An assignment editor at the AJC Todd Duncan is an obsessive "Sons of Anarchy" fan and wrote this piece about the show as it returns tonight for its seventh and final season on FX:
It’s been called Hamlet on Harleys.
Tuesday marks the beginning of the seventh and final season for FX’s highest-rated show Sons of Anarchy.
It’s a bittersweet time for the show’s millions of fans. While they desperately want to know how this dark drama will unfold following last season’s gut-wrenching final episode, they also don’t want the ride to end.
SOA follows the life of Jackson "Jax" Teller (Charlie Hunnam) who is now the president of SAMCRO - Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original - a small outlaw biker gang in the fictional town of Charming, Calif.
The critically acclaimed series documents his rise to power as he tries to steer the club away from the violent gun-running and drug-dealing deals that threaten its very existence.
Most of those costly and bloody deals were hatched and executed by the club's former president Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman) and his wife Gemma (Katey Segal). Gemma is also Jax's mother.
Fans have followed the motorcycle club’s path of mayhem for six years as the crew has gone toe to toe with white supremacists, Mexican drug dealers, the IRA, and rival MCs.
The gritty story is the brainchild of Kurt Sutter (The Shield) whose inspiration for this tale comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet and his fascination with the outlaw biker world.
“I cringe a little bit sometimes when people reference all the Shakespearean overtones,” Sutter has said in a recent interview. ”But I do really feel like when I have the opportunity to keep the show in that wheelhouse I enjoy doing that.”
SOA is definitely in the Bard’s wheelhouse.
Jax has discovered the writings of his late father, John Teller, who founded SAMCRO with Clay after the Vietnam War. John was killed in a suspicious motorcycle accident when Jax was a child.
In the writings, John wants the club to move away from illegal activities and he fears losing control of the club in a power struggle with Clay and other members. It has been hinted over the course of the series that Clay and/or Gemma may have had a hand in John’s death.
Teller’s voice, spoken through his writings, is the ghost that haunts the club, especially Jax.
Also keeping with Shakespearean tradition – many of SOA’s beloved characters in the show usually end up meeting the club’s mascot – the grim reaper.
Two seasons ago, Jax's best friend Harry "Opie" Winston (Ryan Hurst) was brutally murdered in prison. Fans went crazy on social media, cursing Sutter for killing off one of the show's most popular characters.
“Jax, I felt, just needed that emotional upheaval, that one event that happens in a man’s life that can change the course of his destiny, and I think the death of his best friend was that event,” Sutter said in 2012.
The reaction by fans to Opie’s demise is actually high praise for Sutter’s brilliant storytelling.
With all of the violence and mayhem, viewers are still drawn to this complex and mesmerizing underworld and the characters he created.
Members of the SOA clan are not wholesome, perfect people by any stretch of the imagination, but viewers want to see them come out on top, whatever coming out on top means in the world of outlaw bikers.
Sutter also has done something unusual for most shows on television, he’s created fully developed and compelling female characters.
Take Gemma for example. A pastor’s daughter who adopted the club as a young woman to serve as her surrogate family, she is a beautiful stew of opposites. She’s as ruthless as she is vulnerable and scared. She is as reckless as she is calculating.
During last season's finale, Gemma - filled with a sense of betrayal and twisted loyalty to the club - brutally murdered Jax's wife Tara (Maggie Siff) by repeatedly stabbing her in the head with a large fork.
“When you’re a person, I would imagine, that lives with a lot of heinous acts around her and in despicable situations, to certainly have some kind of awareness of that — that’s uncomfortable truths, as well,” Sagal said recently to MTV News. “All of it’s pretty fascinating. It’s really interesting to play somebody like her that has so many secrets and walks with all that.”
Season seven picks up 10 days after Gemma killed Tara and we’ll begin to find out if Jax is going to become the ruthless, rage-filled leader he vowed to never be.
In the end, it really doesn’t matter if anyone survives on SOA. The characters, Sutter’s writing, the dark humor, it’s all going to be missed.
It’s been a great ride.
About the Author
