When Sons of Anarchy debuted on FX this time last year, I appreciated it but couldn’t really get myself to like it; it was (like The Shield, creator Kurt Sutter’s alma mater) relentlessly brutal, but (unlike The Shield) without characters I could get attached to or interested in. Toward the end of the season, I gave it another chance and liked it better, and after getting review copies from FX, I think the second season of the biker drama has, so to speak, found a higher gear. The white-supremacist gang makes an intriguing rival, complicating the moral balance of the show, and former Black Flagger Henry Rollins—who sometimes seems annoyingly, self-seriously in-your-face in his TV appearances—is perfectly cast here.
The show’s still relentlessly brutal, though, and though I won’t spoil here, if you watched the season premiere, you know what I mean. Did the show go to far for you? Far enough? And/or: how about that Melrose Place?