Overall, though, I found the last few seasons of Sons frustrating more often than sublime. The basically amoral nature of the drama never bothered me; the show is an extended gangster movie with a Western feel; all the characters are criminals, and their talk of honor, honesty, and loyalty must therefore be understood within the context of outlaw logic: That was always a given. The vision was always there. The problem was always one of execution. That the padded-out episodes and dead ends and missteps and flat-out terrible decisions are a part of Sutter's creative process explains them but doesn't excuse them. The show's peak was probably in seasons one through four; there were great episodes, scenes, and sequences after that, but also a lot of pointless sidebars and botched story lines (Clay Morrow should've been killed off long before he actually was, and the school-shooting plot in season six was offensively undercooked). There was a great five-season show in Sons, maybe, but it got stretched out over seven and spun its wheels, pun intended. I enjoyed the ride, though, and I hope Sutter gets credit for showing us things along the way that we've never seen on TV, executed with a rare sincerity and purity of feeling.
