Posted on 12/12/2014 4:57:31 AM PST by Kaslin
The year is winding down with some good TV news: The amoral biker-gang drama "Sons of Anarchy" has ended its seven-year run on the cable channel FX, after a final season drenched in pointless sex and violence. Jax, the leader of the gang, shot a bunch of his enemies dead and then drove his motorcycle straight into the oncoming grill of a semi truck.
The show wound down into a relentless deathfest. Jax shot his mother dead, because she stabbed his wife in the neck with a barbecue fork. Most of the cast was slaughtered. And for what? It all seemed like a long slog of sensationalism for its own sake.
The Nov. 11 episode opened with an unbelievably graphic sex scene lasting a full two and a half minutes, depicting seven different couples. Adam Buckman at Media Post reported "this montage featured five heterosexual couples, and two homosexual -- one of which featured the transgender character ... and the other one featuring a jailhouse rape being simulated by guest-star Marilyn Manson."
Producer Paris Barclay explained that on the set, they called it the "f---tage." In an interview, Yahoo's Kimberly Potts told Barclay the transgender sex scene was "the most honest relationship moment in the whole series." Barclay described the awe and wonder of it all.
"When we did the first read-through, everyone responded in such a hushed and reverent manner to just the reading of it, just the lines. ... We knew that we had something great," Barclay declared. When they filmed the scene, "the entire crew applauded for at least two minutes. I mean, literally, with tears in our eyes. Everyone. I'm sitting there watching them applaud, in the middle of 'Sons of Anarchy,' a love scene which involves probably the most degenerate club member, the necrophiliac ... and this transgendered woman who really, for the first time, explains where she came from emotionally and what it's about."
Welcome to Hollywood, where the weirder it gets, the more people cry on the set about the "honesty."
Once the sex and the tears were over, the plot veered back into senseless violence. The show's primary antihero, Jax the gang leader, ripped out a man's eyeball with his bare hands. The eyeball was shown dangling from the socket, blood erupting from the wound, as other gang members kicked and beat the victim. Someone hacked off the victim's fingers with a knife, as the victim screamed in pain. A close-up displayed the severed fingers in a pool of blood. Jax then shot the man point-blank in the head.
It's a given that some in this industry will believe the finale proved a moral point, that the murderous gang leaders all arrived at punishment for their sins, making "Anarchy" creator Kurt Sutter a moralist. It's quite the opposite. The whole point of the show was vicariously enjoying the sadism, the sexual calisthenics, even the school shooting that opened season six -- and since that wasn't enough, Sutter included two rapes and a man drowning in a bathtub of urine.
Sadly, brain-damaged TV critics compare Sutter to Shakespeare, which should have the Bard spinning like a top in his grave. Our "tastemakers" repeatedly adore savage antiheroes and demonstrate a boundless appetite for the grotesque.
Outside of a few random butt’s and an occassional side boob. If you want to call that nudity. There was no nudity in the show.
That’s true, I have seen worse on mainstream TV.
Didn’t Clay supposedly sabotage his bike?
I had mentioned on another thread about how good a ‘job’ Walton Groggins did going from a Crooked Cop with somewhat of a conscience, to a Bootlegger/all around bad ass to a Tranny that could tame one of the ‘meanest’ bikers (who was well aware of the extra gear the ‘lady’ was packing)
Not entirely agreeing with his roles etc but am ‘impressed’ with his range to play a convincing role in whatever I had seen him in.
That was nagging when he first showed up as a ‘girl’...got that “I know I have seen that character but who...even when I went back to see the credits had to eliminate all the people before I realized it was Groggins”...
Guess that is why they call it acting....
It never clarified if JR killed himself or if it was a sabotaged bike. Jax got really upset when someone mentioned that it may have been suicide.
Supposedly Clay did but I don’t think it was ever said outright for sure.
Groggins was a hoot in Justified too.
That's the "overt" plot line, but during one episode, the concept that John Teller might have committed suicide was mooted during discussion among the characters. They left that possibility hanging in the air, leading up to the final episode.
Maybe I ‘heard’ it when the boys were in Ireland and they told Jax that to keep him in line. OTOH, I seem to remember the IRA wanted to work with Clay???
On Groggins being a hoot, in actuality the role he played here was the calmest and best behaved he had (that I have seen)....I am NOT trying to compare anybody with anybody but Groggins looks like he would have a career playing Lee Van Cleif(?) type roles...hired gun, all around bad ass, probably could have found a great role for him in Walter Whites life.
Anyone notice or remember how many COPS materialized out of the OZ series...including the FBI Profiler/Shrink - played a Priest on OZ, Edie went from Guard to Mrs Soprano, a handful of the cons became Cops on L&O and Schlessinger became a Psychiatrist on L&O
Oz might have populated every TV drama since. You can go on and on. Just two, Mayhem is from OZ and his brother was the guy in Good Will Hunting in the classic scene in the Harvard Bar.
I thought it was Jury the club president he killed that had mentioned it as well.
I have been a casual watcher of the show on Netflix, and while it is generally a pretty good series, it has jumped the shark in the last few seasons. It’s much like the Sopranos in many ways, including the creators usage of the series to push his personal (leftist) political agenda with some of the story lines and some not so subtle digs at conservatives.
Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll look into them.
Gen-u-wine filth! Don’t put up with any imitations!
I hope it was a cathartic experience for those who grooved on it. It can’t have done much other good.
It wasn’t supposed to have a moral, Creek.
It was experience for the sake of experience. Some things are so infatuated with evil they don’t need any other explanation.
Sons of Anarchy was great. And even if it wasn't I woulda tuned in every single solitary week to just look at Jax. <3<3<3<3<3<3
Got it. Now one last question.
Who or what was Sam Crow? What is the significance? There was even a folder that Jax went through on the last show that had somethng about Sam Crow on the cover/
I didn’t start watcching until the 3rd season and even then I missed a lot of show.
Samcro
Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club redwood original
thanks. I can see I’m gonna wind up bleary eyed after watching the entire series on one of those weekends where they play every show in sequence.
It did seem to me that the show became more violent over time and I think that was the vision of the writer/director—showing the evolution of Jax’s character into a darker place as he takes his MC with him.
As a writer of noir fiction myself, I love the show.
Yeah the final season got me as well. Hated to see it go.
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