Recently wrapping up its fourth season on FX, “Sons of Anarchy” follows an outlaw motorcycle club as they push guns up and down the California coast. Although Sons is not currently airing on television, the first three seasons are available for instant streaming on Netflix.
To put my love for this show lightly, I’ll just say that I’m obsessed with it. However, to put my love for the show more realistically, it is, in my opinion, the most perfect show on television.
From the first minute of the first episode, it grabs your attention. There have been other shows that I’ve seen that have also done this, but eventually, in the first episode, the plot has to slow down in order to set up the next show. Somehow, creator and executive producer Kurt Sutter (also known for “The Shield”) keeps the show fast-paced from the first seconds, but viewers never feel lost or confused. It’s a seamless marriage of very intricate plot details and action, and I’m still not even out of the first episode.
As the seasons continue, “Sons of Anarchy” never loses its fast-paced action or plot details. Everything you expect to happen never does. Everything you hope happens never does, but somehow you’re always fine with what does happen. In every season, looking back from the first episode to the last episode, you could have never predicted how the season was going to end.
Following the Sons pushing guns, they run into intense rivalries with other gangs, cops who aren’t willing to be paid off and an evil ATF agent dead set on knocking the Sons off their bikes.
At every turn, there are clear villains (I have an intense hatred of Agent Stahl that will probably remain in any character Ally Walker plays) and there are clear heroes (Jax Teller for life). However, there are also characters that you have no idea what to feel about, and that’s a confusion you’ll feel throughout all the seasons.
That confusion is one of the beauties of the show: It’s not just characters you love to hate, it’s characters that you loathe during one episode that then redeem themselves in the next.
As far as the plot, I would go so far as to say that about 95 percent of episodes end with viewers internally thinking (or outwardly saying), “WTF?” I got through the first two seasons of the show in about two weeks, because I could not turn off my computer and stop watching. The need to know what happened in the next episode literally overcame my need for sleep.
I realize that I sound a little crazy, but everyone I know who has watched this show using the instant gratification of Netflix has lost sleep because they had to know what happened. During the fall, I finished work early and skipped homework and sorority events just to go home and watch the Sons on Tuesdays. There is no other show I’ve ever watched that I felt the need to see right as it aired.
It is well acted, well written and well produced – there is no downside to this show for me. I will admit, however, that the violence and sex scenes are as graphic as FX is allowed to make them.
This show is the perfect guy show, with lots of guns, violence and boobs, but somehow, as a girl, I can’t turn it off. Anyone who can appreciate a well-written show that will never leave you wanting more should check out “Sons of Anarchy.” It is, as I said, the most perfect show on television.
