Ellen Gray: Shifting gears on 'Anarchy' bikers

SONS OF ANARCHY. 10 tonight, FX.

FOR ALL the people who've asked me about FX's "Sons of Anarchy" in recent months – from Daily News readers and Philly.com chatters to my sister's boss - this one's for you:

Thanks a lot.

It took a good chunk of last week, including most of a Saturday night, but I'm now caught up on the activities of Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original Charter, and my already overtaxed DVR has yet another appointment on Tuesdays.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I don't mind finding that the show I abandoned last year, several episodes into its first season, because it seemed both ultra-violent and more than a little soulless, has turned out to be one of the best shows of this fall. Or that it took a steady drumbeat of fans to get me to take another look just a few weeks before the end of Season 2. As far as I'm concerned, that means the system works.

If only the system came with a few more hours in the day.

"Sons of Anarchy," for those who've managed so far to avoid stumbling across it, is a drama about an outlaw motorcycle club that's long ruled the fictional town of Charming, Calif. Created by Kurt Sutter, a former writer for FX's "The Shield" who also has a recurring role in the show as an imprisoned club member, "Sons" started out as "Hamlet" in leather, with Sutter's wife, Katey Sagal, as Queen Gertrude, or Gemma, as she's known here.

Like Gertrude, Gemma married the man who may have been responsible for her first husband's death. Shakespeare called him Claudius, Sutter dubbed him Clay Morrow and cast Ron Perlman as the president of SAMCRO, a man who, thanks to encroaching arthritis, is literally losing his grip.

Which would make Gemma's son, Jackson "Jax" Teller (Charlie Hunnam), the moody Danish prince.

You can put away the Cliff Notes now, though, because in its second season, the only show "Sons of Anarchy" is likely to be compared to is "The Sopranos."

It's still too violent by my lights and I only seem able to follow about half the gang's machinations at any given time. But then I was the girl who got through "War and Peace" by skimming through the battles, and I never did figure out most of what "The Shield's" Vic Mackey was up to.

Character is what counts with me, and while Jax after all this time remains a bit of a puzzle, Sutter and his staff have fleshed out the secondary players beautifully. From the sympathetically corrupt police chief, Wayne Unser ("Deadwood's" Dayton Callie), to the "Paulie Walnuts"-like SAMCRO sergeant-at-arms, "Tig" Trager (Kim Coates),

they're both funny and heartbreaking.

It doesn't hurt that Gemma's not the only one of the mothers, wives and daughters of "Anarchy" who's turned out to be a force to be reckoned with: Maggie Siff, who made a big splash in "Mad Men" as department store heiress Rachel Menken, plays Jax's physician girlfriend, and half the fun of the show has been seeing the scary motorcycle mama and the buttoned-down doctor develop a relationship.

Gemma's rape by a group of white supremacists trying to send a message to her husband and son got the season off to an explosive start, and her decision, in last week's episode, to give up her secret for what she perceives to be the good of the group created a moment that felt as if it had been truly earned. I've seen tonight's episode, "Service," but I wouldn't dream of spilling any of its secrets here. You, too, will just have to see for yourselves.

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com