It was disappointing. Not the usual cliff hanger we’ve all grown accustomed to. Next season is all set up now - the hit and run from Tig, Clay dealing with the Irish (it’s pretty obvious that he won’t deal with the Irish unless he’s president again) and the ‘where’s Opie?’ storyline.
Meh…
Romeo working with the feds didn’t surprise me, only because last week he told Jax that Otto hadn’t turned. Before that, I would have been shocked to think he had turned, but not shocked if his second (Luis?) was an informant.
I still think it is the best hour of TV of the week.
I felt like this season ended not with the customary bang but with a whimper.
Season finales for SOA have always kept me on the edge of my seat, but I almost fell asleep during this one.
The finale was a bit of a dud but I’m willing to make apologies for it.
Structure-wise the end of the season is problematic. You could argue that Clay’s shooting is the climax but I think you could also argue that Tara and Gemma telling Jax to finish Clay is the climax. Both of those events felt like season finale material, the finale itself felt like falling action and somewhat predictable wrap-up.
I don’t think the events could have been reordered and I don’t think there were wasted scenes so the let-down was inevitable short of FX giving us a 2 or even a 3 hour finale.
I’m choosing to think of it as Sutter hitting the Reset button in an over-the-top fashion. Now both Jax and Tara have a convincing reason to stay in Charming.
Next year can play like Season 1 with the player shuffled; we have Jax instead of Clay, Niners instead of Mayans, Roosevelt instead of Hale, and no one has to do any faffing about over leaving town, they’re credibly in it for the long haul now.
Kind of a Farscape season finale (Season 4 doesn’t count; that finale was a great big middle finger to the [del]SciFi[/del] SyFy network), where the big dramatic “peak” is the next-to-last episode, and the actual final episode is more in the way of just tying the knot on the bow that’s wrapping up the season.
But IIRC, Sutter said he wasn’t going to leave this season as a cliff-hanger, so the finale wasn’t really about revealing anything we didn’t already know, it was just a matter of how it was going to shake out.
I agree it was less “stellar” than other season enders (S3 really wasn’t a cliffhanger either, IMO), but it still left a good setup for S5.
I didn’t predict or foresee Romeo and Co. being on the inside, and was quite let down when it happened. I didn’t like that turn of events, especially considering all that those two have done. I don’t mind not having a cliffhanger. They’re not always necessary, and too many shows rely on them too much and force the cliffhangers. I hope the ADA is back next season. I loved him in Deadwood, and he was quite good here too.