Fear is to The Walking Dead. Slimmed down, gritty, Mexicanized and full of references to make it similar but different to SOA. Sub-plots, alliances, family, betrayal, secrets, intrique, enemies and the ever looming multi-level law enforcement will feel familiar. Not much black and white, just a lot of gray. Let me quickly get this out of my system, I LOVED SOA and Kurt Sutter is a great writer, but when it comes to his wife, he just cant help himself. Why must he put her in everything he does nepotism be damned? The most unrealistic character in SOA was Gemma. No woman would ever wield that much juice (no pun intended) in the inner workings of a major MC. We start off appropriately enough seeing a crow, you know as in Sam Cro, dead in the road with a scavenger picking its carcass. We see things mainly thru the eyes of E-Z (The Mayan's Jax) who is a prospect with a blood brother in the club and an old girlfriend he still pines for (sound familiar) . Apparently he just did only 8 years in prison for killing a "dirty" cop which one would think is a major red flag. Hopefully prospect E-Z will live long enough to see his patch unlike SOA's Half Sack and V-Lin. E-Z's father, who apparently knew a really good criminal appeal attorney or something like that is the venerable Edward Olmos who is once again type cast as the wise, sage, Yoda like character just as he was in Miami Vice and Battle Star Gallatica. Instead of the Mayans running guns their interest is in dope. Their H-D's don't have flat t-style handle bars but ape hangers. No exclusive dull gray or black paint but some of their bikes have other colors. Call backs to SOA abound: the church table, instead of Jax reading his father's journal E-Z reads books suggested by his father. There is a sex change joke that will immediately remind any serious SOA fan of Tig and information extraction ala Happy. We actually see SOA's San Bern chapter and occasional SOA ally Marcus Alverez. It doesn't take long for the action to start and things to get dicey. You can just see the wheels turning inside of E-Z's head as if he were saying WWJD (thats Jax not Jesus). Once again a Mexican Cartel chiefdom is a major player with the inner workings of moving dope from Mexico to the US fleshed out: tunnels, legit business fronts and protection runs from wholesaler to retailers. Things have a wide open feel as the Mexican government is portrayed as powerless or inept at best and corrupt at worst. 8/10

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