Fixing an American Chopper (Continued)

The guy who bought an American Chopper bike and is trying to fix it up, meets and hangs out with Paul Sr.  

I think I've fallen into a soap opera. I started watching a video, and that video led to another video, then it became a series and now it's spinning off a new series... It's too much! It's still enjoyable but I may have to cut these off at some point. But I don't know, I do still have American Chopper brain-rot, after all.

Fixing an American Chopper (Continued)

 This is a continuation of a previous post where a guy is trying to get an OCC Bike in working order.

I'll give a heads-up, I don't like this video, I think it's pretty lame but we have a series going and I don't want to drop the ball for anyone interested.

This kind of back-and-forth reaction debate doesn't work here. You don't use the term "straw man argument" in a garage. Paul Sr. did not get to where he is by listening to what people say and considering it with an open mind. Paul Sr. does two things: he gets offended and yells at people - that's it.

Oh well. I trust the next episode will be better.

Fixing a Chopper (Continued)

 This is a continuation of a previous post where a guy is trying to get an OCC Bike in working order.

This is very motorcyle-mechanic-heavy. If you're not into that, you can skip it. I get a strange enjoyment from it, probably because I have "American Chopper" brain rot.

Guy Buys an American Chopper Bike

 A dude bought a decades old OCC bike, one made on the show "American Choppers." It's extremely overpowered and has rarely been run. This is a series where he tries to fix it up into working order.

As a weirdo "American Chopper" fan, I like that the form and content of this video echoes that show, very nostalgic.

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For the video below, skip to 22:23.

And apparently this is an ongoing saga for which we have to wait for new videos.

3 miles per tank? Holy cow.

For the sake of accurate information, I tried to lookup this episode and watch the bike being built. As far as I can tell, this is from "Senior vs. Junior" Season 1 Episode 6. But looking for that episode, and other episodes, it looks like there is no place to watch "American Chopper" - pay streaming sites as well as free, it's nowhere. I'll grant that I may be the only person looking this up in 2024 but I'm very surprised and don't know how to explain that.

Not necessarily this guy but there are too many drama queens on the internet flipping out that OCC bikes are unreliable. Of course the themed bikes were commercials. Of course they were meant to be looked at rather than driven. Come on.

American Chopper Returns (AGAIN)

This show is constantly either cancelled or questionable to return but keeps coming back. It's the Brett Favre of shows but without all the cell phone stuff. Not that that's a criticism - I still love the show and want it to keep going.

Discovery aired a special last Monday with new interviews about the family feud and what has happened in the past year. I haven't seen it yet. It'll mostly just be a rehash of the previous season but I'll check it out anyway.

Then, this coming Monday (Dec. 6th) new episodes of the new season will air. HOLY SHORT NOTICE, BATMAN! It's hard to complain about getting what you want and getting it RIGHT NOW but I do fear that it's not enough time to emotionally prepare. I wonder if they have Paul Sr. as head of production now.

"DON'T GIVE ME THIS 'WE NEED TIME TO EDIT' 'WE NEED TIME TO ADD SOUND' BULL****! MAKE THE SHOW! YOU GOT ONE JOB, JUST GET IT DONE AND PUT IT ON THE AIR!"

GET TO THE CHOPPER!!!

Reality shows mar the landscape like bird poop on a field of statues. However, there is one show that represents everything that "reality television" can be (and should be) when all of the stars align and everything is perfect.

"American Chopper" (now called "American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior") premiered last week and within the first five minutes of the first episode I had a surge of adrenaline like the Phillies were about to play a playoff game. This has a great deal to do with the fact that the show format starts off with "last season on 'American Chopper'" and what happened last season was a giant blowout between father and son where Paul Jr. was fired.

But part of it, too, is that judging by the first episode, "American Chopper" is everything reality television can be. Truth is funnier and stranger and more interesting than fiction but most reality shows fail to recognize this and do the exact opposite: take the veneer of reality and script/edit/manipulate it to a bloody pulp. The result - as in my bird analogy - as we've all seen is crap. "American Chopper", when it works, is more like watching sports than episodic television or a sitcom. You care about the characters, you wonder what's going to happen next, you wait with bated breath to see whether they will succeed or fail. And yet, you can't escape the drama and tension - you can't step outside the three walls and simply think that the "writers aren't going to end it that way"; there are no writers, there is no predictable outcome. And you can't dismiss the tension by reminding yourself that "it's just a movie"; it's real people with real problems that can really fail or triumph, they live and breath and can really get hurt. There are no unrealistic twists, no bad actors, no poor sets or cheap special effects. The characters are three dimensional, the action is unpredictable and there are no dei ex machina.

Early last season Paul Jr. was (quite shockingly) fired from a company that he helped create and the television show that documents said company completely flew apart in all directions. The show had always been about the father-son relationship as well as making bikes but after the battle there was no relationship. The plot split in two (Junior/Senior) where Junior thought about starting a boutique (see, you can't write that) and Senior was left to make bikes however he wanted with no real creative process. It turns out that a weekly show about two guys not talking to each other while a drab bike gets built smoothly and easily can be pretty boring and the show was cancelled after it's first truly bad season.

Now, with a lawsuit still pending, Paul Jr. has decided to start up his own shop in direct competition with his father and former business partner. And to help him, he's bringing in a few other former OCC employees that fans of the show will surely recognize - namely Vinny and Nubs. While fans of the show will surely remember these guys, for those who don't, it's like if Mr. T and Hulk Hogan announced that they were going to come back to the WWF for one more tag team match... It would be like that only much less exciting... but then everything in the world is much less exciting than that so my simile is poorly chosen.

But with father and son going head to head, with Paul back designing bikes, with Vinny back building them, with a true underdog vs. Evil Corporation story line, with emotions flaring and people breaking down, with sweet construction montages that include flying sparks, grinding and welding, and as always, really cool motorcycles, it could be an amazing series once again.

It was a little while ago that "Lost" ended and with it a recurring weekly obsession to see the next episode and find out what happens. If the first episode of "American Chopper" is an indication, that terrible torment is back.