The Sons of Anarchy - Pilot Review

The Sons of Anarchy is a new show that FX has brought to us for the Fall season. Like many other FX shows this one pushes the limits of the FCC with violence & drugs. The Pilot episode aired this week and was just over an hour in length with commercials. Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original Charter (SAMCRO/"Sam Crow" or SOA for short), are a group of bikers from just outside of Oakland in a small town called Charming, CA. The SOA are gun runners and hold regular 40 hour a week jobs as well. The head of the group is Clay Morrow, played by Ron Perman. Clay is married to Gemma Teller Morrow, played by Katay Sagal. She's a tough woman and even though her husband was one of the founding members of the gang, she really runs the show. Her son, Jax Teller, played by Charlie Hunnam, is the future leader of the gang and as he's looking through some of his fathers old stuff, he comes across a manuscript of that talks about houw the gang lost it's way. Jax's old man had visions of a hippie type group that didn't believe in violence, but ran the gang as a social type place.

Now Jax is getting some thoughts of changing things. Jax's ex-wife is pregnant with their son. She is a meth head and damn near kills the kid during a drug overdose. The kid is born with a hole in is stomach and a heart defect. Somehow he makes it out alive. Jax wants to be a good father and also wants to be loyal to the club.

The club has an enemy the "Mayans". They are an Oakland based motorcycle gang that wants in on what the SOA are doing. They come up and steal a shipment of guns and blow up the building. This starts a war between the two.

Edit:

Since my original watching of the first episode I decided to give the show a chance and actually think there's more to it. Here's what I originally wrote:

So with that summary I will give you my thoughts on the first week of the show. I think it is too violent, doesn't have a good messgae at all. It so far has glamorized, drinking, drugs and violence. It really doesn't have anywhere good to go.

The writing is poor, the story line is poor and overall it seems like a low budget piece of crap that got a few big names to join in. I don't think it will be the replacement for The Shield and I certainly don't think it's going to last more that one season, maybe 6 episodes tops.

I didn't think much after the first episode of the show, it was a little more violent than I really planned on watching, but then again, so is The Shield. I'm still a few episodes to go and I will revise my summary of the whole show in a new post. I'm leaving this one up as a reminder to not just a show on it's pilot alone.

Cheers!
Dave P.