September 18, 2012
Can Father and Son build a bike together? Let’s find out.
Tonight, PJD builds a trike for Loopster. For Paulie, Loopster inspired a dragster idea, and the wheels are huge.
OCC builds a charity bike for the Make A Wish foundation, via Trusted Choice Insurance. And they are going to improvise it as they go, meaning that Jason can’t mess it up. But up on Senior’s sprawling grounds the two Teutuls are beginning a bike that is a replica of the first one they built together. From a personal viewpoint it would be nice if they got together, but from a TV viewpoint I really hope they don’t. The show isn’t much about building bikes, it is about the battling Teutuls. And if they get along? What about the show? What about the drama?
Both of them are moving cautiously, probably rightly so. If you ignore the constant presence of the cameras, directors, producers, etc, they are all on their own and that is the right move.
“Hopefully this build is th start of something new… we’ve both changed, considerably.” -Paulie
“I just uh uh want us to come to a place of comfterbility.” -Senior
“I hope he (Senior) learns from his past mistakes and really means it.” Skeptical Vinnie
It is uncanny the way Paulie walks into Senior’s garage. He walked in just the same way all those seasons ago at OCC, very casually and nonchalantly. They could have almost simply run some first season footage instead.
Twenty-six minutes in, Jason, or as Senior called him, Jackass, walked in to OCC. I hate the way he immediately sticks himself into everything. “We” hit a snag. “We” did this. Jeez, he showed up when the bike was half-fabricated.
And from the Yang to the Ying of OCC (or wang in Jason’s case) we have Rick, whom Senior described as “the mother” of the shop because he was interested in his relationship with his sons.
The Trusted Choice bike was a done-in-one. The bike was built and unveiled in the same show.
NEXT WEEK:
I have no idea. Discovery’s listings don’t go far enough.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
This is never going to be a functional family. For example, you have two grown men who are called “Paulie” and “Mikey”. And then there’s the problem of a father and son who identify themselves in terms of the other one. You have “Paul Senior” and “Paul Junior”. If these two men are ever going to have an adult relationship, they need to have names that indicate they have separate identities. In most families, the father would be just “Paul” or “Paul (middle initial)” and the son would be “Paul (middle initial)”. Mikey could solve a lot of his mental health issues if he just started calling himself “Mike” or “Michael”.
Another very big problem is the worldwide economic crisis. I see many more motor scooters and “pocket rockets” on the streets these days than I do motorcycles, and especially customized motorcycles. The market for OCC’s outrageously priced production motorcycles must be very flat, if it exists at all. If it wasn’t for the Discovery Channel’s support and product tie-ins, neither OCC nor PJD would survive making custom bikes. Have you noticed that OCC now builds a lot of bikes for anonymous clients, or for some charity?
Father and son need to stop bonding by building a bike and sit down with each other and their respective financial advisors to figure out how they can merge their respective businesses into somethin that can stay afloat when the American Chopper series ends and they are promptly forgotten by people watching shows like Cajun Swamp People Pawn Stars Make Outrageous Custom Guns.
This show is definitely on its last legs.
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You made a lot of good points. As for the last one, this show has nowhere the buzz or “must see” feel it used to.
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