Linda Moss

FX’s New Vic Mackey Is A Woman
August 22, 2008

Cable’s given us a crop of 40-something female protagonists, flawed and antiheroic, in the past few years. Two of them have been police detectives, portrayed byHolly Hunter in Saving Grace and Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer, both on TNT.

Hunter’s character is hard-drinking and promiscuous, sleeping with her married colleague and parading around naked in front of a window for her elderly next-door neighbor. Sedgwick’s is a neurotic sugar-lover.

But next month, FX is bringing America a female character who is an antihero in the tradition of Vic Mackey in The Shield: She’s murderous, right from the get-go, in the show’s first episode. And that character—a hard-ass motorcycle club matriarch in the new drama Sons of Anarchy—is played by none other than Katey Sagal of Married …with Children fame. But Gemma Teller Morrow is no Peg Bundy.

In the first episode of The Shield, which is about to start its final season, Mackey, portrayed by the brilliant Michael Chiklis, shot and killed a fellow cop who was about to squeal on him and his crew. In the first episode of Anarchy, let’s just say that Gemma tries her best to “off” another character.

Sons of Anarchy, which stars Ron Perlman as Gemma’s second husband Clay Morrow, and Charlie Hunnam, as her son Jax Teller, debuts Sept. 3. And it is obviously the drama that FX sees as the successor to The Shield.

Perlman’s character is Jax’s stepfather. Gemma’s first husband, John Teller, founded the Sons of Anarchy bike club. He apparently later died in some truck accident or mishap (not fully explained in the show’s first two installments), after beginning to voice questions about the club’s violent and illegal activities, which include gun-running. I’m already wondering if Gemma, who characterizes the deceased John as weak, had anything to do with his demise.But that’s my cynical streak.

In Sons of Anarchy, the motorcycle club is repeatedly characterized as a family, and let’s just say that Gemma will go to any lengths to protect her kin. In the show’s first episodes, I’ve also enjoyed Maggie Siff’s turn as Jax’s ex-girlfriend, who broke off with him, left town—Charming, Calif.—and has now returned as a doctor. In Mad Men, Siff portrayed the smart and accomplished head of a department store. In Anarchy, she’s sporting a tramp stamp under her white lab coat, a reminder of her wilder days with Jax.

It’s a stereotype that women like bad boys, a stereotype that men buy into. And Anarchy spotlights the notion—agree with it or not—that chicks are sexually attracted to bikers. In one scene, a woman asks a bare-chested Jax to put his leather motorcycle jacket on before they have sex. Whatever revs your engine, I guess.

Posted by Linda Moss on August 22, 2008 | Comments (0)