September 26, 2011
I have been given no reason to believe anything the Discovery Channel shows on their commercials for American Chopper so I’ll just post the description from their website and we’ll see what’s what at the end.
Post-settlement, Senior tries to commission a painting from Mikey but gets mixed signals from his son. OCC starts a build for a hybrid seed company and PJD works on a modern build for a medical technology company.
Before you get too excited, there is no description for next week’s show but it is called Mikey’s Decision, so expect nothing to be resolved this week.
I think last week’s post covered the Senior/Mikey relationship pretty well so let’s just jump right in. But I will say this, no matter what else I and others say about Senior, he is making a move so give him a drop of credit.
The show opens and what are the odds of this? Two competing companies who make hybrid corn seeds have come to OCC to get a bike built. How many hybrid corn companies are there? Seriously, is this just a coincidence? But OCC can only do one and they pick a -get ready for this- father and son company, Beck’s Hybrids. And who went out to the seed place to do research? Jim who never seems to leave the office and Jason Pohl, who thinks it is funny or cool to say “motor-sicle.” The only other option is that he can’t say “motorcycle” properly and even I don’t think he’s illiterate. Annoying yes, ass-kisser yes, illiterate no. At any rate, OCC is going to build some sort of reverse trike that should look like it is ready to harvest corn. And in the “what are the odds of that?” category PJD just made a trike last week. But I am sure it is all a coincidence. OCC makes trikes every week, right?
PJD is building a bike for a medical research and supply company, Cepheid. And in a moment of TV history, we got to see someone stick a swab in Mikey’s nose for some sort of bacteria test. It was negative.
Cepheid makes medical technology, computerized testers and such, and the bike is going to incorporate some of their technology and the clinical look of the Cepheid products, charcoal grey and white, with some chrome. It would be clean and functional, with curves instead of edges, but as the build moved along Paulie was still poking around and trying to figure out what he wanted in the bike. Brendon and Vinnie were not totally sure what Paulie had in mind since, as usual, there were no plans or diagrams to work from and Paulie seemed vaguer than usual with his ideas. In fact, Brendon seemed to have a clearer idea than Paulie this week.
But unclear plans are also a problem at OCC. Jason saw that the frame wasn’t like the plans he made. Why? Because he didn’t take into account the way bikes are built and knew nothing about the structural integrity of the frame. And he had the nerve to say that the fabricators would have to work around it. Work around it? Why not make plans that are buildable to begin with? At least Mike Ammirati (and I think I spelled that right) had the balls to get pissed and curse at him. After Jason walked away, of course. He knows which side his bread is buttered on, and getting Senior’s pet angry at you is not a good idea.
Paul Senior got involved in the build by cutting pipe and some metal work, which you have to admit he is good at.
Senior said that “Mikey is persuaded easily” and blamed Paulie for keeping Mikey away from him. I do agree with the easily persuaded part, but I don’t think Paulie is actively keeping them apart, I think it is a case of Mikey wanting to fit in with Paulie so he goes with Paulie over his father. Senior did say that both of them “did some damage” and seemed a little more honest than usual. That might be because he was away from the shop, by the water with is wife. In front of the guys or in the shop he is all bluster and bluff, but he let his guard down a little and- for a second!- seemed human. After some thought, Senior decided to go to Mikey’s studio with no cameras. (About time!) Hopefully, they could talk about painting and his life and not get into anything with Paulie or OCC. If he came up with it himself, I think it is a very good move.
And for those of you who remember the late, lamented Gus, Senior played around with a younger dog of the same breed. I have no clue if Senior already owned that dog before Gus died, but he showed more love to his dogs than anyone else on that series.
Meanwhile, in a feat of amazing timing, Senior showed up and missed Mikey by ten minutes.
Senior left his number with the receptionist and asked her to call him when Mikey came in, so of course Mikey didn’t want her to call back. (And neither did she.) Mikey, and here I think he is being a total tool, said that he wanted to take baby steps, like emails. Hey Mikey- YOU STOPPED ANSWERING HIS EMAILS! Remember when you were supposed to meet him for lunch and you didn’t show up? Remember when you made therapy a condition of seeing him and he went and you still wouldn’t meet him? GROW UP. (And his art? I still think it is a joke.)
But later on he did text his father to see if everything was OK (it was very unlike him to drop in without a camera crew, so maybe something was wrong) and Senior texted back that he’d like to paint with him. With about thirteen minutes left Mikey said he invited his father over to pick out some art. So of course they went back to the bike build.
During the build, Rick asked Senior how things were going with his sons. Senior, unusually, kept quiet. He was very subdued. If anyone had never seen this show, never heard about the feud, they would have a completely different view of Paul Teutul Senior than long-time viewers do. I wonder why the change?
After a long text exchange, Mikey waffled and finally said “I’m not sure what to make of this.” Man, just meet him. If it goes bad, you don’t need to meet him again. Just man up.
NEXT WEEK: Senior says about a text from Mikey “I feel like he is talking to a client, not his father.” Interesting point, too bad Senior says it to Jason.
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