In Which We Hate The Way We're Speaking To Each Other

Post Mortem

by DICK CHENEY

It's not polite to say who died on Downton Abbey. Most people don't even know. Their lives haven't changed as a result. We love people, especially wealthy individuals, in the specifics, since we sense we may become them. In the abstract, they disappoint us.

this guy

My other favorite show is Sons of Anarchy. Except for the Exorcist-like horror involved in watching Gemma Teller (Katey Segal) have sex scenes with Jimmy Smits, who plays a pimp on the show, it's fantastic. I spent the entire hour flexing my knuckles and lamenting that I'm too old to get on a bike. It would probably end more like this:

The first rule about Fight Club is that you never get on a motorcycle with someone wearing a Duke t-shirt. But we were talking about the death of Opie.

It's impossible to connect the phenomenon of a maudlin young motorcyclist (Ryan Hurst) dying in prison to save his boyfriend with the economy, except to say that watching the members of the MC mourn their large, closeted friend, all I could think of was how much money they saved on the funeral by having it themselves.

basically, your father is an idiot Lady Mary

I was gchatting with someone the other day who was telling me how boring they find scripted television. I explained that was probably because they couldn't see the sychronicity between Branson putting his wife between himself and the British government, and the president doing the exact same thing with Hillary Clinton.

She signed off in a huff and e-mailed me the entire Supreme Court opinion on Roe v. Wade. Having friends on the other side of the aisle is like being married to Lady Mary (tell me when you tire of these comparisons). Everything they think of is completely without regard for the economic realities of the world.

I can't even imagine what it would be like to gchat with Matthew Crawley, probably like sucking on a tootsie roll pop that has asparagus at its center.

branson, you disgust me

No one has done more to diminish the cause of Irish independence than Julian Fellowes. I haven't been this mad since South Park eclipsed the boundaries of bad taste and did a storyline making fun of how Bane sounded in The Dark Knight Rises.

Sorry, my mind is wandering a lot lately. It's a function of old age, and the relentless attacks on Mormonism in the mainstream media. I really don't understand this. One group of people believes in a supernatural human being who is supposed to return to Earth and save the world, and another believes a slightly different version of this myth, but is absolutely crazy for thinking this way.

The only thing worse than that is how many times I'll be writing, "The only thing worse than that" in this essai. The only thing worse than that, though, is how every single joke on Mike & Molly is still about how fat the male in the relationship is. It's bullying, and I find it disgusting. That's his natural build.

buy a large bed please

Doesn't it feel like they're making the bed look especially tiny? My only real problem with scripted television is that every single person on it is completely caucausian. Last night I found myself rewinding the trailer for Alex Cross just to interject a little diversity in my existence. The idea of Tyler Perry as a hardboiled cop hunting Jack Shephard from Lost is beyond my dreams. It makes me think of a Jhumpa Lahiri short story, that's how completely amazing it is.

the answer to Lost was a bright light coming out of a cave. Never forget.

Once I was in a country club where the hazing ritual involved watching all of the Madea movies in chronological sequence while you kept getting messages on your phone saying, "They passed another tax on capital gains!" The fact that no one finds it the least bit strange that Matthew Fox could convincingly play a serial killer should tell us something.

"Brickleberry"

The mere idea of Lost usually reduces me to tears. To cheer myself up I watch this show Brickleberry, which takes place in a national park. The point of Brickleberry is to be offensive, and make jokes about subjects that other shows won't touch. In theory this is an interesting concept but (1) Family Guy has been on the air for over two decades and (2) 90 percent of the jokes are simple racism. (The black character is named Denzel. Haha. Get it? If you don't, you're a fucking square.) (The other ten percent of the jokes are about women and gays.)

You start to understand why my liberal gchat friend hates scripted television. That is, until you watch the finest show airing on any network, The Thick Of It.

Malcolm Tucker and Rebecca Front on "The Thick Of It"

You know how Parks & Recreation pretends to be a show about politics, but is really just a larger forum for the writers of the show to copy down all the funny jokes they read on the internet and have comedians act them out? I can't believe they did an entire election storyline with Leslie Knope, and then occupied her time with solving the obesity problem in Pawnee and feuding over a bathroom. Not even I have that little faith in government.

Ben and December

Here is what all the punchlines on Parks & Recreation revolve around: Leslie is energetic, Ron eats free-range meat, Chris is depressed, Andy is stupid, April is a bitch, Adam Scott has a large head for his body.

You know, it's okay to have a person who has more than one aspect to his personality. It's called a fully-fleshed out character; the show's writers might have seen it in passing during the ninety seconds a day they peel their heads away from their iPhones. The only thing more embarrassing than this season of Parks & Recreation is having to read pathetic Emily Nussbaum essais about how much she worships Amy Poehler or how she doesn't want Parenthood to get canceled. Grow up.

Peter Mannion's aides on 'The Thick Of It'

I guess now that I am "retired", politics just bores me. Art lasts for a substantial duration, blog posts slightly less long. Does anyone remember the Whigs? Or what a dick Andrew Jackson was? I can't muster the energy. It's easier to just look to television for escape. That's why there is no better place to rest your head than the considerable problems of the British.

Unfortunately, most of middle America can't understand a single word said in Malcolm Tucker's Scottish accent, so they watch The Walking Dead instead.
 

The only thing worse than that is. There are people everywhere, when I wake. I have no right to judge them. Wake me up after the election.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about intercourse between Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley.

"Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" - Field Music (mp3)

"Heart" - Field Music (mp3)

In Which We Ride On God's Great Motorcycle

Love of Leather and Country

by DICK CHENEY

Sons of Anarchy
creator Kurt Sutter

I always wondered what happened to the British kid in Undeclared. (I assumed porn.) Then I was gchatting with Grover Norquist last year, and he was telling me about his favorite show, Sons of Anarchy. On Sons Charlie Hunnam portrays Jackson Teller, the vice president of his motorcycle gang and the practitioner of the worst American accent outside of Simon Baker. Grover bought me the show's first three seasons on DVD as a thank you present for a bunch of jokes I wrote him about Ezra Klein. That gift changed my life.

where are all the girls, did they attend West Point or something?

At base, Undeclared and Sons of Anarchy showcase essentially the same concept. Both concern groups of friends a little too overeager to explain how virulently heterosexual they are, adding up to something of a these ladies protest too much, methinks type situation. Each show concerns a counterculture not commonly exposed to the mainstream light; in the case of Undeclared the fact that college is a gigantic scam perpetuated by Fredric Jameson and Judith Butler, and in the case of Sons of Anarchy the fact that a motorcycle gang is basically an enigmatic cover story for a bunch of guys to ride on big metal phalluses.

I never understood the appeal of a motorcycle before, and I still don't. For a show concerned only with people devoted to the speedy vehicles, Sons of Anarchy hardly ever shows the members of the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original (SAMCRO) admiring or enjoying their motorcycles. As transport, the devices are convenient because they can be ridden fast and hidden easily, but these jockeys don't seem to care much for their steeds. They're more into quietly serving out jail time and absolute monogamy.

"Do they force you to read The Daily Beast in here?"

Hunnam's Jackson Teller had a high school relationship with Tara (Mad Men's Maggie Siff) that engendered a love that never abated. Despite the fact that he turned into a drug-running, guns-abusing freak like his father, she's still attracted to his hard pecs. Even after he cheated on her with an adult film performer, she was still fine with it and raised his children without complaint, then went to her job as a hospital surgeon. And that's not all!

Listening to the British Hunnam pridefully spout the various details of the arms trade is about as believable as imagining that a University of Chicago educated doctor would ever copulate with him, but that's part of the fun of Sons of Anarchy. As the show's current season came to a close, the union has been so insanely ludicrous that the Sons of Anarchy writing team has the couple communicate only through cliché, as with this charming exchange from the penultimate episode of the season:

TARA: Tell me you love me.

JACKSON: I love you, Tara.

(pause)

Do you love me?

TARA: If you make it stop I will.

(pause)

I love you Jackson.

Jesus, did none of these people watch Tell Me You Love Me? Clearly not, or they would have cast Adam Scott as a rogue biker named Frederick de la Santos and I wouldn't have to watch him tongue kiss Amy Poehler anymore. Why not embark on a crossover episode, like when Urkel hit that girl on Step by Step with his car?

the fact that Ed Bundy remarried is the cherry on top of this situation

Jackson's mother Gemma Teller is played by Married... with Children's Katey Sagal as an aggressive, controlling presence in the lives of her son and husband. She reminds me of my wife Lynne if every third sentence out of Lynne's mouth was, "Don't hurt my baby." Her ongoing feud with Drea de Matteo was the highlight of the show's first season, although the fact that Drea did not get naked and that they never showed her shooting up heroin or bearing Jackson's baby somewhat lessened my interest in the storyline. 

"Tell me what you really thought of the second Hellboy."

Sagal's first serious dramatic role is a mixed bag. (I'll be scrambling my metaphors a lot in this paragraph.) Her ongoing marriage to show creator Kurt Sutter has hardly engendered goodwill among the fanbase, and including her original music was another fly in the ointment. The fact that her husband (Ron Perlman) beat the shit out of her and all she did was frown a lot constituted the final straw for me, however. Sagal actually enlists her son to kill her husband, but he has to leave him alive because of the CIA. Fortunately this storyline doesn't seem likely to go all Boardwalk Empire but I still get kind of creeped out by the way she looks at Hunnam.

just tell everyone you got into INXS there for awhile juicyEven when Sons of Anarchy gets silly, like when they debuted Tom Arnold as a wacky pornographer, the show usually redeems itself. There are actually many moments when Sons of Anarchy crosses conventional lines, such as when valued club member Juice tried to hang himself from a tree with a steel chain. You don't often see a suicide attempt on cable television these days, although god knows the British host of The X Factor should give it a shot. Also, there should be a specific viewer warning for having to see Ron Perlman's exposed belly.

To join the Sons of Anarchy, a member has to get a back tattoo. If they leave the group, they have to get it inked over or removed. I believe the Church of Scientology and the Heritage Foundation have a similar policy. The most common method of leaving the SoA is by death, and this season's death march has already claimed club founder Piney (William Lucking, not that it matters now). Ron Perlman shot him in the chest with a shotgun because he had an incriminating letter, setting up the weathered veteran as the show's biggest heel.

Also on the death list was poor Herman (The Shield's Kenneth Johnson) whose main crime was being cast on the doomed NBC version of Prime Suspect. Most of The Shield, Deadwood and Oz have taken their own place in Sons of Anarchy; you'd be surprised to know how few actors there actually are in the world, maybe 600 total not including Tom Cruise or his wives. They get thawed out of cold sleep every Tuesday.

get it????

Last night the show's many concurrent storylines converged in a not-so shocking season finale. When we had last left club president Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), he was lying motionless in a hospital bed after being shot in the stomach by Piney's son Opie (Ryan Hurst). Instead of actually having the balls to kill off the most famous actor on their show, Sons of Anarchy creator/actor Kurt Sutter (below as incarcerated member Otto Delaney) chickened out and left Clay alive.

Jackson Teller had long calculated a plan to leave his club in the dust, move to Portland and start up a bed & breakfast with his wife. Instead, in the season's climactic finale scene, he ascended to the presidency of his little club. He explained the change of heart by saying that it would be one thing to simply abandon his club, but another to destroy it completely. I sympathized with him for the first time then because it's the same way I feel about having to watch the second season of Game of Thrones. Then again, how could it be as bad as A Dance With Dragons?

Jackson's tough decision is the exact same as Kurt Sutter's. When you make a beautiful piece of art, the second hardest thing to do is to leave it behind entirely like Larry David and Seinfeld, but the most painful thing to do is turn it into something unrecognizable. Sons of Anarchy lost its way a little bit this year by not changing enough in seasons past. Any character, no matter how finely drawn, becomes stale after we see them in identical situations over and over again. Consciousness change through repetition is only another myth perpetrated by the American political process.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about The Walking Dead and Boardwalk Empire. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Honey Girl" - Jolie Holland (mp3)

"Little Birds" - Jolie Holland (mp3)

"The Devil's Sake" - Jolie Holland (mp3)