"Sons of Anarchy" returned to FX on Tuesday September 10 for its' sixth season. Fans were eagerly awaiting the season opener to learn the fate of Jax (Charlie Hunnam) and his motorcycle club. The first episode of season six centered on Jax's struggle to keep SAMCRO together in the wake of the arrests of Clay (Ron Pearlman) and Tara (Maggie Siff). As the episode unfolds viewers see a young, elementary school aged boy walking around the town. The episode begins with the boy presumably getting ready for school. He kisses his sleeping mother and heads out the door.
As the episode continues we see the young boy pop up here and there. He is still dressed in his school uniform but it looks as though he is just ditching for the day. The point as to why viewers are shown this young boy comes at the very end of the episode. It is that moment that has some viewers and critics asking if the writers of "Sons of Anarchy" have gone too far. At the end of the episode we see the young boy sitting on a bench outside of his school. The boy takes out a note book and jots a few things down. He then rolls up his sleeves exposing his arms which reveal he is a cutter. The boy then opens his backpack pulls out a high capacity gun, walks into his school and begins to shoot anyone and everyone he can.
The viewer never sees what is happening inside the school but the screams of adults and children alike, as well as the stream of blood that covers a window leaves little to the imagination. After the scene depicting the school shooting, fans are left bewildered as to what the shooting has to do with the plot. The answer comes in the promo for next week's episode. The gun the boy used to shoot up the school was sold by the Sons of Anarchy. Jax will use this incident as the motive behind trying to pull his club out of the gun running business.
The shooting will hit the SAMCRO crew even harder when they realize the boy is the son of Nero's (Jimmy Smits) cousin. Nero and his cousin played by Dave Navarro joined SOA last season in a joint business venture, escorts. Show creator Kurt Sutter sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the season six premier episode and why he decided to write this story now. "My desire to do this story just felt very organic to the world: These guys deal guns, and there's a certain amount of disconnect once you put those guns out on the street," Sutter told ET.
"You sorta sell and move on, not unlike a drug dealer who doesn't really know the emotional impact of their product. And to have a father [Charlie Hunnam's Jax] who's struggling with boys of his own and questioning the violence of his life, and is this right for his kids - it just seemed like a very organic story to tell," Sutter continued. "And I waited because I knew that ultimately the emotional and social impact would be great, that it would be hard to have that story happen and then move on to a couple seasons where these guys are selling guns and just livin' their life."
"I knew if we did it, it would really have to be at the end," Sutter told EW. Sutter has said in the past that "Sons of Anarchy" will end in its' seventh season. The shows' creator believes this tragic event would be a good way to push the story and the series towards the end. "It ultimately becomes the final straw in their relationship with the gun business and the domino that takes us to a fairly tragic and epic conclusion. It impacts all their relationships: It impacts their relationship with the IRA, their relationship with local law enforcement, their relationship with other charters, and, more importantly, it really impacts their relationship with Charming, their hometown," Sutter told EW.
When asked by Entertainment Weekly about the decision to make "this young boy, the 11-year-old son of Nero's cousin's old lady, the shooter," Sutter said it was a move that would turn around to haunt Jax. In season 5 Jax offers a few guns to Nero's crew saying "Look, let me just give you guys a few guns, it makes everybody happy. Sutter said what Jax believed was an "innocent move that no one thinks is going to be bad - is that little thread that comes back to bite them in the ass."
There are some who have criticized Kurt Sutter for writing a school shooting storyline when just last December Adam Lanza shot up an elementary school in Connecticut killing a number of children no older than six. "We don't do political stories on this show. This isn't about me making a political or social statement about gun violence and blah, blah, blah. So it was a difficult balance for me, because I didn't want the story line to become about that. And yet, I had to acknowledge some of it because if I didn't, it would feel irresponsible. So I tried to, as the season progresses, layer in enough of my point of view so there is some sense of responsibility in terms of the controversy but it doesn't become a narrative arc about gun violence. It ultimately stays about the impact it has emotionally on our characters," Sutter said.
Sutter would later issue an apology via webcast to anyone who was offended by the depiction of the school shooting. The Parents Television Council became outraged by the episode and are using it as an example as to why "Washington [must] allow customers to buy networks a la carte." Sutter apologized for upsetting any viewers that have been personally involved in a school shooting.
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