Have You Hugged A Biker Lately?
I’m beyond thrilled by how good Sons of Anarchy has been for the last several weeks, and although it’s been almost a week since the last episode aired and there’ll be a new one tomorrow night, I wanted to take a moment and mention why the show’s been working so well lately. (I’m also posting about Sons of Anarchy on a Monday because it’s pretty much the best thing on television at the moment, and I am still in deep post-Mad Men coping mode.)
SAMCRO
As I began to describe in my previous post about this show, Sons of Anarchy deals with a world I find completely foreign, which is both a good and bad thing for new viewers. On the one hand, you’re going to immediately alienate people who feel absolutely no interest in a crazy gun-dealing biker gang, and who will overlook an otherwise intelligent, well-made drama because it’s about dudes with skulls and crossbones on their leather vests. If you can overcome that barrier, though, the premise’s unfamiliarity becomes an asset. I am fascinated by the rules and rituals of the club, and everything from the vocabulary to the honor code becomes a way of establishing a fully realized, richly detailed environment. For instance, the leather vest I just mentioned is actually a “cut.” The club is an “MC,” and you always collect all the cell phones before “going to church,” (attending a formal club meeting).
What I hadn’t previously considered about the benefits of this particular world is that the nature of an MC allows the show to balance some intriguing emotional extremes. Like Deadwood or The Shield, violence is mandatory. The codes of an MC require retaliation, and SAMCRO’s mission to protect Charming, CA from drugs and crime does not mean ending drugs and guns everywhere, it just means shifting the crime and drug trafficking somewhere else. This is what I expect from a show about bikers – there will be anger and gunfire, and probably a lot of sex. The more I learn about the foundation of this show and what the MC is really about, however, the more I understand that this show is also about sentiment. When the club talks about brotherhood, loyalty, and love, they mean it with the same sincerity as a national anthem or a Hallmark card. Unlike The Sopranos, where families look like cohesive units but perpetually tear each other apart, most members of SAMCRO have every reason to abandon or destroy the club, and instead, time and again they choose to stay and fight for the club’s survival. At its best moment, Jax and Opie realize that SAMCRO president Clay Morrow has become a liability to the club, but instead of deciding to stage a coup, Jax acknowledges, “The burden lands on the club. Clay is Clay because of us. We made him.” Instead of violence, they decide to change the club from within.
For a bunch of badass bikers, they sure do spend a lot of time hugging each other and crying.
The resulting show is a potent and satisfying mixture of violence and unabashed familial love, and the most recent episodes have pushed that all-too-dangerous combination to its extreme. There’s a lot of black humor here, as well as cynicism and depression, but to my surprise, it turns out the bikers are at heart one of the sappiest groups of guys you will ever meet. Near the end of last week’s episode, “Service,” Clay struggles to comfort his traumatized wife, and his second-in-command finally reminds Clay that the best thing he can do is remind Gemma that he still loves her. Then Clay and Tig give each other big bear hugs, and Tig says, “I love you, brother,” and it would be the most cloying, obnoxious moment ever if it weren’t so tender. And obviously true.
This week and next will be the final two episodes of this season, and as much as I’m looking forward to them, I’m dreading the absence of this show. The good news is that ABC and NBC have both announced the upcoming premiere dates for their popular mid-season releases. LOST will be returning February 2nd at 9pm, and Chuck is coming back January 10th, with regular airdates on Mondays at 8. I’m looking forward to fully analyzing my love-hate relationship with LOST in weekly “The chemists say, I say” blog posts, and I would love nothing more than for Chuck to be so awesome as to also justify a weekly post. We’re heading into the winter television slump, but I’m trying to keep my eye on the highlights.