Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy
Lost in the summer tv doldrums I recently watched the entire first season of FX’s “Sons of Anarchy”. It was great. I had no real expectations going in and didn’t really know what it was about but I found myself finishing watching all 13 episodes in about 3 days (this says a little something about the amount of free time I have). In a nutshell the show is about a gun-running motorcycle club, the Sons of Anarchy aka Samcro, set in the fictional North California town of Charming. Much of the plot revolves around young club vice president Jax Teller and club president Clay Morrow and the different directions they want to take the club. As wikipedia notes, there’s a lot of Hamlet in the DNA of the show.
Show creator Kurt Sutter (who has a blog) deserves a real pat on the back for the quality of the cast, particularly those in the supporting roles. Kim Coates is fantastic as sexually deviant “Tig”, Ryan Hurst great as “Opie” and Mitch Pileggi of X-Files fame stands out as white supremacist Darby. The biggest revelation though is Katey Sagal as Gemma Teller Morrow, mother of Jax and wife of Clay. Sagal, probably most famously known as Peggy Bundy on “Married with Children”, is, in a word, fantastic. She goes from caring mother to ruthless club wife in an instant. I was going to praise the show for creative casting but it turns out Sagal is married to Sutter so that probably helped. Still Sagal deserves serious Emmy consideration.
Occasionally the quality of the writing slips but overall this is an enjoyable show. And yeah, I want to get a Harley Davidson now. Season 2 starts tonight at 10pm on FX.
Holla at me