Sons of Anarchy (**Spoilers**)

Finished the second season of S.O.A.

A veritable symphony of bad Irish accents. Our movies and T.V. are full of British and Irish and Aussie and New Zealander actors who do convincing American accents. (Jax is an English actor, for instance.) But Americans often do lame foreign accents. (Meryl Streep excepted, of course.)

I figured out last night, that the world of motorcycles is like a Settlers of Catan game. The resources are drugs, guns, porn and extortion. The players are the Latin gangs, the Black gangs, the White gangs, the Irish gangs, the Cop gangs -- and, the S.O.A.

I have a suggestion for T.V. writers -- "Lockdowns" are obviously inconvenient for your plotting, so don't do them. Don't send off the "Queen" and the "Princess" on a stupid tampon shopping trip, with one guard, if that's what you need to do, and pretend it's sensible. (I looking at you, too, Terra Nova -- either it's a lockdown or it isn't...)

I don't know why, what gave it away -- but I sensed that Numbnuts was doomed a couple of episodes in advance. I turned to Linda and said, "He's wearing a red shirt..."

Finally, if all you are going to do is pop the bad guys in the end -- then why do you make a big deal out of "being smart" and "setting them up?" The shooting them in the head option is always there, but they are wildly inconsistent about when they apply that solution.


As long as I'm complaining, I've just about had it with Hell on Wheels. What bugs me is that it is supposed to be a show centered on building a railroad, but they make zero effort to make that believable. Seriously, if they had the same plot and same actors and same costumes -- but actually made a half-assed effort to show the 'working on the railroad' part in the background in a believable way -- it would be a decent show.

I'm trying to winnow down my T.V. watching, so I'm through with Hell on Wheels.

I've suggested to Linda that we write down a list of "Unmissable" shows, DVR just them, and contain our watching to just a couple of nights a week. I don't think that will work when Linda will watch any rerun of N.C.I.S. or Bones and especially Law and Order, and I'm a sucker for any Nova or Frontline or Masterpiece Theater that comes along.

I realize that we watch too much T.V., but there really are a bunch of very good shows on these days, especially on the premium channels. Network T.V.? Not so much. House and Mentalist both are pretty mediocre these days -- the only exception is The Good Wife, which is consistently great. I'm going to drop Persons of Interest -- it's O.K., but that isn't good enough. C.S.I. Las Vegas is barely hanging in there, as the major characters drop away one by one. Grimm falls short of being a good show. Mentalist is hanging by the thin thread of charm. So I'm willing to drop those, as well. Maybe only The Good Wife is truly unmissable, for me. And The Walking Dead.

And the cable shows: Dexter, True Blood, Boardwalk Empire.