CHARMING – Unless you’re a true sociopath, it’s almost impossible to look at yourself in the mirror when you know that the things you’re doing are wrong.
You find ways around it – staring at the bridge of your nose or an eyebrow or anywhere but the deep, dark pits that cast a glimpse into the hollowness of your soul that you know exists. That’s a truth you don’t want to face.
But if you’ve watched Sons of Anarchy at all for the past seven seasons, you’ve run across example after example of where the show’s protagonist, Jax Teller, is propped up on a foundation of false ideals and beliefs that have tricked him into thinking those baby blues are giving him all of the insights of the heavens.
Until Tuesday.
After nearly a decade on television and forging the redefinition of what a cable television show could become, Sons of Anarchy has come to a bloody, violent end.
No more wondering where the fictional town of Charming – realistically, the Southern California community of Tujunga – is located within San Joaquin County.
No more laughing as boats pass through the Los Angeles Harbor and despite the traffic and the size, it’s somehow supposed to be Stockton. No more wondering what local law enforcement’s official take on the show is – especially that of the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department, which is portrayed rather unflatteringly in the show.
Nope, it all came to an end Tuesday.
And there’s a good chance somebody in your office is talking about it it right now.
That’s because – spoiler alert – all of the things that you thought were going to happen, didn’t.
While Teller has at times had the moral compass of a third-world dictator, the decisions that he has made have been made unflinchingly. That’s either the opportunity to witness a slow, steady descent into madness or delusion, or the chance to see somebody who holds principle above all else.
He’s no hero. His actions led to the death of dozens of innocent people and those who dared to get tangled into his deceitful web – including his best friend, who was trying to go straight after doing a stint in prison for the club, and his wife, who was killed by his own mother. He murdered people for personal gain or just because it was convenient.
But at the end of the day, he did the right thing, relatively speaking. He gave his kids to his ex-wife, turned over the reins of the club to his best friend, and jumped on a motorcycle – sans helmet – and went out in a blaze of glory.
It was the same way that his father died – that complicated old man that he spent seven long seasons trying to figure out and understand.
And so there, on an isolated stretch of what is supposed to be I-580, Jax Teller rode with the full thunder of the California Highway Patrol behind him but without a worry in the world. He was free. The weight of the world was gone. The weight of the club was gone.
A lone crow.
A murder of one.
I don’t necessarily know that Sons of Anarchy cast San Joaquin County in the best light, or that the fact everybody’s favorite fictional motorcycle club is the kind of claim to fame that you’re going to put up on a billboard to try and drive tourism. But for seven seasons it’s been a thrill to turn on the television and see the supposed places that I go – the places that I see and I’ve lived – and knowing that at the same time millions of people are probably looking up those places on Google because they’ve never heard of them before.
It’s all over now.
And what a way it was to go out.
