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.
I’ve never seen this show, although I’ve been tempted to start watching it from the beginning on Netflicks. Is is any good?
I have no idea, I have never even heard of it.
I walked away from the show in the second season.
Just plain depressing.
I am glad I never tried to watch that crap
God is not mocked. He will repay.
I watch one and was so bored that I never watched another.
Have never watched a single episode...
It’s pure fiction and has no sense of reality. The bike scenes are good. The writer is depraved in the gruesome murders he portrays. It is sick with countless murders. Don’t waste your money paying for it.
I did just what you contemplate. I don’t see the overwhelming everything bad in the early episodes.
Anarchy is basically a soap opera with motor cycles. Alternatively, it is The Sopranos... west
If not taken seriously it is fun
The reason I stopped watching Scandal was all the senseless killing
One good thing about killing everyone off, it makes it harder to start again....
I watched most of it and kind of ‘brutal’ to a point but you have to realize who you are dealing with.
This last season - IMNSHO - was designed to make sure you were glad to see it go...at least IMNSHO...that is the ‘read’ I got.
Sopranos left an out and you could take it anyway you want - especially after the open assault on Meadow a show or two earlier - just showed ‘they’ apparently weren’t afraid of anything - breaking the ‘law’ of ‘No hands on family - you kill the old man that is ‘made’ and you can take care of his family’...
Of course James G sort of put the finishing touch on it, also seeing how most of the ‘original regulars’ had assumed room temp by the end...
Guess there would be ‘room’ for one final wrap up with Tony’s funeral being the center piece and a recap of the whole series in flashbacks.....
I watched the first few seasons but eventually got burnt out on the sex and violence. It was sensory overload for me and became offensive morally speaking. I used to love gangster movies as a young adult. But as I matured, the characters simply lost their glitter and I saw them for what they were: heartless criminals.
He sure will
I have never decided how I felt about the Sopranos ending the way it did. At the time I was shocked, but over time, I guess it left it open for a future series or movie or just allowing the audience to decide how it ended in their own mind.
The Soprano follow-up is Lillehammer. It is a spin off. First season good
Second season, not quite as good
Third season so..eehh.
I’ve never watched that either. As a matter of fact I haven’t watched any TV shows or series in ages
mostly monologuing in my own head now, because it was compelling for some reason. Maybe it was the shocking rawness of it.
I watched Army Wives on Netflix. My adult kid tried to show me Breaking Bad, but it was too twisted for me. I did enjoy Army Wives, Hart of Dixie (about a NY female doctor who goes south to the Gulf Coast) and I watch Nashville on Amazon after it shows on network tv, that way I avoid commercials.
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