[Spoilers ahead] On another indulgently long episode of SoA (it was 93 minutes tonight, and each episode this season is going to be significantly longer than an hour, making each week a mini-movie), things were pushed to new heights of depravity. Tonight’s season six opener featured anal prison rape (guy on guy), beatings galore (guy on guy, guy on girl, and girl on girl), a raid on a torture porn studio, drowning a man in a bathtub filled with urine, an out-of-nowhere school shooting, and Donal Logue’s naked ass. All of this conspired to make this probably the sickest episode the show has had yet, but I never felt a real emotional connection to any of the “outrageousness.”
Season 5 saw Tig’s daughter getting horrifically burned alive, and Opie being beaten to death in prison, but those events packed a raw wallop since they meant something to the core surviving characters. Nothing on tonight’s ep felt really all that connected to the main cast, and the consequences of everything but the school shooting will probably be minimal. SoA creator Kurt Sutter has said that he’s not going for pure shock value, but tonight’s episode sure felt like it. When your sweetest, most humane scene is between Jax and a gentle madam (Kim Dickens, a character we’ve never met before tonight) who’s wanting to open up a new whorehouse, you know your show is trying so hard to be edgy, that it might have lost touch with reality. Most of the main characters are one step away from death (Clay, Tig, Otto) or so jaded they barely seem to have reasons left to live (Clay again, Tig again, Otto again, Bobby, Juice), and it’s a little hard to be riveted by the outcomes of characters who may not even mind if they were finally put out of their suffering.
That being said, I’m glad to see Jimmy Smits back, and Donal Logue’s vengefully insane ex-U.S. Marshall is already an interesting antagonist. And new additions like Dickens, CCH Pounder, and the terrific Peter Weller will keep things interesting in the weeks to come. Grade for Premiere: B-