Along for the Ride
**Minor Spoilers**My friend calls me a serial obsessionist. That isn’t completely true. I really have several obsessions at any given time.
At the moment, I’m hooked on Sons of Anarchy. I’ve seen ads for the show for years and said to myself, “I’m going to watch it as soon as I have time to catch up on the older seasons.” But the time never came—until I signed up for Netflix. Suddenly SoA and tons of other shows that looked tempting became available.
The plan was to watch the pilot episodes of a number of shows: Community, The Blacklist, or Red Road (Jason Momoa…mmmm) for example. But I started with Sons of Anarchy. Once I saw the first episode, I never looked back. I eat, sleep and breathe SoA. This week I’ve finished Seasons 1 & 2, and started Season 3. I’ve lost sleep, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried—how could they kill off Half Sac? I’ve become obsessed.
As a writer, I can’t keep from analyzing it. First, how did the writer turn a motorcycle gang of gun runners and killers into the good guys? What the hell did he do to make the upstanding, kind and honorable police officer the bad guy? Talk about lessons in character development.
It’s also fascinating to watch beloved characters make bad decisions. When the decision is in line with the character’s personality, life or circumstance—like when Jaxx (Charlie Hunnam) fights despite a desire to leave that life, or when his doctor girlfriend slugs the hospital administrator—you get it. You even support the bad decision. But when the decision makes no sense in light of the character as they’ve been written so far, or is irrational considering the current circumstance—Whoa. It’s hard to watch.
For instance, when the Sons have Zobelle (Adam Arkin) cornered in the convenience store with plans to kill him (Yay!), but leave because Jaxx wants to chase a different bad guy. It wouldn’t have taken that long to shank the guy, right? If they’d only taken a hot second they could have “finished it”, as Clay, leader of the SoA would say. Sure, keeping Zobelle alive leaves the door open for future conflict but it was a stupid, illogical decision.
Fortunately, the men of Sons of Anarchy are largely consistent and make decisions that are “true to form”, which is one of the reasons we can’t seem to get enough of them. Action packed episodes, and gut-wrenching emotion are additional critical reasons.
Incredibly hot, powerful men don’t hurt either. Heading back to my binge watching. Saddle up and ride, boys.
