I was 14 years-old when I discovered Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and ever since then I’ve been drawn to antihero characters. I love flawed, selfish, and tragic personalities—they’re just more entertaining. We know what the hero is all about—heroes are bold, brave, compassionate, and generous. They’re predictable. They’re vanilla. But antiheroes are like napoleon ice cream—you might get one flavor,or a mix of flavors, but in the end it’s all one big blended mess. Many of us love the antihero because—let’s face it—morality is boring. Ambiguity is interesting.
We’ve met a lot of compelling antiheroes on television: Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan, Jack Bauer, Walter White, Don Draper, and one of my favorites, Detective Jimmy McNulty from The Wire. The FX Network has brought us fun-loving antiheroes too, like Tommy Gavin from Rescue Me, Louis C.K., and Sons of Anarchy’s Jax Teller.
I’ve particularly enjoyed watching Jax be the antihero. For six seasons, Jax and the club have been unlikely heroes, as a working-class biker gang dabbling in guns, drugs, prostitution, and pornography. Oh, and tons of violence. Like, their-unmarked-grave-site-is-at-capacity kind of violence. But, despite the shady deals and blood baths, viewers have stood by the Sons since 2008, because they protected Charming and seemingly avoided killing innocent people. Plus, Jax has been working for years to get the club on a legit path, to right the wrongs of his predecessors. The diary entries to his boys are enough to make you want to fall in line behind Jax’s pretty blue eyes.
But recently, those pretty blue eyes have been dark and hollow. We’re now six episodes into the final season of SoA, and Jax’s stare is more vacant than their bombed-out clubhouse. Instead of being the cunning, focused, and strategic antihero we’ve cheered for the last six years, Jax is singularly focused on avenging Tara’s death. He has frantically and irrationally lashed out at the wrong people, and nearly destroyed everything he’s worked so diligently for in the last few years. Now his family, the club, and the city of Charming is squarely in the center of a gang war and Jax is in the eye of the tornado.
At this point, traditional antihero narrative would still inspire us to cheer for Jax, because we’re always rooting for the underdog, right? Unfortunately, there is nothing appealing about this storyline, since we know Jax’s anger is directed at the wrong people. BTD (Before Tara’s Death), Jax would have gotten Gemma’s story checked out six ways from Sunday. ATD (After Tara’s Death), grief-stricken Jax ignores his cunning intelligence and foolishly listens to Gemma, a woman who lies more often than she tells the truth.
Worse yet, no one in Jax’s inner circle questions him about it! Our dear old Bobby, usually the enthusiastic devil’s advocate, is muted this season. He even had the nerve to tell Wendy it doesn’t matter if Jax knows what will happen next, “We’re with him.” Oh, I wish I could smack his forehead. Bobby, honey. It’s not okay to start a gang war that kills loads of innocent people (I’ve counted 22 so far this season). You know it, I know it, and Jax should know it too.
And this is the problem with not only SAMCRO, but Jax’s antihero narrative as a whole. We’ve earnestly watched Sons of Anarchy for six seasons because of Jax’s special antihero status, and unfortunately I see that changing in a few significant ways:
Antiheroes are thoughtful.
They are dark, layered, complicated characters who wait for opportune moments, and deliberate before taking action. In contrast, Jax and SAMCRO, at this point in the series, mostly spend their days cleaning up the previous night’s messes. Sure, sometimes Jax can squeeze in a plan. But it usually has to be improvised, leading to more unforeseen messes down the road. Jax recently told Tyler that the club jumps “fast and forward.” While I commend the Sons’ agility, their unbridled enthusiasm is not always a good thing.
Antiheroes usually don’t rack up a high body count.
In fact, most antiheroes try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum—that’s the heroic part of their nature. This season, not only have the Sons killed more innocent people than gang members, but they’re awfully cavalier about it too. (Shout out to Tig who said, regarding Diosa, “We could leave the bodies on the floor and [men] would still come back, because they love pussy. Sorry. Too soon?” Yes Tigs. Definitely too soon.)