At the end of the episode, a young boy used a gun in a school shooting . It’s one of the weapons Jax had the club give Nero’s crew last season. You’ve wanted to do this story for years. Why, and why now?
KURT SUTTER: As much as I don’t want to do something because it is sensational, I also don’t want to not do something because it might be perceived as sensational. My desire to do this story just felt very organic to the world: These guys deal guns, and there’s a certain amount of disconnect once you put those guns out on the street not really knowing whose hands they’re gonna end up in and what violence that they create. You sorta sell and move on, not unlike a drug dealer who doesn’t really know the emotional impact of their product. And to have a father [Charlie Hunnam's Jax] who’s struggling with boys of his own and questioning the violence of his life, and is this right for his kids — it just seemed like a very organic story to tell. And I waited because I knew that ultimately the emotional and social impact would be great, that it would be hard to have that story happen and then move on to a couple seasons where these guys are selling guns and just livin’ their life. I knew if we did it, it would really have to be at the end and, ultimately, I realized it was a good way to take us to the end. [Ed. note: Sutter expects the series to run seven seasons.] It’s not being done arbitrarily. It ultimately becomes the final straw in their relationship with the gun business and the domino that takes us to a fairly tragic and epic conclusion. It impacts all their relationships: It impacts their relationship with the IRA, their relationship with local law enforcement, their relationship with other charters, and, more importantly, it really impacts their relationship with Charming, their hometown. Maybe they’ve lost their favorite sons status over the last four or five years, but they’ve never really been seen as a danger or as a pariah, and that really changes this season as a result of that.
Tell me about the decision to make this young boy, the 11-year-old son of Nero’s cousin’s old lady, the shooter.
Here’s what I dig about we tend to do on this show: We have a lot of what I like to call epic absurdity on this show. It’s really big and runs right up to that line of being fantastic. But then we tether it into some sense of reality and we always connect it. So what was almost like a throwaway line in terms of story in season 5 with Jax saying, “Look, let me just give your guys a few guns, it makes everybody happy” — that innocent move that no one thinks is going to be bad — is that little thread that comes back to bite them in the ass. Sometimes it’s not the huge moves or machinations, it’s just the simple moves that get us into trouble. Jax probably was not thinking through the consequences of what might happen with that. As far as the kid — that was a bit of a risk. We don’t do flashbacks on this show, but there was a part of me that said, maybe we can play with the audience a little bit: Do they think it’s some sort of young Jax, or at least thematically, are we trying to say something? I think the interesting thing is people who see that on my show start to think, oh my god, what awful thing is gonna happen to this kid? You just assume because he’s an innocent that he will ultimately be the victim of something, and then to flip it and have him be the perpetrator of the violence as a result of that perfect storm — it’s hopefully what will feel organic but also surprising to people.
We don’t do political stories on this show. This isn’t about me making a political or social statement about gun violence and blah, blah, blah. So it was a difficult balance for me, because I didn’t want the story line to become about that. And yet, I had to acknowledge some of it because if I didn’t, it would feel irresponsible. So I tried to, as the season progresses, layer in enough of my point of view so there is some sense of responsibility in terms of the controversy but it doesn’t become a narrative arc about gun violence. It ultimately stays about the impact it has emotionally on our characters. My point of view — and I still believe this — is that one party is not responsible for those things. Meaning, in my opinion, it is the gun laws, it is the level of illegal guns that people can buy on the street, it is the issues we have with mental health, it is our education system, it is the responsibility and burden on the family. What we weave in organically, I think, is the sense that there are a myriad of circumstances that create this perfect storm, and ultimately, law enforcement needs to hang the responsibility on somebody. So it’s the CCH Pounder character [District Attorney Tyne Patterson] that we introduce in episode 2. She is looking for the face of the devil to hang this crime on. But again, what I hope gets conveyed is the idea that there is not necessarily one party responsible for what happened with this kid.
Source: insidetv
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