[browna]

The series was never a masterpeice, and more holes than the last 10 years of the Oilers defensive game, but the last season was almost unbearable.

Throw as much gratuitousness against the wall and see what stuck was the plan this year. Situations (mostly killing) that caused 2 or 3 episodes of club/street/character fallout in previous years, with club and various character dilemma/development and then resolution, went largely ignored suddenly this season, as the episode had to move onto the next scene that didn't make sense, rather then dwell on what happened for any length of time.

Then, toss in random stuff like the 17 year old baby sitter who was in love with Rat, and had some heart to heart and that she was bipolar and why did he hang out with her...then nothing past that, other then he banged someone else two episodes later....and...that was it for either of their development or talk of their relationship. It appeared to be tacked on...writers awkwardly trying to develop those characters, since they stopped Jax and and his thoughts/writings in his diary from other seasons.

Anyways, this last season was the writers accelerating timelines much faster than previous seasons, to get all loose ends tied up. It came across as sloppy, past the point of believability in almost every episode this season. Took half an episode to get Juice to and back from some motel, or people to and from the cabin, but driving to Oregon and back for Jax was 1/4 episode.

Tacking on scenes both for shock value, but also to pretend that there was some deeper meaning, was horribly executed. It's as if these writers and producer knew that the end was coming and wanted to beef up their personal resumes and show they could write something "deeper", and have a body of work that wasn't just gang-style shootings. And they failed...and with that, and the rushed nature of everything else this season, left a sour taste in the original theme, in wrapping up this series.

As popular as the show was, and as much as they think they're part of the none of those guys are going to be writing or producing any Emmy winning things after something like this (Sutter included, IMO), so I suspect to see them fall back to this and try to cash back in with an SOA in 2-3 years, probably with most of the Redwood charter (or what is left, maybe the club got decimated, and the show is about someone trying to start in back up), along with maybe Wendy, Jimmy Smits and the kids possibly grown up.