By Todd Garbarini
During
the 1980s and 1990s I became disillusioned with television shows in general. Most of the series airing at the time seemed
derivative and predictable with little regard for the audience and more for the
commercial breaks. All of that changed
in 2001 when I began watching HBO’s The
Sopranos on a free HBO weekend, the first show that I can confess to binge-viewing
(the act of watching numerous episodes back to back with no break) and easily
the best television series that I have seen thus far. What was remarkable about it was the ability
of the writers to take their time and develop not only characters but
significant plot points, all without the annoying constraints of network
television and the need to get to the next conflict. This is not to infer that network television
is completely without merit as that
would be a gross and unfair oversimplification. Fox Network's 24, a show that
I initially was at first reluctant to watch, sucked me in when its first season
debuted on DVD. I have never been so
addicted to a storyline before and could not wait for the next episode and then
the next season. I have watched all eight
seasons at least three times.
The
Fox network has a sister network, Fox Extended or FX for short, and like most
other cable networks it has its fair share of exclusive programming (and
commercials, sigh), a maneuver that
appears to be the norm for networks if they are to survive. Even Netflix has learned this with their highly
acclaimed series House of Cards. FX’s most successful show, Sons of Anarchy, is now airing its
penultimate and sixth season. The series
has been heavily criticized for its use of brutality and profane language, though
I’m not sure that a motorcycle gang would speak any other way (as of this
writing you cannot drop “F†bombs, at least not yet, on this network). Despite
these complaints, however, SOA, as it
is known to its most zealous adherents, remains a rich dissection of the human
condition and how people deal with problems and try to solve them. They aren’t necessarily people you would want
to live next door to, but nefarious characters are infinitely more interesting than
real life. For one thing, they make us
think about how we would act if we found ourselves in their circumstances. In Breaking
Bad, Vince Gilligan's brilliant AMC series about high school science
teacher Walter White (played stupendously by Bryan Cranston) who becomes a manufacturer
of methamphetamine after he is diagnosed with lung cancer, people who normally
otherwise would not resort to violence or murder end up making those choices
when pushed to the brink and see no other options. In SOA,
murder seems to be a way of life and there is the Shakespearean element at work,
though it is covert; critics have cited Hamlet
as an obvious influence. Each season of
the show consists of 13 episodes, and season five is now newly available on DVD
and Blu-ray.
In
the fictional town of Charming, CA, the Teller-Morrow family heads up the
original and founding chapter of the Sons of Anarchy Motorycle Club, Redwood
Original (aka SAMCRO for short). At the
end of season four, Jackson Teller (Charlie Hunnam) has become the president of
the club, with his future wife Tara (Maggie Siff) at his side. Season five opens with the introduction of
the father of a young woman accidentally killed by the recklessness of Tig (Kim
Coates), one of the Sons’s members. Unfortunately for Tig, his victim’s father is a drug lord and the most
dangerous gangster in Oakland, CA, who catches up with Tig and enacts the old “an
eye for an eye†principle against one of Tig’s two daughters in one of the most
harrowing and upsetting sequences in the show’s history. This action propels forward a plotline that
ends up with Clay (former president of SAMCRO, played by Ron Perlman) in jail
for a murder he didn’t commit in the final episode. Along the way, a major character dies in a
brutal way, and the show follows the axiom that no one is safe when it comes to
violent storylines. Jackson constantly
has to make difficult choices for the sake of his family and the club he
presides over while trying to placate his vice president Bobby (Mark Boone
Junior). In some ways, he is like 24’s Jack Bauer as he is sucked into
danger and has to use his wits to extricate himself and his club members. More often than not he is trying to convince his
mother and Tara that things are going to be different and that everything will
be all right; though noble, it doesn’t appear to be realistic.
Creator
and executive producer Kurt Sutter, who pulls double duty playing “Big Ottoâ€
Delaney, has amassed a phenomenal cast. The performances are universally
excellent. My personal favorite is Mr.
Sutter’s real-life wife, Katey Sagal, who won a well-deserved Golden Globe Award
in 2011 for her brilliant portrayal of Gemma, Jackson’s mom. I always liked Mrs. Sagal as Peg on Married…with Children, and her banter
with Ed O'Neill, her slovenly husband Al. I never would have thought of her as a choice to play a character like
Gemma, however she has blown me away with the depth of her characterization of
this woman who will stop at nothing to keep her family intact.
The
Blu-ray looks absolutely gorgeous in high definition and the sound is crystal
clear. If you pump it through a stereo,
be prepared to mistake some of the sound effects for real-life sounds: several
times I thought my phone was ringing–
and my phone vibrates, I don’t even use a ringtone!
There
are also some nice extras to go around. Some of the episodes have some extended
scenes. There are also deleted scenes
and a few commentaries on select episodes. The best feature, in my humble opinion, is the ability to run the
episodes continuously without having to go to the main menu and select the next
one if you decide to watch more than one in a row. It actually encourages binge viewing!
Another
winning release for fans of this terrific show.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON