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Sons of Anarchy Watch: Belfast and Furious

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Brief spoilers for the season three premiere of Sons of Anarchy after the jump:

Kurt Sutter knows how to do himself a montage, and the closing moments of the Sons of Anarchy premiere, “So,” did a powerful job summing up and setting the scene for where Jax, SAMCRO and all the associated players are at the outset of this season: Abel spirited away to Belfast by the IRA, the club reeling from his loss and now—just for good measure—hit by a drive-by, the Charming Police losing their chief Phil Leotardo-style in the chaos.

And the sequence was scored with an aptly sinister music choice: Richard Thompson’s “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” is a war song about Iraq, but Thompson’s dark Celtic styling was a fitting choice tonally for the reveal of Abel in Northern Ireland, and lyrically it fit SoA’s atmosphere of constant menace, and its theme of inescapable cycles of violence and vengance, visited, in this case literally, on father’s sons.

Short on time for a longer writeup, but this seemed like a strong setup episode that carried forward the compelling Jax-Abel plot while setting up subplots like Gemma’s reunion with her father and Jax’s attempt to push Tara away for her own good. Was it worth the wait?