American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior - Season 1 - Page 2

It was.  The show was cancelled, because it sucked that last season and ratings were down.  They thought up this idea and the ratings were back to where they used to be, however it was not many episodes.  It will be back though.

Well, yeh.  The only reason any of these companies buy a custom bike is the advertising.  They pay $150,000 for the bike and their name is mentioned a 100 times an hour on a highly rated cable show.  That's cheap advertising.  I've seen the hardcore types make fun of OCC bikes, but I know they've also won awards.  Hardcore types always complain about anything popular, doesn't matter what the product is. 

Look, I may be going out on a limb here but somebody has to say it.  Paul Sr is a multi-award winning bike designer.  He personally designed several bikes that were on the cutting edge of his era.  That's why OCC got the show in the first place.  Paulie is a kid who had a lot of potential, but blew it by being a punk.  The tail dont wag the dog.  Anybody who has a teenage son knows what I mean.  No offense to you or Paulie, but PJD's bike shop is a dream and will be closed by the end of next year.  Paul Sr. has had a lot of emotional meltdowns on live TV, but that really doesn't matter; he works his ass off.  Paul Jr. is a slacker who should have known his place.  It is never a child's right to decide they are somehow the peer of their parents.

     I think there is a lot that we don’t see.  It seems like Sr. made his money in the iron works business first, and that the bike building is his second venture.  He seems to get his family involved in his work, with one of his other sons running the iron works plant now.  In the earlier shows, there were sports competitions between the bike crew and the iron works crew.  Sr. may have worked hard at one time, but with just watching the show – he is shown sitting in the office, coming out for a fight once in a while, and going back in the office.  Every now in then he does something on one of the bikes, but most of the time it is just yelling and complaining about progress.  All of the design work and fabrication was done by Jr and the crew.  I thought that Vinnie and Rick were the hard workers in the crew, while Jr. was always kind of flakey and a punk as you put it.

     There were a few episodes where Sr. and Jr. would design bikes at the same time and compete against each other using the same crew, and the results were usually in Jr’s favor – where Sr is stuck always doing the old school, hard tail look – with much more of the work being done by the crew.

     Now that Jr. has his own shop, he seems to be taking things a little more seriously and actually showing up on time and working hard.  He also has to do the work of getting new projects that his father used to do.   We now see Sr. trying everything he can to make his son’s new venture fail, bad mouth him at every chance, and generally be a jerk.   It is sad that the father/son relationship seems to be lost because of the big egos involved on both sides.  I’m not sure what happened with Sr. and Mike, but that relationship seems lost as well.  Jr. seems to be taking the higher road and not bad mouth as much, but Sr. can’t let things go.  I think it showed a lot that Jr. actually met a deadline and got his first two bikes done on time.

Wait, there's new episodes?  Wow I haven't seen a single ad.

Hopefully next week Jr and vinnie will build another bike.  That Geico bike was nice.  I still fast forward through most of the senior parts.