campaign was supposed to work.

The more interesting - and, at times, unsettling - part of the episode dealt with the role that the club plays in the lives of its members. The opening sequence, with everybody going to the mattresses - and the realization that SAMCRO takes everybody (kids, wives, old ladies, two-fingered friends) to the mattresses with them - and Clay giving a speech to the assembled crowd, showed the power that the club has. We need to see that power, and that sense of community, every now and then so we understand why it is people like Jax and Opie are trying to save the club instead of burning it to the ground.

But if the show usually dances around the question of whether it considers the club a good or a bad thing - or whether it's willing to judge the club at all - the scene with Tara smacking around Margaret felt uncomfortably in favor of Clay and Gemma's vision of SAMCRO. The whole scene, and particularly the "No, this is assault" moment, seemed structured to get the audience pumping their fists - Let's watch Tara show that snooty administrator lady who's boss! - and yet I was mostly horrified by it. For all that "Sopranos" fans wanted Dr. Melfi to sic Tony on her rapist, David Chase was always clear that Melfi was the closest thing the show had to a representative from real society, and in a society of rules, that stuff's just not done.

Now, Tara occupies a different dramatic space on this show than Melfi did on "Sopranos." She grew up around the club, is dating a member, taking care of his baby and befriending the club's matriarch. Perhaps I was meant to be horrified by her actions in that scene, and one of the storylines of season three (if not the finale) will be Tara recognizing that perhaps she's adopted more of the club's morality than she wanted to. But if this is just the next step into her ascension to Gemma's throne, and something meant to be applauded, then I'm going to have a problem with it.

But we'll have a better sense of that - and of how (or if) Jax and Clay can still get their righteous vengeance if all their targets are behind bars - in next week's finale. Even though I didn't love "The Culling," I still have very high hopes for what's to come.

Some other thoughts on "The Culling":

• The show has more or less dropped the tension over the club members getting their bail revoked, Oswald losing his land, etc. Even with his recognition that LOAN is worse for the town than SAMCRO, wouldn't Hale at some point in this episode have just thrown Jax, Clay and others back into jail for violating the terms of their release?

• Last season, Jay Karnes did a multiple episode guest stint as Agent Kohn, and we have our second "Shield" regular turning up as an "SoA" guest star, as Kenny Johnson pops up as the Tacoma charter's version of Tig. Predictably, the two hate each other, though I thought it a nice touch that Tig is too messed-up by recent developments to even care about whatever their feud is about.

• As mentioned previously, the explanation for what happened to Chuck and Darby in the Caracara fire had to be cut for time from "Fa Guan." We got half an answer here, sort of, in that Chuck turns up alive and mostly well at the clubhouse, and continues to be a useful friend to the club. But where exactly has Chuck been in between the fire and now? And what happened to Darby? If he died, wouldn't Hale have also charged Weston with murder? If not, where the hell is he?

• I have to commend whoever was responsible for the work on Chuck's mutilated hands. Not sure if that was a prosthetic or something digital, but it worked. I had just assumed they would keep him in the gloves all the time, as that's an easy way to hide the actor's non-amputated fingers and thumbs.

What did everybody else think?