A Proper Burial For The Sons of Anarchy, Jax Teller and The Almost Great TV Show

***Spoilers for the entirety of the show, including the very end of the series. Because you know, big, semi-truck sized stuff happens at the end.*** When I say that I never felt that Sons of Anarchy was a great show it isn’t meant as an insult in any way. SOA has been one of the most enjoyable shows for me over the last eight years. I would often recommend the show to people and describe it as “picture The Sopranos, except it’s a motorcycle gang and Christopher is the main character instead of Tony.” And yet, to call it great would be to concede a number of things that make TV shows great for my personal taste. The story telling was often bloated and unnecessarily convoluted, especially over the last three seasons. Certain characters had delayed “comeuppance” or “justice” for their actions based solely on it being a much showier pitch down the line instead of what would fit logically within the narrative. Whether it was a running joke in the writer’s room or not, it seemed that a car / motorcycle chase through heavily populated areas was required for each and every episode. And then there’s the way diversity was handled but…we’ll get to that later. Still, for a network that had a number of either critically acclaimed or highly rated shows, the fact that Sons of Anarchy became the flagship for it is nothing to be dismissed. Many TV experts or writers talk about the end of the golden age of TV and how Mad Men will be the last remnant of a certain type of TV show that began wit…