New York - Season two of the FX drama "Sons of Anarchy" is primed to end with bloody payback. The Sons, a fierce and fiercely close-knit motorcycle club, are set to wreak havoc on enemy forces that have cut into their outlaw livelihood and horned in on their turf (the curiously named town of Charming, Calif.).Further upping the ante for the season conclusion (Tuesday at 10 p.m.): The club must teach the ultimate lesson to that band of white separatists who, at the season's start, sent the club a message by seizing and raping its matriarch, Gemma Morrow.
Played by Katey Sagal, Gemma is dishy, shrewd and tough as wife to the club's president (Ron Perlman) and mother of its rival for the throne (Charlie Hunnam).
But recoiling from the shock and shame of her attack, she has shown viewers a previously unglimpsed vulnerable side.
"This season I had to keep asking myself, 'Who is she, vulnerable?'" says Sagal. For three seasons she starred on the ABC comedy "8 Simple Rules," which was rocked by the sudden death of co-star John Ritter early its second year.
Gemma came into her life thanks to her husband, Kurt Sutter, who created "Sons of Anarchy" after seven seasons as writer and executive producer of FX's landmark cop drama "The Shield."
"He began researching outlaw motorcycle gangs and came up with a great sort of mythology about that world," Sagal explains. Sagal laughs. "I know there's nefarious behavior, and gangs, and guns and gunrunning. (Among the series' large ensemble, Mark Boone Junior, Tommy Flanagan, Johnny Lewis, Theo Rossi, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking and Kim Coates play other club members.)
Like Gemma, they've got personal issues that don't get much personal scrutiny.
"Those people are all about shame, guilt, denial, secrets," says Sagal. At the same time, these are not goons or buffoons, any more than Gemma is the cliche motorcycle mama. They're relatable to viewers as fellow members of the nation's least exclusive club: the struggling working class.
Business setbacks, and worse, abound for the Sons. "I think that's what viewers are responding to," says Sagal. "The characters' everyday-ness."
Now, as Sagal awaits the "Sons" finale (she says she holds off screening each episode until it airs), she plans to fill her hiatus with voicing sessions for "Futurama."
Plus making music. An accomplished singer before she started acting, she spent a decade touring with such headliners as Bette Midler, Etta James and Bob Dylan. Only once did she offer him a suggestion: that Gemma - who, like most of the family, consumes plenty of tobacco and pot - go cold turkey.
