It probably wasn’t the best idea for Jax to pin the shooting on “some black guys,” but no one could have expected that Tig would take the news so personally. I can understand why he feels like it might be his fault after turning his back on Clay, but to just retaliate on the Niners like that without any proof they were even responsible was really stupid. Tig was lucky to get out of that situation alive, because you can be sure that’s not the last we’re going to see of the Niners. Though Laroy made it out in one piece, his wife/girlfriend/someone important was killed in the initial attack, and two more of his men died in the ensuing chase. Geez, just when all the gangs in Charming we’re starting to play nice with one another and Tig had to go and mess it up.

Meanwhile, Gemma looks like she’s finally done protecting Clay (either that, or she just wants to be on the winning side) and decides to open up to Tara about all the horrible things that Clay has done lately. It was obviously just a ploy to make her feel guilty about using John Teller’s letters as leverage, but it worked, because Tara gave Gemma the key to the storage unit where they were hiding all along. After reading through the letters, however, Gemma took out the ones that implicated her and Unser and handed the rest over to Jax, which ultimately led to her spilling the beans on years of secrets – from Clay’s initial attempt to kill JT by sending him into a Mayan ambush, to rigging his bike to crash, to shooting Piney in the cabin and even putting out the hit on Tara.

All in all, it was a pretty clever attempt at getting Jax to stay in Charming and take over his rightful place at the head of the club, but Gemma wasn’t expecting Tara to outwit her. This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen the good doctor evolve as a result of spending so much time around Gemma, but it is the first time that she’s let her know it. Tara knew all along what Gemma was going to do with those letters and even had the gall to brag about it. In fact, she’s so confident that Jax will keep his word about leaving town that she’s willing to help kill Clay (using a blood thinner, natch) and allow him to wrap up business with the IRA and the cartel before heading off on their merry way, and Gemma definitely wasn’t happy about it.

What neither woman realizes, though, is that Jax is about to walk in to a world of trouble. Forced to take Clay’s place at the meeting due to his (ahem) condition, Jax is given assurance by Romeo that despite what Lennie the Pimp may have told him about Otto striking a deal with the Feds, his inside source has confirmed that it’s not true. Now, either Romeo knows something that the Sons don’t or they need to find better sources, because if Jax and Chibs get caught at the meet, they’ll be arrested as part of the RICO case. And when you think about it, that only makes Juice’s cooperation with Lincoln that much worse, since those are the two guys (particularly Chibs) who were there for him after his suicide attempt. Kurt Sutter always has an ace up his sleeve, however, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with this time around.

With time running out until Romeo’s arrival, Clay decides that he has no other choice but to condemn the pair to death and try and save face with the cartel. But Juice, who doesn’t exactly want their blood on his conscience, suggests that they give the prospects one last chance to return the brick with no questions asked. If it shows up, they’ll be kicked out of the club, but at least they’ll still be alive. That gives Juice just enough time to run out into the woods, grab a sample for Roosevelt, and take the brick back to the warehouse… or so he thinks. Instead, he runs into Miles, who quickly puts two and two together and realizes that Juice is the thief. The ensuing chaos led to one of the series’ biggest “holy shit” moments yet, with Juice getting a hold of Miles’ gun and shooting him clean through the face. And now that everyone thinks Miles was the one responsible, Juice has been given yet another lifeline.

But how much longer can this realistically go on? Though the club was a little surprised that it was Miles who stole the cocaine, they don’t seem to be putting too much thought into why he might have done it. Chibs, on the other hand, is the only one who’s even remotely suspicious of the whole situation, especially after the way Juice was acting around him all day. Their conversation about the prohibition of color in SAMCRO must have come across as pretty random to Chibs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he started sniffing around Juice’s personal life. Those two appear to have a stronger friendship with each other than most guys in the club, so Chibs will undoubtedly want to do everything he can to get Juice out of trouble before the rest of SAMCRO finds out. The whole thing still feels a bit contrived to me, and even more so after Chibs admitted that many of the club’s rules were pretty outdated. After all, if one of its own members doesn’t even agree with certain by-laws, then surely there’s room for some change.

Nothing else really happened tonight story-wise that was so major it deserves a full breakdown, but there are still plenty of things worth discussing, so as usual, here are some other thoughts from the episode:

* One of the show’s biggest strengths has always been its ability to slip in some humor when you least expect it, and there was a great example of that tonight when, after Happy fired a few more rounds into Miles’ dead body seemingly just for kicks, Chibs deadpanned, “Did you get him?”

* The whole subplot involving Tig and his duplicitous daughter may have seemed kind of lame when compared to some of the other stories this season, but it was a nice piece of character development that allowed the writers to show the usually tough-as-nails enforcer in a completely different light. Some people were probably thinking, “Why did he give her the money if he knew she was lying?,” but that’s what made it so great. He did it because he’s her father, and that’s what fathers do. And that knowing laugh between Gemma and Bobby just about said as much.

* The honeymoon period between Opie and Lyla sure didn’t last long, but is anyone really surprised? They weren’t exactly the ideal couple, and now that Opie knows about Lyla getting the abortion, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be together for much longer. At least Jax made sure that Ima won’t be ruining any more relationships in the future. That was a great bait-and-switch move on his part, and she deserved every bit.

* I can’t believe that Clay is actually going to go through with putting a hit on Tara, and using the cartel to get it done no less. Thankfully, it looks like she’s got a guardian angel in Unser, who has not only tipped off Roosevelt that she could be in danger, but has taken the extreme action of leaving a fake death threat in her car as a scare tactic. I doubt that Sutter would actually go through with killing Tara (or would he?), but it’s certainly going to make for some interesting tension between Clay and Unser.

“I had John Teller killed while I was bedding his wife. It doesn’t matter what the reason was. Jax finds that out, he cuts off my goddamn head, he sticks it on the reaper pole.”

Wow. I mean, it’s not like it was a theory that hadn’t been batted around before, but thinking he may be involved and knowing for certain are two very different things – especially when Gemma was in on it too. Or was she? That’s where the story gets a little interesting, because while she clearly had knowledge of Clay’s plot to kill Jax’s father, I think that she was given the same bogus reason as Unser. Clay apparently told him that JT’s weakness would bring violence to Charming, and though Unser believed it at the time, after breaking into Tara’s office to steal the letters, he realized that it was all just a lie. Clay didn’t like that JT was trying to get the club out of the gun business, and he killed him for it, dragging Gemma and Unser down into the dirt with him. To make matters even worse, Gemma thinks that the letters have been destroyed by Unser, but the originals are still out there, and the only way that Clay can ensure the truth never gets out is by killing the only people who know about them: Piney and Tara.

Meanwhile, after the club receives word that Otto has found out about Luanne’s affair with Bobby (and suspects he may have been involved in her murder as well), SAMCRO tries to set the record straight by tracking down Georgie Caruso, who they believe is the real culprit. But Georgie is nowhere to be found after leaving the porno business for greener pastures in the sex toy industry, so the guys head to Cara Cara to meet with Layla’s new producer/director, Dondo (played by none other than The Hoff), who offers to lure Georgie back to the studio if they promise to kill him for what he did to Luanne.

As expected, Georgie falls for the trap, but when he offers up his wealthy Japanese business contacts in exchange for his life, Clay surprises everyone by agreeing to let him go. That’s because he’s planning to push the investors onto Jacob Hale in an attempt to feign success with the Charming Heights project, only to then pull them out at the last possible second so that the property deal falls through. Unfortunately, that leaves Bobby to break the bad news to Otto, but instead of just telling him the truth about Georgie’s stay of execution, he lies and says that they killed him instead. I’m not really sure why, but I’m starting to have my doubts that Georgie murdered Luanne at all.

Bobby wasn’t the only one acting especially shady tonight either, with Juice’s loyalty to SAMCRO being tested now that Roosevelt is blackmailing him with the information about his biological father. What’s funny is that Roosevelt himself is unknowingly being played at the same time. Though he initially refuses to help Lincoln play the race card against Juice in fear that he’ll be held accountable should Juice end up dead, Lincoln assures him that his involvement will be struck from the record in order to protect him. What Roosevelt doesn’t realize, however, is that Lincoln is lying straight to his face. (And here I thought he was actually one of the good guys). Granted, he did what he had to do in order to keep his investigation alive, but I always figured Lincoln for someone who played by the rules. In any event, Juice is now stuck holding an entire brick of cocaine, and SAMCRO has just noticed that it’s missing. Here’s hoping that doesn’t mean his days are numbered, because it would be a pretty stupid way for him to go.

But after witnessing Clay make a similar verbal promise to the Wahewa chief knowing full well that he was lying through his teeth, you could tell that Bobby wasn’t buying Clay’s faux act of sincerity any longer. Not that it really matters, because the decision went through even without his vote, albeit with plenty of drama. Piney should have known better than to go behind Clay’s back and involve Gemma in club business – and it’s likely earned him a permanent spot on Clay’s shit list (not to mention a death threat) as a result – but Gemma also needs to keep her nose out of where it doesn’t belong. Still, the look on her face after Clay’s outburst suggests that she’s never seen that side of him before, so it’ll be curious to see how that affects their relationship going forward.

And at the rate she’s going, Gemma might not have many allies by the time this season is over. She was already pushing her luck by breaking into Tara’s office once, but by doing it again, she was practically begging to get caught, which is exactly what happened when Tara’s boss walked in on her snooping around. That may have forced Gemma’s hand to take the more direct approach and confront Tara about Maureen’s letters, but while she claims that nothing good can come of Jax reading them, Tara seems to believe that she has another agenda – namely, protecting the truth about John Teller’s death. Tara clearly already has her suspicions just from the way she’s been behaving around Clay lately, but the fact that she’s gone through the trouble to make copies of the letters proves that she thinks Gemma is up to no good. SAMCRO’s queen bee may have finally met her match, and I don’t think she’s fully realized it yet.

Meanwhile, after his RICO case was seemingly ruined following the death of his undercover agent, Lincoln has turned his attention to SAMCRO in order to use their criminal dealings with the Russians and Real IRA to keep the investigation alive. He doesn’t have much to go on at the moment besides speculation about the Sons’ involvement with the Galindo cartel, so he sends Roosevelt into town to shake things up by attempting to turn Juice against the club. Apparently, Juice’s biological father is African-American, and Roosevelt thinks that SAMCRO wouldn’t take too kindly to that information. I find it hard to believe that the club would exile Juice because he’s half-black (he doesn’t even look it), so I’m hoping that nothing comes of this revelation, because the writing on this show is far too strong to fall back on such a weak subplot.

And as it just so happens, he’s right, with Alvarez serving as the middle man for introductions between SAMCRO and the Galindo drug cartel, which is run by a guy named Romeo, who, despite being played by the always intimidating Danny Trejo, actually seems like a pretty nice guy as far as drug traffickers go. Clay has struck a lucrative deal with Romeo to provide guns to the cartel, but when Jax learns that their new business venture includes transporting cocaine for them as well, he’s not a happy camper. Though working with Romeo comes with its benefits (namely, protection from the Russians and friends in high place), Jax doesn’t like that Clay has agreed to the deal without speaking to the rest of the club about it first.

There’s a reason for that, of course – no one would ever agree to it – but Clay is so desperate to make some quick money before he’s forced to step down as President that he asks Jax for his backing when he puts it to vote. Though Jax is completely against the idea of getting mixed up in the drug business, he agrees to help out Clay on one condition: when he finally does step down, Clay will back his decision to leave the club and push the vote for Opie to become the new President. Clay has no other choice to agree, but I can’t imagine how Tig or Bobby (who clearly have more seniority than Opie) will react when that day comes. Then again, what’s to say it ever will? Plus, Bobby isn’t on very good terms with Clay after locking horns over the vote, and he’s trying to get Tig on his side by convincing him that they’re no longer part of Clay’s inner circle.

A munity is the last thing the club needs right now, however, because no matter how much the other Sons may disapprove of Clay’s latest deal, they’re going to have an awfully hard time convincing themselves that they don’t need the cartel’s protection after Jax and Opie were kidnapped by the Russians and held for ransom. Clay and the guys did everything they could considering the circumstances (more on that later), but it was Romeo and his crew who ultimately came to the rescue. They may end up being more trouble than they’re worth, but for now, the Galindo cartel is the only thing standing in the way of the ROC (that’s Russian Organized Crime for those who’ve been wondering what that acronym could possibly stand for) from ordering a total massacre of SAMCRO and everyone they love. Things are about to get very interesting in little old Charming.

Other thoughts from the episode:

* For someone who takes law enforcement so seriously, Roosevelt is surprisingly lax about following the rules himself. Not only did he exploit the city’s resources (in this case, what looked like the entire fire department) in order to gain entry into SAMCRO’s clubhouse, but he then proceeded to smash up the place with no reasonable cause. How in the world could that possibly be legal?

* Never one to stay out of trouble for too long, Gemma is surely only going to make the situation involving the mystery behind John Teller’s death worse by snooping around in Jax and Tara’s personal lives. Though Clay explicitly told her to leave things be lest she raise suspicion, Gemma just couldn’t help herself knowing that Tara was in possession of those letters from Maureen.

* Tara’s far too smart not to figure things out eventually (especially considering she already has a copy of the police report from JT’s “accident”), and though Gemma may think she’s more cunning than her, I think that we’re really going to see Tara evolve into more of a traditional “old lady” this season when Gemma tries to cross her.