Sons of Anarchy Review

Kurt Sutter borrows the bones of Hamlet, sets them inside a gun running motorcycle club in the Central Valley, and then keeps writing for seven seasons past the point where the structure can carry it. When the show works it is because of casting. Katey Sagal plays Gemma as a woman who has decided love justifies anything, and she is frightening in a register basic cable drama rarely reaches.

Ron Perlman gives Clay the physical authority the part demands, and Charlie Hunnam holds the center even when the writing asks him to be torn and decisive in the same scene. Critics were warm on the first two seasons and warmer on the fourth, which tightens everything the third let slide. The failures are consistent and well documented. Plotting runs the same loop for years: a deal with a new faction, a betrayal, a shootout, a funeral, and nothing about the club has actually changed by the finale.

Episodes bloat past their running time in the late seasons, the Irish arc is the low point of the series, and the dialogue swings between blunt exposition and speeches that would embarrass a stage play. What holds is texture. The rides, the clubhouse, the sense of a small town owned by men who have convinced themselves they are protecting it. That world is fully imagined even when the story inside it is not.