In September on the FX channel, a TV show premieres just in time to make me not give up on TV all together after long, happy-go-lucky, never-actually-funny sitcoms throughout the summer (you know, except for Shark Week because that's AWESOME!). It's called "Sons of Anarchy" and it stars some legends:
Charlie Hunnam (Green Street Hooligans)
Katey Sagal ("Married with Children," "Futurama")
Ron Perlman (Hellboy, The Last Winter)
I don't remember why I first started watching this show. Usually I don't get into shows unless I already know the actors in them or if I happen to sit down to something Kate's watching and just happen to like it... something that doesn't happen often because she enjoys MTV. I think maybe it was the colorful advertisement in Entertainment Weekly. Whatever the reason, I sat down to the first episode and the show took off! I was unused to TV such as this! This was real stuff. It was like a movie every single episode! I was thrilled with the action, the characters, and the appropriately-placed humor. Here was an excellent TV show.
Now, we're in season three, which is proving to be slower than the previous two seasons though still entertaining. I'm one of those fans that will tune in every week even the show has completely lost its touch. I have dedication like no other! But I digress...
The plot in one sentence is you follow a motorcycle gang as they run in with other gangs or "clubs," control the police, try to make a living, and protect their family in a small California desert town. The show is rated TV-MA because, yes, it shows violence and a lot of sex. It's a TV motorcycle gang. We're not talking about Bikini Bottom here. It's a rough town and no matter who you are, if you're caught without a gun, you could get seriously hurt with some of the ruffians that live in Charming. But the violence, the sex, the action... that's not the main reason I tune into the show.
With season three, I recognize a new love budding in me over the show ...I've always wanted to be a part of a big family that lived close together. My family... we're not family reunion people, especially not now after the divorce. How do you have a joint family reunion when the two sides won't talk to each other? It'd be like a Hatfield/McCoy family reunion (which is funny because I AM a 7th generation McCoy. One day we'll discuss Von Hippel disease!)!! What a disaster! Whenever I wrote stories, I also wrote in first person and the character that was most like me always lived with a large family. One of my favorite stories I wrote was called Famous Family and it was a huge family of actors living on the same block and going about the Hollywood world. I loved it. The "me" character had two older brothers, one sister, several aunts, several uncles, even more cousins, both sets of grandparents, and was never without attention and family love. I truly believe in "it takes a village to raise a child," and that's what you get with "Sons of Anarchy."
Yes, they murder people. Yes, they smuggle illegal guns. Yes, the unattached men screw everything in site. Yes, they have made some horrible, poor decisions. That's not what makes it so great. What's so great is the family dynamics among this gang, the Sons of Anarchy. Wives or "old maids" and other family members are also members of the club even though they don't have patches or ride. Because if one of them gets hurt... the whole gang goes after the culprit. There is a togetherness among them I have never experienced before, a togetherness I tried to create among the boys that never stuck.
My favorite character is Gemma - mother of the vice president and wife to the president - no one messes with her family! She doesn't take crap or let anybody walk all over her. She is independent and strong. I wish I could be like her. Now, I'm not going to be tying up a caretaker to a wheelchair in a garage as a hostage because she threatened to turn me into the FBI... but I will start telling people, "Hey, you can't talk to me like that! Keep it up and there's the door."
I kind of just did that to one of my friends, one of the boys. I got fed up with the way he talked down to me. So, I told him how I felt, and he didn't like it, and well... it remains to be seen whether I lost a friend or not. But, they say change is a good thing. I don't want to have friends that talk to me like that or blow me off all the time. No regrets. He is a great person, but I don't need that kind of negativity in my life. There'll be no replacing him, but it's time to either fix the problem or move on as my self worth continues to plummet because of his heartless words.
I'm an oddball, everyone knows it! I should have to wear a sign or something. Maybe I'll never find a Sons of Anarchy of my own, but it's definitely something that will continue to pop up in my writing. Because I that's how I use my gift: if I don't like something about this world that I can't change, I'm going to get on my computer and write a new world, one that I can change. And, it'll be bad a$$!
No comments:
Post a Comment