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LTTP: Sons of Anarchy

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L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
So I really dug this show, I basically marathoned all 7 seasons in a deeply unhealthy 2 week span.

Yeah, it was kinda soap-opera and not super realistic.

Yeah, the reactions of the law-abiding characters siding with the club make zero sense after a while. Actually, everyone makes zero sense after a while. SAMCRO are basically super-terrorists by season 4 but everyone's like "but there's a baby so it's okay."

Yeah, I had weird feelings about the way racism is handled on this show.

But screw it:

  • Charlie Hunnam was cool as fuck as Jax.
  • It has Theo from the Cosby show as a gangster.
  • It has Robocop as a corrupt cop.
  • There's a mountain of great performances - Ron Perlman, Henry Rollins, Jimmy Smits, even Marilyn Manson was great, but WALTON GOGGINS HOLY SHIT - like, I had no idea he wasn't actually trans until I looked him up after the show. That was crazy.
  • So many of the riding scenes are really well shot.
  • The IRA thing was dope. Like, Jimmy O and the Kings were such great antagonists and the Irish connection made the Sons way more interesting as criminal operators.
  • The turn the Mayans take made them badass.
  • Clay was an epic villain.
  • The music choices are so great, I don't care much about folk music but now I know Noah Gunderson is awesome.
  • Chibs. Chibs was the best.
  • Opie & Jax in the isolation cell...the choice, the beat down...that whole thing was terrifying. Like, I never, ever want to go anywhere near a max security prison.

And I kind of dug the way that by the end the show didn't shy away from the fact that its characters were terrible human beings and that the hero was essentially a failure, but they were still human so you found something in them to care about anyway. Except Gemma. Gemma is awful.

A lot of the commentary online gets upset and nitpicky about the show, but that feels like forest-for-the-trees stuff to me; taken as a whole this show is a classic, and I really hope the rumoured Mayans and First 9 spinoffs come to fruition.
 
W

wenis

Registered for GAF on September 11, 2001.
That 2nd season is god tier television, but man it's such a rocky show after that. Lots of amazing and destructive highs, but some incredible lows.
 
Karak

Karak

Member
Love it despite the issues. We actually do a weekly get together with a couple of us and watch a couple episode. Fun for sure.
 
E

Extra Sauce

Member
A friend of the family just lent the complete DVD boxset to my parents.

I feel like I should intervene.

Maybe I'll hide the first disc.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
Crush. Kill. Destroy. said:
This right here is why the show won't be a classic like you say it is. She's such a huge part of the show and she's terrible. Kept around way too long because she's married to Kurt Sutter and the show suffers greatly from it.
Click to expand...

To be fair she got a bunch of nominations and awards for her performance during the course of the show, it made sense that they would foreground her
dumb annoying and terrible
character after that.
 
I

inm8num2

Member
I loved SoA. It's flawed, and the last 3 seasons were increasingly plagued by sloppy writing and Sutter having too much runtime, but the characters were always fun to watch and the drama engaging. If you want a soap opera on wheels, you just roll with it and SoA is a good time.

Seasons 2 and 4 are the best (4 is my favorite). 1 is good and picks up pace as it goes along. 3 has a strong start and finish but stalls a bit in the middle. 5 is also very good but a sign of the decline. 6 is entertaining but messy. I was mixed on 7 for reasons that I won't even bother putting behind spoiler tags so nobody clicks on them.

What always drew me to SoA was the characters. Jax, Clay, Opie, Tig, Chibs, Bobby, Tara, Juice, Gemma, Unser, Piney, Wendy, Nero, Eli... Great antagonists, too (Stahl, Pope, Zobelle, etc.). Such a widely varied cast, each person having their own quirks and depth. Felt like the actors really grew into and embraced their roles, adding to the overall themes of brotherhood, family, loyalty, etc.

Find me a sweeter, more sincere tv relationship than this. :)
yrPpfBy.gif
 
U

User 479360

Banned
I heard good things and saw lots of people wearing the clothes, so it went near the top of my must see list. FX marathoned it soon after and I PVRed it.

I watched one or two episodes and found it very boring.
 
S

soundscream

Member
If you dont approach it as being a "good show" but a trashy soap opera (like true blood) you will enjoy it more. It got silly the longer it went on but I was still entertained because I didn't take it seriously.
 
A

ApharmdX

Banned
P4P most disappointing series I've ever watched start to finish. I'm glad you liked it OP but I thought it went downhill fast and never recovered.
 
Lightning Count

Lightning Count

Member
I have liked it more without the shoehorning in of Christianity/religion. So many American shows do this and honestly it's pissing me off, ok if you want your characters to have faith that's fine, but stop being so fucking heavy handed with it.
 
kavanf1

kavanf1

Member
I thoroughly enjoyed the show, taking it for what it was. It didn't have the depth of Sutter's other work (ie The Shield) but it was still fairly gripping TV and I liked the way it handled violence - no big standoffs or showboating, people were dead before you could blink and that's probably how it is in the real world.

However unlike most people I HATED the IRA thread of the show in the second or third season, I forget which (whenever they went back to Ireland). The Irish accents were awful, the portrayal of Ireland was awful, and that completely removed my immersion. It's probably because I'm Irish that I think that - I'm sure your average American watching the show doesn't pick up on how bad that stuff is, why would they - but it was bad enough to almost make me give up on it.

It was third time's a charm for me with SOA - started watching it on three separate occasions over the last few years before finally binging it a few months back.
 
M

Matty77

Member
First two seasons were excellent. The third was just as quality technical wise but your mileage will vary based on how much you care about the Irish stuff. After that it got unwatchable quick.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
kavanf1 said:
I thoroughly enjoyed the show, taking it for what it was. It didn't have the depth of Sutter's other work (ie The Shield) but it was still fairly gripping TV and I liked the way it handled violence - no big standoffs or showboating, people were dead before you could blink and that's probably how it is in the real world.

However unlike most people I HATED the IRA thread of the show in the second or third season, I forget which (whenever they went back to Ireland). The Irish accents were awful, the portrayal of Ireland was awful, and that completely removed my immersion. It's probably because I'm Irish that I think that - I'm sure your average American watching the show doesn't pick up on how bad that stuff is, why would they - but it was bad enough to almost make me give up on it.

It was third time's a charm for me with SOA - started watching it on three separate occasions over the last few years before finally binging it a few months back.
Click to expand...

I'm part Irish by heritage but not nationality - can you expand on what you felt was wrong with it?

Matty77 said:
First two seasons were excellent. The third was just as quality technical wise but your mileage will vary based on how much you care about the Irish stuff. After that it got unwatchable quick.
Click to expand...

Really? I thought season 5 dragged a bit, but stuff like the prison convoy heist and the tension of how everything went down with Clay was pretty awesome.
 
M

Matty77

Member
LiveFromKyoto said:
I'm part Irish by heritage but not nationality - can you expand on what you felt was wrong with it?



Really? I thought season 5 dragged a bit, but stuff like the prison convoy heist and the tension of how everything went down with Clay was pretty awesome.
Click to expand...
I just felt it got to unrealistic, like a fast and furious movie.

You went from three seasons of a small town biker gang who while outlaw and head chapter of a national group, were still locals who had friends and family and a very small law presence with the town and half corrupt sherif looking the other way because they didn't shit where they eat, to plot lines with Russian mafia and cartel or is it cia into who the fuck cares anymore.

If it had started out over the top fine, but it didn't it started in a grounded in reality literal(in Kurt's own words) modern retelling of Hamlet, and somewhere it lost sight of that.
 
S

siddx

Magnificent Eager Mighty Brilliantly Erect Registereduser
I thought the haters were just being typical internet "fuck this thing I used to like" assholes until the last season, at which point I was right there with them. It just pushed itself past that line between entertaining and stupid as fuck.

First few seasons were phenomenal though, and later seasons besides the last were absurd but still fun.

And yes gemma fucking sucks.
I also wish clay had survived till the end only to die in the finale.
 
E

EdwardTeach

Member
I really enjoyed it, though I did think it was fairly flawed especially in terms of the overarching plot.

Great characters though, as you have mentioned, with a lot of fantastic acting. Even though I watched The Shield, I didn't recognise Walton Goggins! he was very convincing.

Aside from the ridiculous plot, the biggest issue for me was the truly atrocious Jimmy O "accent". It was one of the worst attempts at an accent I have ever heard and ruined every scene in which he spoke, because it was unintentionally hilarious.
 
N

newdayrocks

Member
LiveFromKyoto said:
So I really dug this show, I basically marathoned all 7 seasons in a deeply unhealthy 2 week span.

Yeah, it was kinda soap-opera and not super realistic.

Yeah, the reactions of the law-abiding characters siding with the club make zero sense after a while. Actually, everyone makes zero sense after a while. SAMCRO are basically super-terrorists by season 4 but everyone's like "but there's a baby so it's okay."

Yeah, I had weird feelings about the way racism is handled on this show.

But screw it:

  • Charlie Hunnam was cool as fuck as Jax.
  • It has Theo from the Cosby show as a gangster.
  • It has Robocop as a corrupt cop.
  • There's a mountain of great performances - Ron Perlman, Henry Rollins, Jimmy Smits, even Marilyn Manson was great, but WALTON GOGGINS HOLY SHIT - like, I had no idea he wasn't actually trans until I looked him up after the show. That was crazy.
  • So many of the riding scenes are really well shot.
  • The IRA thing was dope. Like, Jimmy O and the Kings were such great antagonists and the Irish connection made the Sons way more interesting as criminal operators.
  • The turn the Mayans take made them badass.
  • Clay was an epic villain.
  • The music choices are so great, I don't care much about folk music but now I know Noah Gunderson is awesome.
  • Chibs. Chibs was the best.
  • Opie & Jax in the isolation cell...the choice, the beat down...that whole thing was terrifying. Like, I never, ever want to go anywhere near a max security prison.

And I kind of dug the way that by the end the show didn't shy away from the fact that its characters were terrible human beings and that the hero was essentially a failure, but they were still human so you found something in them to care about anyway. Except Gemma. Gemma is awful.

A lot of the commentary online gets upset and nitpicky about the show, but that feels like forest-for-the-trees stuff to me; taken as a whole this show is a classic, and I really hope the rumoured Mayans and First 9 spinoffs come to fruition.
Click to expand...

Should have stopped after S2, OP.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
Moff said:
holy shit is that walton goggins?
Click to expand...

Yep. The only good part of that last season was the relationship between Tig and Venus (Edit: Well, Jimmy Smits was pretty good, too). Show was ok for a season or two but ultimately Sutter was too in love with the characters and their lifestyle. The ending of this show is still one of the worst things I've ever seen and I say that as someone who hate-watches The Strain.
 
O

Officerrob

Banned
It was a good show for about 2 or 3 seasons, after that it was garbage. All the convoluted bullshit to keep Clay around was fucking ridiculous
 
xrnzaaas

xrnzaaas

Member
The show was great for about half of its run, then it started to turn bad and the last season was barely watchable. Also I hate that they kept some of the characters alive for a long time no matter what... Clay got way too many free passes and Unser's untreatable cancer somehow got lost in the process.
 
C

ColdPizza

Banned
The show got tiresome in the later seasons. Clay and Gemma should have been offed far sooner than they were.

Jax got annoying with his head shake saying "I promise you"... his promises meant jack shit.
 
G

GitarooMan

Member
I really think the show set up an interesting scenario throughout season 1 and especially at the end and then basically dropped it and turned Jax into the dumbest person on Earth so they could drag it out. The show tonally completely loses it way after season 1 IMO.
 
T

Trigker

Member
I like its constant connections with The Shield, but imo there's no comparison.
SoA is just a mess of brutal murders every episode.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
ColdPizza said:
Jax got annoying with his head shake saying "I promise you"... his promises meant jack shit.
Click to expand...

To be fair, at least 2-3 characters call him out on that to his face. Jax being a shittier leader than Clay is one of the more interesting underlying themes in the series.
 
Teletraan1

Teletraan1

Banned
I watched it last year. As said it started off OK but went to shit fast. They spend like 3.5 seasons saving tara from bullshit to have Gemma kill her off on a bunch of half information and assumptions. Every single problem was self inflicted because someone wanted to kills someone with zero information. That FBI woman was possibly the worst acted character on Television. Jax saying he was done with SAMCRO every episode got tired fast. Overall it was so so and I probably would have been better off not watching it to be honest.
 
kavanf1

kavanf1

Member
LiveFromKyoto said:
I'm part Irish by heritage but not nationality - can you expand on what you felt was wrong with it?
Click to expand...

It was inauthentic, that's not what Ireland is really like, it's some kind of romanticised Californified version of Ireland. That aside, the vast majority of the country thinks the IRA are utter scum, not some kind of noble cause everyone is secretly rooting for. They're also a relatively spent power and don't have anywhere near the kind of strength portrayed in the show, so none of the actual storyline rings true either. Maybe if SOA had been set 20 years earlier, but not in the period it was set.

And the accents...oh man the accents. Have you seen that film with Hugh Grant playing a foppish Englishman (wait, that's all of them, more information needed) who marries into a mob family? Anyway, James Caan is the mob boss and he tries to get Hugh Grant to learn how to talk like a mobster - fuggedaboudit, all that stuff. Well, Hugh Grant's impression of a mobster in that film (Mickey Blue Eyes, that was it) is better than any of the SOA actors' attempts at a Northern Irish accent. And just to be clear, Grant's mobster impression was terribly, intentionally shit. The guys in SOA were actually trying.

Also, Tara was insufferable. But that's nothing to do with the Irish theme.

I still enjoyed the show though.
 
R

ruxtpin

Banned
ColdPizza said:
Jax got annoying with his head shake saying "I promise you"... his promises meant jack shit.
Click to expand...

I don't know what Hunman was going for, but dude needs to get his neck checked. Annoying head tilt throughout the entire show, "Hold your fucking head up straight dammit!"
 
M

mm04

Member
I really loved the show early on. There was humor in there with the comradery and I enjoyed that part of it. But as the club got deeper and deeper into organized crime, that aspect pretty much disappeared and it became 60 minutes...then 90 minutes of misery every week. As others have said, Gemma was a despicable character and I never wanted a character to die more than I did her.
 
MisterFalcon

MisterFalcon

Member
Trigker said:
I like its constant connections with The Shield, but imo there's no comparison.
SoA is just a mess of brutal murders every episode.
Click to expand...

And even with all the murdering the Sons are always poor as shit. You'd think that there would be some big money rolling in with committing 30-to-life felonies like murder and smuggling automatic weapons but they may as well have been flipping burgers. I remember seeing an episode where getting together $10,000 or so was a huge deal and when doing a hit Tig drives a stolen Range Rover worth at least twice that.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
MisterFalcon said:
And even with all the murdering the Sons are always poor as shit. You'd think that there would be some big money rolling in with committing 30-to-life felonies like murder and smuggling automatic weapons but they may as well have been flipping burgers.
Click to expand...

I think they draw that line early on with Opie and his lumber job, working long hours for bad pay. It's clear that being in the Sons - at least before everything went insane - was better than regular work for these guys, who mostly have no real education or life skills aside from low grade mechanics.
 
C

cacildo

Member
I liked it more than all non-comedy shows ive watched to the end

Because stuff actually happen in this one

Of course most of it was pretty stupid. I binge watched it so it came to a point it felt "they never had a break"

But at least there was stuff happening

The only two non-comedy shows aside from SOA i really got to watch "to the end" were Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead (still going). And both really suck because for most of the time nothing happens (TWD sucks because of more reasons than that)

SOA at least has stuff happening non stop. Its even probably better to watch it one episode at the time than watch it all at once
 
kavanf1

kavanf1

Member
While I'm ranting, another thing was Hunnam's accent randomly reverting back to his normal Newcastle lilt over the course of the series. It got particularly bad for a while in one of the later seasons, almost as though he abandoned any effort at hiding it.
 
N

Nodnol

Member
I too was late to the SAMCRO party, and marathoned the show about 6 months ago.

I had my frustrations and problems with parts of it, but I dug in and loved a lot of the characters. I'm suprised at the hate it gets in this thread (though the same goes for a lot of shows).

I enjoyed the ride, and liked how they ended it. It's not the pinnacle of television, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.
 
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