As I noted yesterday, Sons of Anarchy returned last night for its third season, and by the end of the episode, I was already desperate for next week’s installment. The first episode of season two ended with Gemma’s rape, an act which spurred much of the action in the rest of the season and immediately jolted the viewer into emotional investment. Kurt Sutter clearly has a taste for kicking things off with a bang, because the end of “So” performed a similarly impressive feat of emotional heightening. After the long, slow burn of Jax’s nearly affect-less despair throughout the episode, the sight of him turning berserk in front of the entire SoA and the Charming police force was enough to make you gasp. It would have been a sufficient gesture for the episode’s end, but then capping everything off with the image of Hale’s brains spattered across the road – and it’s obvious that the props and makeup people did everything in their power to telegraph that Hale is absolutely, thoroughly dead – felt like the final knife twist I didn’t realize I was anticipating.

It was a strong episode all around, but particular praise has to go to Charlie Hunnam and Maggie Siff, who both completely sold their grief and fury at Abel’s kidnapping. Jax makes the journey from comatose on his son’s nursery floor all the way to enraged Angel of Vengeance in just under an hour, and it was mesmerizing. The episode built several emotional marker points along the way – Jax gripping his son’s blue SoA hat, the moment when Jax’s grief actually diffuses a nascent gang war, his alienation from and then return to Tara – and they were all accompanied by some really lovely cinematography that movingly conveyed his increasing isolation from the club. There were so many great shots of Jax alone, but the classic for this episode has to be Jax slumped in front of his father’s tombstone, with the first of his “SO” “NS” pair of rings perched in focus behind him. It’s an elegant little bit of familial patterning. A dead father who fell apart when he lost his son, the remaining son now on the verge of collapse after his own son is kidnapped, all three of them damaged by their association with the Sons; a pair of rings that together spell SONS, but the first one by itself only spells the empty, rudderless word “So,” which is also, of course, the episode’s title.

My only complaint about the setup for season three is that much as I love Gemma and Hal Holbrook playing out Gemma’s own familial drama (and of course, it makes so much sense that Gemma’s father would be a minister), I worry that she’ll be absent from the club for too long. All of these sons and fathers are much better, more balanced, more interesting people in the presence of their mothers and daughters, and Gemma’s too crucial to the show’s balance to be missing the action. On the other hand, Gemma’s grandson has been kidnapped and no one told her? I am almost looking forward to the rage that will no doubt rain down from the heavens. Please let it be sooner rather than later.

Hooray, Fall TV is coming back! Other than the stellar Mad Men season currently underway and a few pleasant highlights (like Huge), I am more than ready to hand over a summer of kicky, fluffy, brightly lit USA procedurals and derivative reality shows for a solid TV schedule. Here are some of the releases circled on my September calendar:

Sons of Anarchy – I’ve been waiting to write this post for a while, and could conceivably have put it up several weeks ago as release dates became available, but I decided it would just be too painful to anticipate all of these shows and then have to wait forever. But I’ve waited long enough, because FX’s amazing Sons of Anarchy returns tonight! There’s an interesting NYTimes piece which suggests that Sons of Anarchy is the show that best tackles the current American tendency toward fringe politics, and while that isn’t the show’s primary source of interest for me, it is a prominent feature. Neo-nazis and anarchists aside, Sons of Anarchy is a fabulous Shakespearean drama disguised as a biker fantasy and peopled with murderers, gun runners, the ghost of King Hamlet in biker manifesto form, and some fantastically powerful women. Long live SAMCRO.

Boardwalk Empire – Easily the most anticipated release this fall, Boardwalk Empire is HBO’s next major must-watch production. The setting is Prohibition Era Atlantic City, and the show centers on the early gangsters and politicians who made the city into a capital of crime and hedonism. It features Steve Buscemi as the main character Nucky Thompson, it also stars Michael K. Williams of The Wire fame, and Martin Scorsese directed the pilot. It also premieres on September 19^th, which means Sunday nights are soon going to be very, very busy for me.

Chuck – Okay, we all know I have a strange and powerful weakness love for Chuck, and am thrilled it’s getting an early fall premiere date rather than being pushed to mid-season. As with any season of Chuck, this one may well be the show’s last, so treasure it for all it’s worth.

Undercovers – At the Visionaries panel at Comic-Con this year, JJ Abrams worked to characterize what he hopes will be a healthy balance between episodic and serialized plotlines for his new spy show, which premieres September 22^nd. I don’t know. On one side, I see a show like Fringe, which became quite interesting and worthwhile at the end of last season, and which has almost certainly managed to survive because of its commitment to episodic storytelling. On the other side, it’s clear to me that Fringe only became compelling once it managed to walk away from the straight up Monster of the Week format and throw itself full force into Crazy Doppelganger Land. I’m sympathetic to the desire for seriality and the need for something like an episodic show’s accessibility, but I almost always feel that shows trying to be both things end up doing neither of them well.

Law and Order: LA – Law and Order is dead, and yet, like a zombie apocalypse’s Patient Zero, its progeny live on, beginning September 29^th.

The Walking Dead – This one’s cheating, because it doesn’t come out until the end of October. For now, watch the trailer and marvel at how awesome it will be.

I am officially in love with this season of Mad Men. The flavor of it is distinctly different than the past three seasons – the switch to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has been accompanied by a new tone for the show, so that it feels a little looser, a little more comfortable being funny and brutal and strange. Last night’s episode was astoundingly good, so much so that I feel like instead of writing this blog post I just want to watch it again. Of course, episodes like these don’t roll around every day, and it’s because they can’t. You can’t have Don and Peggy holed up together in the office for every episode, ripping each other to shreds and then baring their innermost secrets, because if they did, Mad Men would quickly become a trashy, will-they-or-won’t-they soap opera with Don and Peggy in the starring roles. Instead, we get this one episode organized around a boxing match, and everyone gets beaten to a pulp so they can wake up the next morning with a belief that today will be different than yesterday.

Although the central idea works well – two competitors in a ring, working at each other until one of them prevails – none of the matches in the SCDP world end with nearly the speed or the definitive conclusion of the famous Muhammed Ali/Cassius Clay knockout. The battle between Don and Duck Phillips does at least have a victor, as Don says “Uncle” and Duck backs off, but the thing is so messy and ill-conceived that unlike Ali, Don’s big opening swing doesn’t even land, and their undignified thrashing hardly comes off as impressive. There are similarly chaotic fights all the way through, including everything from that goofy Samsonite commercial Peggy and Stan pitch in the episode’s opening to Peggy and Mark’s embarrassingly public break up, but of course, the title match-up is Don and Peggy.

The fight feels like something Mad Men has been building toward since its opening episode, and you can see all of their history being woven into the different sections of their showdown. Peggy is struggling with her need for equal treatment and fair recognition for her work, Don can’t cope with the meaning of Anna Draper’s death, and they both have huge, ever-looming backstories that they perpetually try to keep crammed inside of – well, inside of a suitcase, and the baggage follows them everywhere. At some point, the fight turns into something else, and as they sit chuckling over Sterling’s Gold and the idea that Bert Cooper has no testicles, those hidden histories begin to unfold. It’s remarkable to hear Don tell Peggy about his childhood, but I think it’s even more amazing to hear them both talking about Peggy’s pregnancy, something she has managed to keep almost completely separate from her working life. Her openness to the subject is no doubt triggered by Trudy’s visible pregnancy and her fantastically mean comment in the bathroom, and the acknowledged presence of Peggy’s storied past puts Don and Peggy on the same side rather than allowing them to remain adversaries. The fight that began as a breakdown between a boss and his protégé turns into a bigger battle about how much your past defines you, and Don and Peggy finish the showdown as allies against a world that doesn’t know them.

As anticipated, Anna Draper’s death kills Dick Whitman. Collapsed onto Peggy’s lap, Don sees her going, suitcase in hand, and Peggy’s suggestion about the most exciting thing about a suitcase takes on a more existential meaning. From the first person perspective, the most exciting thing about a suitcase is, as Peggy says, “going somewhere.” Of course, if you’re not the person carrying the suitcase, “going somewhere” becomes “watching someone leave.” With no one left here who remembers him, Dick vanishes inside of Don Draper’s past, and Don can no longer be that split personality, shifting back and forth between sophisticated ad man and country yokel. His task now is to be a single person containing both of those lives, and although it may seem impossible, Peggy Olsen pulls him out of the initial despair. When Don says that there’s no one left who knows him, and Peggy answers, “that’s not true,” she’s not saying she knows Dick Whitman. She knows the person he is now, Don Draper, who grew up on a farm and saw people die in Korea and became a successful ad man. She knows him better than Betty, or Pete, or Bert Cooper, all of whom know the story about Don’s stolen name, because she sees all of the aspects of him at once, as part of a single person.

There can only be episodes like this if they’ve been earned, and Mad Men has been setting up this moment of understanding between Don and Peggy for a long time. In keeping with that idea, I think Mad Men also earned the gesture they made at the show’s end, which I loved but which it can only do once in a while. One of the easiest ways to evoke a time period is through musical reference, but that’s a game Mad Men has often refused to play. Stephanie won’t dance to the Beach Boys, she’ll dance to now-forgotten Jan and Dean; Don will talk about Bob Dylan, but only two seasons after he gets used as the final music of season one; the only Beatles presence on Mad Men is a two second clip where Don tells his secretary to buy an album for a Christmas present. Still, every once in a while, you get to pull out something iconic, and it’s hard to get more sixties than Simon and Garfunkel. “Voices leaking from a sad café / smiling faces trying to understand” – Oh, Mad Men. You got me.

Happy September 2nd, 2010 everyone.

I try to avoid overwrought pronouncements like “this is the best thing I saw this summer!” or “this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” because really, I’d end up saying “this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen” every time a new episode of Real Housewives aired. Inevitably people would start asking, “then why do you keep watching it?” and I’d have to follow myself down into some deep schadenfreude-lined tunnel of misanthropy, and though I am certainly in favor of self-knowledge, there are some things better left unexamined. All of which is to say, I try to avoid statements like that, and yet I feel drawn to give a similarly categorical declaration. Huge is the most surprising thing I saw this summer.

It would be tempting to go farther out onto a limb and say it is also the “best” or “most touching” thing I watched, but any summer with new episodes of Mad Men means “best” is probably taken, and “most touching” makes it sound like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which would be very unfair to Huge. So I’ve landed on “surprising,” and feel pretty good about that claim. The premise of the show is that a bunch of kids attend a fat camp, and somehow, it ended up being a thoughtful, character-driven study of teenager-hood, self image, family, relationships, sexuality, popularity, and fitness. Yeah, you’d be surprised, too. (Alas, I fear few of you are, as there were more viewers for Kate Plus 8 than there were viewers of Huge’s season finale on Monday night).

Alistair looking in the mirror

There have been no official announcements, but the general lack of buzz about the show makes me dubious that Huge will get renewed, so I want to make sure to take this opportunity to say: this is what classy, teen-focused TV can look like, and it’s a darn shame there isn’t more of it. Several of its characters managed to be both appealing and believably flawed, including a character named Alistair, whose like I have never before seen on TV but remember clearly from real life. Alistair is the weirdest guy in the bunch, who throws himself almost too fully into another character’s roleplaying game, refuses to shower, and whose sexuality is the subject of much debate and gossip. Indeed, his sexuality seems uncertain even to himself, and by the end of the season, we start to get the sense that it would not be enough for Alistair to call himself “gay” – he may actually be happiest with himself if he weren’t fully male. He is supportive of his friends, an enthusiastic participant in activities and games, and he completely lacks a “not cool enough” radar. I’ve never seen anyone like him on TV, and am impressed that he made it onto air, weirdness and ambiguity intact.

The other thing to say about Huge’s individuality is its style, which comes off as a very different technique than the majority of ABC Family’s stilted, over-scripted, stagey and over-saturated programming. Most of the show takes place outdoors or in relatively rustic cabins, and something about Huge’s setting seems to have leaked over into its cinematography and script. Characters speak to each other with relaxed or anxious or tired or angry voices, but they lack over-dramatic intonations or long, polished speeches. Girls are just as likely to be found giggling with each other about a quiz in a magazine as they are fighting over a boy, and make it through the season with a minimum of backstabbing, cruel gossip, or frenemy building. Unlike Rich at FourFour’s now-famous piece about reality television, the characters on Huge actually are there to make friends, and the genuineness of that is refreshing.

In keeping with that persuasive conversational realism, the show often focuses on small exchanges that take place at dusk in the woods outside of camp, or two girls chatting in the cabin bathroom, or people whispering to each other in the middle of a group activity. No bright lights silhouette people against stark backgrounds, or seek out couples embracing in the semi-dark – it’s a camp, and there isn’t much light outside, and so most of your deep meaningful encounters will take place quietly, and without much illumination. There’s something so poignant about watching people whispering to each other in the woods, perched on rocks or walking with a flashlight along a path, that definitely feels more true to my experiences of camp than the slick, glossy embraces on Pretty Little Liars.

Will and Dr. Rand talk about being overweight

And because Huge is not about just any camp, but about a camp for overweight teenagers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t end with the last episode’s conversation between the camp director and the show’s main character. Wilhemina asks Dr. Rand what she was like when she was fat, and she answers, “I hated myself.” “And now you don’t?” asks Will. “Less,” says Dr. Rand. “And that’s it? That’s the big improvement? You hate yourself less?” “Yes,” she says. If you ever doubted that Huge wasn’t just a fictional version of The Biggest Loser, there’s your proof. I’d love to see you back, Huge, but if not, we’ll always have this summer.