Author: Rebecca Ford

NBC

The battle rounds continued for the second night with each of the coaches — Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton — pitting two members of their teams against each other and eliminating one. If a player is kicked off a team, the other coaches have the option to “steal” the singer for his or her team.

PHOTOS: ‘The Voice’ Season Four Finale in Photos

Team Christina’s Jacob Poole vs. Matthew Schuler: “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark”

Both singers push as hard as they can, but the song’s quick pace is a tough one. Matthew seems to have more emotion and power with his performance. Aguilera chooses Matthew, sending Jacob home.

Team Cee Lo’s Kat Robichaud vs. R. Anthony: “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing”

Green decides to pit these two against each other because they’re so different. They both plan on bringing plenty of emotion to the Aerosmith song. Kat is very charismatic and intense onstage, but R. Anthony has some great runs. It’s a tough choice, but Green decides to go with Kat.

STORY: ‘Voice’ Winner Cassadee Pope Talks Debut Album, Life After Television: ‘It’s Harder’

The show then quickly runs through some other battles:

Team Cee Lo’s Cole Vosbury vs. Lupe Carroll: Toto’s “Africa.” Cole wins.
Team Blake’s E.G. Daily vs. Sam Cerniglia: Bonnie Raitt’s “Something to Talk About.” E.G. wins.
Team Adam’s Ashley DuBose vs. Justin Blake: “Just A Fool.” Ashley wins.

Team Blake’s Monika Leigh vs. Ray Boudreaux: “Some Kind of Wonderful”

It’s the battle of the funk singers to wrap up the show. First, they get a visit from Cher, and Monika pretty much completely freaks out. After working through their issues in rehearsal, they deliver the best performance of the night. Levine says Ray proved himself with that performance. Shelton agrees and decides to keep Ray.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story for Monika. Green uses his “steal” to take her for his own team. Seems like a perfect match.

What did you think of Tuesday’s battles? Sound off in the comments section below.

E-mail: Rebecca.Ford@thr.com
Twitter: @Beccamford

Prashant Gupta/FX

“Sons of Anarchy”

After a week of bloody deaths (good-bye Otto and Lee Toric!), Sons of Anarchy returned on Tuesday with the club trying to track down the Irish after a couple of the SAMCRO members were brutally murdered. Jax deals with problems with the police, while Clay ends up getting an offer from the Irish.

After the Irish

The episode begins with the California motorcycle club staking out the Irish hotspots. They’re on a revenge mission after the Irish chopped up a couple members of the club. They corner some Irish to find out where Galen and Connor are. They say Galen is already long gone, but Connor is still in town.

After a long chase scene, the Sons are able to capture Connor. Jax gets the phone number for the leaders of the Irish group and asks them if they can avoid an all-out war. The three kings are apprehensive about working with the late Pope’s organization instead of the Sons. They say they’ll have to talk it over with the others.

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But Galen says he wants to keep working with Clay. He says he’s already gotten the wheels turning to get Clay out of jail. Galen says they can continue to work through Clay while severing ties with Jax and the club.

Lieutenant Eli Roosevelt is tasked with getting Nero Padilla to help build a case against the Sons because there’s suspicion that the club was responsible for the gun used in the school shooting. He follows Nero and Jax as they go to work on their new escort service.

Tara’s Plan

Tara tells Jax that she needs to get out of town because Gemma is scaring her. Wayne offers to help Tara with her “exit strategy,” but says he’ll need to know all the details.

Gemma visits Wendy and asks her to bring her a copy of Tara’s will. She’ll show it to Jax to once and for all convince him that Tara is up to no good. “This push and pull with Tara — I hate it. I just want the family to be right,” Gemma tells Wendy.

STORY: ‘Sons of Anarchy’: Showrunner Kurt Sutter Explains Season 6’s Shocking Event

Wendy storms in on Tara with her lawyer and tells Tara that she can’t keep lying to everyone.

Clay and Gemma

Juice gets a call from Clay’s lawyer that Clay had gotten a conjugal visit set up and Gemma needs to bring $500 cash.

When Gemma gets to the prison, Clay reveals that he’s heard from the Irish, who want to spring Clay from jail and let him be their distributor. He’s run the whole thing from Belfast.

But when Gemma’s ready to leave, the crooked prison cops say that the money wasn’t enough for the visit — that they want to watch the conjugal visit. They beat up Clay a bit, but then Gemma agrees to do what they say.

When Gemma and Chibs meet back up with Jax, Chibs is pissed that Jax has been trying to broker a deal between Pope’s old crew and the Irish. “I could have told you how deep this hatred runs,” Chibs says to Jax.

At the end of the episode, the family and friends of SAMCRO are at the clubhouse, as the members gather for a call to the Irish at 8 p.m. But just moments before, Jax notices an Irish pen sitting on the bar and realizes that a “delivery” was made earlier in the day. They get everyone out of the clubhouse right before the place explodes.

What did you think of Tuesdays episode? Sound off in the comments section below.

E-mail: Rebecca.Ford@thr.com
Twitter: @Beccamford

Kiernan Shipka, Matthew Weiner

Two days after AMC announced that it would split up the final season of the hit show Mad Men into two seasons, creator Matthew Weiner attended The Hollywood Reporter‘s star-studded Emmy nominees party, where he spoke for the first time about the big change to his show’s seventh season.

PHOTOS: Inside THR’s Emmy Nominees Night Party

“It’s a strategy from the network and I was told about it,” he told THR at the West Hollywood event on Thursday night.

While the decision may not have been in his hands, Weiner told THR he’s making the best of it.

“I found a way to work with it. That’s all I can say. I think it’s an opportunity,” he added.

However, Weiner is very convinced that he won’t be following in the footsteps of AMC’s other shows The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, which are both getting spin-offs on the cable network.

“There’s no chance,” he told THR with a smile. “No judgment against anybody else — but this is it. This is the story. When it’s done, it’s done.”

Weiner’s show will air the first seven episodes, dubbed “The Beginning,” in the spring of 2014 and the final seven, “The End of an Era,” in spring 2015.

“Every season is a new story, and I don’t want to get bored but I also don’t want to let the audience down,” said Weiner. “For me, I start over. And there’s this kind of thing that happens with the audience every year where it’s like they’re very happy to see us back in the premiere and when the new story starts around episode two they start getting antsy and then they get with it by episode three when they see it’s a new story.”

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Weiner will once again attend the Emmys this Sunday, where his show is nominated for outstanding drama series. The show received 10 nominations this year.

Weiner told THR he used to have more superstitions and rituals ahead of the big show, but that he’s calmed down over the years.

“It’s just a matter of calming down, getting excited to see everybody and for me, I feel so luck to get to go. It doesn’t happen to everybody,” he said.

But he did tell THR he still has one tradition: “I take a bath on Sunday morning, no matter what. I don’t mean that I never bathe, but I actually take a bath in a bathtub.”

E-mail: Rebecca.Ford@thr.com
Twitter: @Beccamford