Shakespearian Nerd

For a long time I had been hearing that the show Sons of Anarchy was absolutely amazing, but hadn't gotten around to watching them myself, and all I really knew about it initally was that it was about a motorcycle gang. Just like initally all I knew about The Walking Dead was that there were zombies in it. Sometimes it's hard to sell a show on such limited information, but sometimes it totally pays off. Sometimes it's better to know next to nothing about a movie or television show before you watch it, then everything is a surprise.

Just before Xmas we got a free magazine in the mail that had Kim Coates on the cover. Being that his is somewhat of a Saskatoon celebrity (not quite as well known as, say, Joni Mitchell, but still pretty famous), and he also went to highschool with my mom, I read the article and was intrigued by two different things. First, that he was in Sons of Anarchy, and second that Sons of Anarchy was based on Hamlet.

I heart Shakespeare. I love the timelessness of the tales, the relatability of all of the themes, the elegent language... so this made Sons of Anarchy actually end up on my "must watch" list. Roland had also read the article, and being a slight motorcycle enthusiast himself, I figured season one would be a good choice as an Xmas present. Once he had completed all four seasons on DVD [within a week], and once life settled down, I started watching them myself.

Now, it is not blatantly obvious that this show is based on Hamlet, and there are some definite HUGE differences. After completing the second season, I decided to google the parallels between the two to get a little clearer picture and maybe make some predictions of my own. However, that was not as easy as it initially seemed to be. I have determined that there is not a lot of overlap between fans of Shakespeare and fans of Biker Gang dramas. The problem here is that most of the people that post their thoughts on Sons of Anarchy have no clue about Hamlet. I find that most people get the blatantly obvious right (Jax = Hamlet, Clay = Claudius, Gemma = Gertrude, and John Teller's Diary and Letters = The Ghost), but the problem is that people try to speculate about other characters without ever having read (or understood) the play. They seem to just have read a synopsis, and because Polonius and Laeretes are Father and son, that must mean that Piney and Opie are those characters, but that does not make any sense to me at all. Piney is unhappy with Clay's leadership, whereas Polonius is in Claudius' back pocket. His right hand man. Tig is far more like Polonius in my opinion....Granted, I have only finished watching the first three seasons, and there are still two more to go until we are caught up with what plays on television, but... it just seems so damn unlikely!

I have my own theories on the who's who of Hamlet, but at this point, I'm just figuring that the final season of the show will play out like Hamlet, but we'll just have to wait and see, I guess...

If anyone has any insight into this show's parallels to Hamlet, PLEASE, I would love to hear your theories! They have to be a million times better than the tripe I've read online...