Why is that, you may ask? Well, it's very simple. For the first time in seven years - seven glorious, wonderful years - I don't have the next season of "Sons of Anarchy" to look forward to.
Call that silly if you want to, but to me SOA is more than just a television series. True, it was in my humble opinion the single best television series in the history of television, but to me it was also more than that. We moved to South Carolina in August of 2006, and the first year or so was pretty much settling in and trying to find our places in the grand scheme of things. About the time all of that started to come together, along came this new television series about a 1% motorcycle club (I refuse to use the word 'gang' because MCs are not 'gangs') called "Sons of Anarchy." Being a biker myself (although certainly not a 1%er) I took an immediate interest in it, and by the third episode of the new series I knew that FX was really onto something. The show was tough, gritty, funny, interesting, captivating, sad, violent, and happy all at the same time. It had a stellar cast and was written by a man who is nothing short of a genius, and I was instantly hooked. It was the most realistic show about a 1% MC that I had ever seen, and the more I watched it the more I loved it. And the more I loved it the more it became a part of my new life in South Carolina.
When the third (or maybe the fourth) season began, someone did an interview with the creator and writer/producer of the show, Kurt Sutter, and in that interview they asked him how long the show would last. He said in that interview that he really couldn't see it going any further than seven seasons, because by that time they would have pretty much done all that could be done. Sutter is also a student of the liberal arts and anyone who has any amount of schooling immediately recognized that SOA was modeled after "Hamlet." (And knowing that, by the way, meant that for 5 of those 7 years I knew that the show was going to end with the main character's death, which it did. Bummer.)
The main thing I loved about the show was the realism and the accuracy. They didn't do quite as much riding as I would have wanted them to do in the show, but knowing how tough it is to film action shots like that I understand why. Anyhow, Sutter said that he had researched the show for 18 months before writing it, spending time with three different 1% MCs to learn about The Life and how things were in an "outlaw" MC, and it showed. When he was asked about the graphic violence and the accuracy of what was portrayed on the show, if it was realistic or not, he said that it absolutely was and that FX wouldn't let him put everything he wanted on the air because it was TOO violent and graphic. By the time his research was over Sutter had such a deep understanding and deep respect for the clubs that he did a couple of things. First, when it came time to design the club's colors he made sure that no MC in existence used the color scheme that he wanted to use. There is no club out there that uses royal blue on white for their colors, so that's the color scheme that Sutter chose. Second, he had such a deep respect for what patched members had to go through as prospects to earn the right to wear the three-piece patch colors of their MC that he refused to allow FX to license anything that depicted all three pieces of the SOA's colors. You can buy a ton of stuff with the top rocker that says "SONS OF ANARCHY" and the grim reaper center patch, but you won't find ANY officially licensed product out there that displays the bottom rocker that says "CALIFORNIA" on it. Anything you see with all three patches is an unlicensed ripoff, and believe me there's a ton of it out there.
But aside from the show being an accurate, truthful, gritty depiction of life in an outlaw MC, it was the characters and the plot that made the show such a hit. As I said, the main basis of the show followed "Hamlet," but the twists and turns of the show as the seasons went on showed just what a creative genius writer Sutter truly is. That, and you never knew who was gonna die next. The premier of the third season showed one of the main characters, Deputy Chief Hale, getting run over and killed by a van being driven by a rival MC. This took me and a bunch of other people totally by surprise, almost as much as when the wife of one of the main characters was accidentally killed by an SOA member in Season 1.
Like I said, you never knew just who was gonna go next, although you were pretty sure that the main character, Jax, was gonna come to a violent and deadly end. And boy, did he. (No, I won't elaborate in case you haven't seen the series and plan on watching it after reading this.)
My wife, bless her heart, started the tradition of giving me the previous season's episodes on DVD for Christmas each year, and I'd spend the off months waiting for September and the season to start again by watching the previous year's season on DVD. And this past November after the show had completed its run I started watching the entire show again from beginning to end, catching the final season on Amazon Fire since the DVD wasn't out yet.
All told I've seen the entire series - all 7 seasons of it - a total of three times. And I plan on watching it again this month, kinda to help fight the withdrawals.
Then there was the music, the soundtrack for the show. Absolutely fantastic to say the least, with Katy Segal recording songs for quite a bit of it. (She was one of the Harlettes, the backup singers for Bette Midler in the '80's, you know, and has one hell of a voice.) Whoever designed the background music and decided on which song to feature for a specific, important event in the show is a pure genius. More than once I was brought to tears because of what was being shown and the music accompanying it, because the music just seemed so perfect. Go check out YouTube if you want some examples. Have a tissue handy.
But like the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. So now it's September and no "Sons of Anarchy" to look forward to. That show became such a part of my new life here in South Carolina that it's kinda just thrown my whole psyche off-track if you know what I mean. Oh, I'll get over it, but Tuesdays are gonna be kinda empty now as far as TV goes, know what I mean?
Thank God for DVDs.
Deo Vindice.
IHC
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