I have seen bad tv before - there is no shortage of it and never has been. But I don't think I have ever seen a case of such bad tv being as inexplicably overrated as this show. A friend had recommended it to me over a year prior to my watching it and I finally got around to checking it out, going in blind, without reading any reviews, sadly. After making it through the first episode, I thought perhaps I had simply misremembered the title of the show; my friend had described it as a solid watch - this couldn't be it, surely. I tried a few more episodes and it certainly didn't improve. I then read some critic reviews, many lauding the show. So I persevered, thinking that maybe new writers took over at some point and turned it around. No. this clearly did not happen. I cannot think of one positive aspect of this travesty. It plays like a show where the Little Rascals grew up, went horribly wrong, never left their little clubhouse and started a life of crime, rather than harmless mischief. This bizzaro world version of Spanky is played by Hellboy and is not nearly as smart as the little kid. His clubhouse generates no money - his fellow Little Rascals seem to have to cough up their OWN money just for Spanky and Co to take road trips. Bizarro Stymie is played by the Pacific Rim guy, Hunnam, a Geordie playing a California biker, butchering accents as per usual. How this person gets roles outside of Newcastle is beyond me; he couldn't even pull off a LONDON accent in the football hooligan movie Green Street (a bad movie, made worse by his involvement). If swaggering could make up for lack of acting ability and a terrible accent, he might be in good shape. But it doesn't. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen someone swagger so excessively on screen before and I'm drawing a blank. Anyway, Pacific Rim is supposed to be the new breed of biker, I guess, prettier, tighter and wearing baggier jeans. He is also deeper and more intelligent - he can read, and shows off this skill by taking his dead daddy's manifesto up onto the roof of the clubhouse to read it and ponder its meaning whilst looking both contemplative and cool at the same time with his long hair and girlish good looks. The other Little Rascals all kind of blur together; I still couldn't put a name to a single one of them despite having watched the entire first season. There's a Scottish one, a Fat one (well, fatter than the others), a Perverted one (well, more perverted than the others), an Old one who carries around an oxygen tank, a Tall one - they all basically hang out at the clubhouse or ride around on their bikes, getting into mischief. Hellboy's "Old Lady" is Peggy Bundy, who has a mouth on her that should be sewn shut. The obscenities she spouts, I have no idea how she can do it with a straight face. The dialogue is infantile at best; as many other negative reviews point out, most sentences end with "Jesus Christ", which quickly becomes both comical and highly irritating. Also, most conversations end with a man-hug or a back-slap, "love you, brother", "love you too, bro" - these Little Rascals are a touchy-feely, loving bunch. The episode plots all kind of run together very quickly; they try to make money, fail miserably, get into long, sloppy fights with other clubhouses - fortunately they make it easy to tell them apart by dressing the scamps in different little leather waistcoats. These Little Rascals are supposed to be the Good Guys, I think; they are apparently "protecting" their town by not allowing drugs or prostitution within it. The price the residents pay for this is the extortion of local businesses and the noise and air pollution caused by the Little Rascals riding around on their bikes to bad rock music. The gang REALLY "protects" one of the local businesses. A female porn director is being harassed by the competition. They ineffectually rough up the competition, then basically take over her business, using it as a second clubhouse where they can watch naked ladies and giggle, then let it get burned to the ground, and ultimately let the poor woman get beaten to death with baseball bats. "All part of the service, ma'am". They like to have different places to loiter and look cool in their little outfits - they constantly hang out at the local hospital and commandeer the hospital chapel as a second meeting room. Within the club, everything is quickly forgiven with a man-hug; one Little Rascal attempts to kill one of his "brothers" and kills his wife by mistake, but no biggie, a bit of sulking then it's all good, bro. The episodes even follow a similar format, starting with bad rock music playing over cuts from one character to another waking up in bed, waking up facedown in a nasty hooker's crotch, having breakfast, however they start their day, then the "meat" of the episode (Little Rascals sit around their fancy little table and make a plan, then have an adventure), then ending with a bad rock music playing over a bike ride, cue credits, tune in next week for more of the same. It is truly appalling, a terrible, terrible show. It is so bad that it becomes a car wreck, you know you shouldn't stop and look but it is just so grimly wrong and sickly fascinating that you can't help it. I actually checked out part of the third season (I finally quit rubber-necking this car wreck midway through the second season) purely for the bad Irish accents, after reading some of these negative reviews in a bid to find some sanity to counter the madness that is all the positive feedback on this dross of a show. It was worth it; Northern Ireland accents butchered beyond belief, just cementing how lazy the show runners are, zero attention to detail, no concerns for credibility whatsoever. They apparently blew their Northern Ireland budget on Paula Malcolmson, so there is only one legitimate Belfast accent, which is actually WORSE for the show as it just makes the brutal accents stand out all the more. Why bother with quality writing, dialogue, plots, authenticity, when you can basically take a massive dump on camera episode after episode and keep getting your contract renewed for another season? I cannot stress how bad this show is - it's like the Bold and the Beautiful - minus the Beautiful - on bikes. I have no idea how anyone could endure the full series, I struggled to make it halfway through the second season and there was zero character development, I imagine it simply keeps churning out A-Team style adventures every episode. There ARE good tv shows out there, with show runners who have a "story" to tell, that consist of characters with arcs, dialogue that contains value, be it realistic, compelling, witty - this show has absolutely none of that. However, I recommend you watch it, at least SOME of it, just to see how woefully bad "good" tv can be - this garbage is HIGHLY lauded, it won AWARDS! Wow. Truly baffling. What a strange world we live in.
Review of Sons of Anarchy
