The Remote Island : Sons of Anarchy

Henry Rollins Joins FX's "Sons Of Anarchy" [VIDEO]

Jake Kalish — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:55:00 GMT

Henry Rollins has joined the cast of FX's Sons Of Anarchy, playing an enemy of the motorcycle club. You know, there was a time, not too long ago, when Henry Rollins was more than just a monologist/activist/author/publisher/radio personality/actor. He was a screaming punk rock fan puncher. Or are you not familiar with that Henry Rollins?

Here's screaming Henry:

And here's punching Henry:

PREVIOUSLY:

"Sons Of Anarchy": You Lost Us At The Masturbating Ex-Con

"Sons Of Anarchy" Fills A Gaping Bullethole In The Flak Vest of Our Hearts

Top Ten New Shows: #6: "Sons Of Anarchy"

Wake Up And Smile: "SNL" Still Making News (Even The Middling, Right-wingy Bits)

Bryan Christian — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Who broke up with Hef? What heinous crime has a pink Power Ranger been accused of? And what's the only good part about this now infamous SNL sketch? Click on through to find out, plus Sons of Anarchy -- and Lost and Desperate Housewives spoilers!

-- NBC took down the unfunny, vaguely insulting bailout sketch from last Saturday -- and then reposted it a couple hours later. Apparently it's because of a fake C-Span crawl advocating the murder of a couple of fatcats. Listen, that's neither here nor there. What's important is, if you didn't see it, just so's you know: the only good part of this sketch is when Fred Armisen, as Barney Frank, finally says something, because just seeing him standing off in the corner with crazy hair, crazy eyes, and crazy monobrow, you just KNOW he's gonna kill. And then, well, he doesn't quite.

-- Our favorite of the Girls Next Door has always been Holly. Is that wrong? She's demanding, yes, but she goes shopping, guys... in tiny shorts. Well, poor Hef. Sounds like he and Holly are no longer a thing. Leaving him with only two other things to cavort with.

-- Quick: name the most dangerous former Pink Power Ranger. If you said Amy Jo Johnson, that folksingy whinybaby that nearly ruined Felicity's freshman year, you'd be wrong. Turns out Skyler Deleon, who also donned the pink helmet (yeah, that sounds kinky) killed a retired couple for their yacht. Damn, Felicity, turns out you got off easy.

-- Wisteria Lane's gonna have a fire some time this year, and not everyone's gonna make it out. Except we're pretty much guessing that they're only gonna get rid of the new people, because God knows Eva Longoria ain't goin' out looking the way she do these days.

-- Oh, also: there are apparently some Lost spoilers here, but we'd never know, because damned if we're gonna spoil anything if we don't have to.

-- And finally, not everyone feels the way we do about Sons of Anarchy apparently, as it's been renewed for a second season by the FX network. Oh, man, are we really gonna be second guessing our putting an end to recaps of that show for, like, years?

"Sons Of Anarchy": You Lost Us At The Masturbating Ex-Con

Bryan Christian — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:36:00 GMT

No, we're not gonna explain what that means. If you saw it, you know. If not, well, we're glad that you got a life.

So, since we're officially hereby relieving ourselves of all repsonsibility to recap this show, let us note: man, oh man, is that table something to behold.

"Sons of Anarchy" Delivers The Goods, But Is It Enough?

Bryan Christian — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:22:00 GMT

Hey, a real live Sons of Anarchy logo! (Courtesy of Northwest Harley Blog)

Faithful readers will remember that after last week's gratuitious and nonsensical foray into vigilante justice, we were ready to give up on Sons of Anarchy, which had started out with some promise, perhaps even a few literary and sociological aspirations, but rapidly devolved into senseless fights and gross mantalk. Well, they still got the gross mantalk -- you don't receive oral pleasure from Latinas in this world; you "throatsquirt a couple of brownies" or something -- but the sex and violence last night (and there was a bit) was so deeply ingrained with the laws and bylaws of motorcycle clubs -- their territories, their customs, their hierarchies -- that we were fascinated. Basically, now that an ATF officer has come to town (Jay Karnes from The Shield), the Sons had to stash their AK's somewhere for a while. The safest place they could find was in Nevada, under the protection of a brother gang, The Devil's Tribe. Problem is, the land between Charming and the Tribe is run by the Mayans, sworn enemies of the Sons, so in order to provide the Tribe and the guns the protection they need, Clay decides to "patch over" the smaller gang, in effect forcing them to be an SOA charter.

Now, if you're catching hints of the Wild West and Mongolian barbarians in all that, you're not alone. It was an episode rife with that sort of detail. Even the C-plot this week was thick with it: when Half-Sack called Gemma a "MILF" in front of Clay, Clay got his revenge by pulling rank on Halfie and banging another prospect -- a female one, trying to be a Tribe old lady -- that he was into. And she was into him, too! Nice!

And yet, we're not taking Sons off probation just yet. We're still a little wary of the subplots involving Maggie Siff as Jax's surgeon/ex, which is a drag because she is so wonderful on Mad Men. But the fact that Jay Karnes is her stalky ex is just too neat for our tastes, and the back and forth she gets with Katie Sagal is a little tiring. (Though maybe that's Sagal, who might have a little too much distance from her character...) And we can't imagine that every episode will be this well researched (or, it should be noted, give grotty and excellent character actor Mark Boone Junior so much to do.)

So, tell you what: we'll probably keep watching, but unless it really starts to wow us, you might not see too many more updates from here on out. Sorry kids, only so many hours in a week.

PREVIOUSLY:
"Sons Of Anarchy", You're On Notice
"Sons of Anarchy": Do As I Say, Unless You Don't Wanna And Someone Gets Hurt

"Sons Of Anarchy", You're On Notice

Bryan Christian — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:23:00 GMT

In short, the best things about last night's episode of Sons of Anarchy -- wherein the Sons tracked down a child rapist so her father could back out of getting a grisly revenge -- were probably, um, all the promos for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

In long: Jax was kind of nowhere to be seen, there was a bunch of senseless and stupid violence, Mitch Pileggi brought a little too much swishiness to a scene where he was supposed to be buttering up Katey Sagal, Jay Karnes from The Shield turned up to complicate not one but two plotlines a little too conveniently and hamfistedly (ATF ex machina, the Greeks called that), and we're not sure which line of dialogue was more embarrassing: the time where Drea de Matteo emerged from a meth induced coma/rehab to deliver, in thorough-yet-marblemouthed legalese, "The hospital's a little nervous about liability issues," or when Katey Sagal, speaking to the mother of the poor girl violated in the open scene, warned her that her daughter might always think of herself as "the girl who was raped at Funtown."

Now, maybe you don't get the full absurdity of that line. So say it to yourself, right now, sitting in your cube. Be sure to think of all the times they said something both banal and weirdly profound on The Sopranos. Now imagine that scenario as a FAIL, with Segal bringing none of the conviction that, say, Silvio brought to every single ridiculous syllable that fell from his lips. No, seriously, do it. We'll wait. Pathetic, right?

All in all, last night's episode lacked any of the qualities that we found appealing in the pilot -- gone were the intimations the road as an endless frontier and bikers as a landless nation roaming it. Gone too were any of the references to Hamlet; in fact, we're starting to wonder if the producers or the network doubt that Charlie Hunnam, with his laid back approach to Jax, has the magnetism to carry the show on his own. (Hence his second banana-ing and the appearance of Karnes?)

And what did we get instead of all that? We had a bunch of trigger-happy rednecks and petty theives, solving crimes for the rich and dealing dirty justice in a vacuum or morality or consequence. And not in a good way; more like The Fall Guy with leather and knives.

Therefore, we are ready to declare our first Recap Probation of the year. Sons of Anarchy, we will catch you next week and give you a fair shot, but if you don't bring the un-suck, you are off our pages until Ron Perlman wants out to shoot Hellboy 3 or FX decides it's time for there to be a Paddy's Pub West. Whichever comes last.

PREVIOUSLY:
"Sons of Anarchy": Do As I Say, Unless You Don't Wanna And Someone Gets Hurt
"Sons Of Anarchy" Fills A Gaping Bullethole In The Flak Vest Of Our Hearts

"Sons of Anarchy": Do As I Say, Unless You Don't Wanna And Someone Gets Hurt

Bryan Christian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:29:00 GMT

"I know what you're thinking, and you're right. This show does need more me."

Apparently there's a sign up in SAMCRO HQ that says "Brains before bullets". So how come last night's episode of Sons of Anarchy seemed so senselessly violent? Is this what we can expect?

First things first: let's say you got this plotline with those two Mexican gals that were killed in the fire at the wirehouse. (The first warehouse fire in the pilot we mean; not the second.) When you got the law from two counties sniffing around, and you're worried about them tying the warehouse (which had been full of guns) to your club, it's no great position to be in. And that goes double when one of your boys -- let's say Tig, who seems to be a potentially scary dude -- might have left a little, erm, evidence of his own inside those aforementioned dead gals.

OK, that's a jam. But what we wanna know is where, exactly, does it say in the SAMCRO bylaws that the solution to this problem is to buy some bodies from a horny funeral home attendant who's got a thing for one of your club honeys so that you can fake a whole other murder across town to get the fuzz out of your hair long enough to steal the bodies of those Mexican gals and dispose of them as you please.

Hey, look at that, we just summarized like half the show in a single sentence. A single, wholly preposterous, needlessly crass sentence.

Are we beginning to rethink this whole Sons of Anarchy thing? A little. This was a pretty underwhelming second ep to a series, and one filled with too much non-gritty, non-quirky violence and a number of obvious plot complications that just kind of rose and fell out of nowhere: Tig's relationship with the dead Mexican ladies, Tara's suddenly knowing that Gemma tried to kill Wendy, Jax beating the crap out of some guy just because he cut him off in traffic. They're all developments that have something to do with character, and yet they don't really hang together all that well.

Also kind of half-baked is the story of Opie and Donna, who continue to have money problems, so much so that Opie's angling for more work in the club -- of the parole-violating sort, dum-da-dum!, that won't complicate things later on... So Donna's too proud to accept charity from Gemma. We get it, she's a toughie, and she'll have to be since he's probably got a target on his head. But maybe if there was just a hair more context for this story, like Opie having something to say about being passed over as heir to the club in favor of Jax... something to give these sadsacks some gravity! But we got nothing, so they're kind of chugging along, and we're supposed to feel bad for people we barely know who aren't going to dinner with the rest of the club? Meh.

The only satisfying plotlines this week had to do with Clay and his attempts to hold the club's finances together in the face of this whole warehouseless situation. The gun deal with the 'Niners apparently went off smoothly -- there were even celebratory muffins! -- but a few days later what first seems like business as usual -- a protection run arranged by the outgoing police chief, Unser, played by Dayton Callie (aka Charlie Udder from Deadwood) -- turns out to be a bold power play by Clay. Instead of making the protection run as promised, and keeping Chief Unser happy, Clay hands the shipment of [we don't know, we weren't paying attention] to "Uncle Jimmy" and the local mafia, making a percentage of the profits -- and putting Chief Unser in his place. Kind of an awesome move, but for some reason it had less screentime than Jax's corpse/booty snatching. We can't help but say: The Sopranos would have given this storyline serious play. We'd have been on that "protection run" so much we'd be picking insects from our teeth at home.

So hey, SoA, as our hero would say: You're on notice. Take it slow, ditch the Tarantino-esque, well, anything, and more Clay. If he's our Uncle Junior or Al Swearingen, we gotta get inside his head more. Ron Perlman can handle whatever you throw at him and besides, Clay might have much to teach us. Anybody who can make a little scratch and keep their local in-the-pocket-lawman from retiring in the same move belongs on The Apprentice!

The Weekly Rewind: We're All Just a Bunch of Gossip Girls

Ben Kallen — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Politics, TV shows, celebrities: It's all a mess of tawdry gossip. So why don't we delve right back into it with the highlights of the week:

As the new TV season started, we watched the premieres of Raising the Bar, America's Next Top Model, Sons of Anarchy, Gossip Girl and also 90210. And what did we learn? Teenagers and models are far more interesting than lawyers. (Sorry, Mark-Paul Gosselaar!)

We reported that David Duchovny had entered rehab for being a sex addict, maybe because he looked at too much computer porn. Then we heard it was actually because he fooled around with hot women. Which may be worse, but is far less embarrassing.

We found some funny-shaped Hannah Montana candy -- and, boy, did you guys have a lot to say about it!

We learned that Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester was almost born in jail. (We thought about hugging her and telling her that it doesn't matter, but didn't want to deal with the restraining order.)

We revealed a secret plot to suck your soul into a computer.

We heard from wacky old guys Alec Baldwin and David Letterman.

We overheard some heartfel t commentary at the Republican convention, and discovered that VP candidate Sarah Palin is made for TV.

We saw reporters get rocked like a hurricane.

We learned that in space, no one can hear you swear. (Correctly, anyway.)

We worried about Heidi and Spencer leaving The Hills, and about Kim Bauer coming back to 24.

But we can't wait to see Britney at the VMAs -- and talk to you about it next week.

Photo: The CW

Previously:
The Weekly Rewind: Summer's End

"Sons Of Anarchy" Fills A Gaping Bullethole In The Flak Vest Of Our Hearts

Bryan Christian — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:23:00 GMT

We’ve heard that FX would like to have Sons of Anarchy, the new biker gang drama that premiered last night, pick up the audience left high and dry by the impending departure of The Shield – but we’re not so sure they’ll pull it off. Don’t get us wrong, we’re hooked. They’re just very different shows is all: Sons owes a debt to The Shield, it’s true – California, crime, cursing – but it’s got a more ambling pace, and wears a few other references more plainly on its tattered leather sleeve:: The Sopranos, Deadwood, and in particular Shakespeare’s longest tragedy Hamlet, with its heir apparent prodded by circumstance and family (both living and dead) into realizing his destiny. This is a quieter, more thoughtful show, and though it’s got a few kinks to work out, it’s off to a pretty good start.

Sons is the story of what happens to Jax Teller, a member of the Californian motorcycle club the Sons of Anarchy (or SAMCRO) after a rival gang, the Mayans, blows up a shipment of guns the Sons were delivering to another gang. Clay, the president of the SAMCRO (played by Hellboy's Ron Perlman) wants to hit back hard and send a message; but Jax isn't so sure. He seems like a thoughtful kid -- Hunnam has a Ledger-esque innocence that no amount of blood or axel grease can obscure -- and circumstances in his life are making him secondguess the path he's chosen. His crankhead ex-wife Wendy, played by Drea de Matteo, has gone into labor 10 weeks ahead of schedule after OD'ing, and the baby (named Abel) has the same heart defect that afflicts all the men in the Teller family -- including, it seems, his late father and brother. To complicate things further, Jax has just uncovered a manuscript written by his late father -- the co-founder with Clay of SAMCRO -- indicating that maybe running guns and making money weren't the only things the outfit was supposed to be about.

Now, weaving through all this is Katey Sagal as Jax's mom Gemma, who since the death of her husband has married Clay -- yes, that should be your Hamlet alarm going off -- and is plotting to secure her son's rise to the leadership of SAMCRO after Clay can no longer ride. (Clay suffers from something like arthritis, which appears to be taking away mobility in his hands.) So, in this episode, we see Gemma extracting from Clay a promise to "nail Jax down", i.e., make sure he stays strong and plays hardball with the Mayans -- yeah, your Sopranos alarm should be going off, too -- and dispatching de Matteo's character with a syringe full of meth hidden in a bible (though apparently de Matteo will return.) It's unclear whether she's doing all this for Jax or for herself, but Sagal's handle on the character -- she's Livia Soprano with cleavage and Kools -- is familiar without being operatic and so full of offhand brio that she gets the viewer past her murky motivations even as they drive her to murder.

Back to the gunrunning. After some deliberation with the club, Clay gets his way, but his attempt to send a message to the Mayans gets a little more complicated -- and a little bloodier -- than anticipated. An attempt to steal back some guns and blow up their garage ends in a shootout, wherein Jax takes a few in his bulletproof vest -- in part because he let a good friend take a pass on the job and was caught up short. What's more, one of the victims of the shootout turns out to be a member of another gang, some Neo-Nazis led by a believably shirtless Mitch "Agent Skinner" Pileggi -- meaning that the Sons have twice as many enemies as they'd realized. Perhaps because of this, Jax finally relents and visits his newborn son in the hospital, with his mother and stepfather in tow.

Now, some critics have complained that Hunnam (who, we should note, is a Brit) plays Jax a little too close to the vest, but we buy his take on the role for a few reasons. For one, isn't one of Hamlet's great lessons that the way to enhance the impact of dramatic action is to set it on a backdrop of inaction? When, in a diner sitdown with the Neo-Nazis, Pileggi's Neo-Nazi taunts Jax about his family, his explosiive reaction is way more plausible than if he'd been all "loose cannon"-y throughout the pilot. (And this is even after he beats the crap out of the meth dealer -- also a Neo-Nazi -- who sold his wife her stuff. Again, unlike lots of other biker characters of his age, Jax is a guy who has some cool to lose.) Likewise, Ron Perlman is an actor who we all know is capable of big, broad emotion and theatricality, and he's underplaying here too, as are Pileggi, Sagal, and a host of other actors from Trees Lounge, Mad Men, The X-Files, Jericho, and The Corner. These are guys who are out of jail and trying to stay square, guys who are on oxygen, guys who spend their nights as Elvis impersonators, and guys who end club meetings with a tiny gavel. Better to give them somewhere to go than have them spinning their wheels and going nowhere.

Top Ten New Shows: #6 - "Sons of Anarchy"

Bryan Christian — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:49:00 GMT

The new fall season is almost here. Starting next week, the cable and broadcast networks will begin rolling out their new shows to see if they take off like castaways on an island or singing casino managers. Here, then, are the top ten new shows we're most looking forward to seeing.

We think it says something about how starved we are for a particular kind of show that we're excited to see Sons of Anarchy. Best case scenario: FX's new biker drama, which comes to us from a writer from The Shield, turns out to be a sort of Deadwood on wheels, with Ron Perlman -- an actor long deserving a juicy role of the non-latex-and-prosthetics variety -- as its scary, unpredictable, black heart.

Worst case, the show winds up more like that another David Milch/HBO production, John From Cincinnati: an aimless, gratuitous, sundrenched mess more in love with its own eccentricities than anything else. Or, it could surpises

Sons of Anarchy (Wednesdays at 10PM EST) premieres Wednesday, September 3 at 10PM EST on FX

TOP TEN NEW SHOWS 2008

#1. "Fringe"
#2. "True Blood"
#3. "90210"
#4. "Life On Mars"
#5. "The Mentalist"
#6. "Sons of Anarchy"
#7. "Do Not Disturb"
#8. "Eleventh Hour"
#9. "Kath & Kim"
#10. "Knight Rider"