American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior - Season 1 (1 Viewer)

TLC is reviving "American Chopper" -- with the estranged Teutuls going head-to-head in competing bike shops.

The new show, "American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior," begins filming next week and will premiere in August.

It focuses both on the original Orange County Choppers business run by Paul Sr., and Paul Jr.'s startup bike shop.

The new shop, Paul Jr. Designs, is located across from the original OCC shop in Rock Tavern, NY, near OCC's Newburgh site.

The hook? Father and son haven't spoken in over a year, ever since Senior fired Junior from the family business.

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http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/hog_brawl_DGIaJp3YxntDfDynaIrtbL#ixzz0l292JFMH

Interesting. Jr designed most of the bikes throughout the years. Now Sr relies on his staff to design the bikes, but I was underwhelmed by all of the Jr-less designs. Maybe Jr will bring back Vinnie. One thing is for sure, even with all of their problems, they appear to understand that they both need the show.

I don't think that Vinnie will be coming back any time soon...he took Cody and opened up his own shop - so they are now also the competition...

http://designbyjoyce.com/vinnie/index.html


And it looks like Vinnie is going to be doing his own show as well...

http://www.vforcefans.com/article8.html

Surprisingly, Vinnie's show just recently debuted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttle_Junkies_TV

Originally Posted by Steve_Tk

Interesting. Jr designed most of the bikes throughout the years. Now Sr relies on his staff to design the bikes, but I was underwhelmed by all of the Jr-less designs. Maybe Jr will bring back Vinnie. One thing is for sure, even with all of their problems, they appear to understand that they both need the show.

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I thought the designs and the show both suffered with Jr. gone. I'm looking forward to seeing the show return.

FYI, I saw a rumor that Jr. brought on Vinnie and Nub (plus some other guy who I didn't recognize) in his business.

It looks like you might be on to something....link showing rumor you are discussing...

http://www.designbyjoyce.com/pauljr/article6.html


Also - there is a picture of Vinnie at Jr's new shop...at least he is visiting....
http://twitpic.com/1hlt86

The guys in the shop were really being dicks about Paulie last season--even Rick was getting in on the snide comments. It's going to start off with me in Junior's camp. I hope they blow OCC away. It'll be a hard climb, though. I wonder if they're going to bring in Lee.

Just saw a trailer for the new season last night on discovery. I did see Vinnie in the background of the trailer. It should be interesting.

Starts August 12th.

Damn. Well, I missed the first episode. Luckily, it'll air Thursday before the second episode.

Man! I missed the first episode as well. I didn't think it started for another couple of weeks. Did anyone see it and if so was it a good first episode?

I enjoyed it, but Sr has completely lost his mind. Just listening to the things he says, the guy really is terrible. None of his three sons talk to him, but he's not the problem. The guy is a text book narcissist. Will be fascinating to watch Jr. build a company from scratch, I just hope they get rid of the Sr. portion and OCC soon. Their bikes are terrible and I'm not a fan of anyone in that shop except Rick, who has left OCC.

 

And Vinnie is back.

Lost interest in the show a long time ago but decided to check it out the new one. Both Jr. and Sr. have egos bigger than the new OCC building and are edging over line of being unlikeable, but I think I'm rooting for Jr. I'm curious to see how he does building up his own shop and at least that is more interesting than the bits of him trying to start up that clothing boutique with his girl.

 

I've only watched episode 2, rerecorded ep 1 and will watch later. OCC's window bike was as boring as they come. Hopefully Jr. will get a client soon. I'm sure it will happen soon as they explain behind closed doors that it is for a new show and you'll get lots of tv coverage.

Sr.'s a jerk. For over a year's worth of shows now, Paulie has just been taking care of his own business while Sr. wastes no opportunity to cut him down. Remember when he took his crew on a picnic and then told them he was celebrating the six month anniversary of firing Paulie? Checking out the picture in the paper and assigning his negative thoughts to Paulie fiance was despicable. I hope Paulie can give him a good challenge.

I watched 2 episodes so far and it's not bad. I'm rooting for Jr. to succeed but considering how bad the American economy is at the moment, he sure picked a lousy time to start a bike building business. Even his father is having a tough time at OCC (I've heard that a lot of people there were let go). Not a lot of people these days are going to spend money on a custom bike when they have to put food on the table.

Sr. is coming across as a real jerk. He has the nerve to bad mouth his own son about his work, yet he has not actually built anything himself as far as I know. At least not since the show has been on. He has always been the cartoon charater while Jr, Vince and Rick did all the real work.

 

I really hope that Jr. can somehow get Rick to leave Sr. and work for him. I would love to hear Sr.'s spin on that.

It's also sad that the OCC minions seem to love sidling up to Sr. to dish dirt on his sons. Mike seems to be the worst. The guy in the office--can't remember his name right now--seems to just listen to Sr.'s rants without responding, and I like Jim Q. and Rick. Jason can be a jerk, and he certainly doesn't have Jr.'s eye for design.

 

Of course, a lot of this is just manipulation for television. As if we're to believe Sr. just rode by and then hopped off. More like, "We need you down at Jr.'s new shop. We've got duelling film crews set up."

It is hard to watch some times. Sr. was always a jerk, but now he is surrounded by yes men who just put up with his crap. He has totally sold out - having a restaurant tie in - all the while making boring looking bikes with multiple themes that don't go together. The window bike had windows, a dead founders portrait, the dead founders kids hand prints, and a blue flame paint job - too much that didn't go together. Then they made some strange looking bike that had the oil tank as part of the back of the gas tank - with a see through window with some strange looking piping between them. Every time one of these crap fest bikes comes out, Sr. has to drive by Jr's shop to show off - and rub his face in it.

 

There is a reason Jr. would fight with him all of the time. In the mean time, Jr. is busy buying multiple items of expensive equipment and hiring people for a shop with no business, no raw materials, and no prototype bikes to even show people. He spent all of his time on a new Jr. logo and developing hats and t-shirts and car decals - with no bikes. I guess Vinnie's bike shop didn't work out, as he is 1 of the new employees - no sign of Cody yet, but I'm sure that is coming. Jr. has also brought Mike into the fold - which does nothing to help him build bikes but distracts people and is sometimes fun to watch on TV. Most of the first two episodes were setting up the new equipment and offices for Jr. new company...and then him on the phone as everyone turned him down. And, if you didn't have any business, would you need 4 or 5 new stands, when you can't even get 1 up and running with a bike? Lots of waisted equipment and a clueless owner who is full of himself.

 

In one of the first episodes, we see Sr. and a yes man talking about Jr. asking for a free flow-jet machine for his new shop. It seems like Jr. High school - that is my supplier and you can't talk to them...Jr did end up with a Flow Jet machine, but it never said if he paid for it. We then see Jr. wanting to make t-shirts that say "Free Rick" on them to get back at his father as a joke - like I said, was more successful at making a logo and t-shirts then a bike.

The Flow thing was annoying. Did he pay for it? Was Jim Q's contact at Flow just full of shit when he said they wouldn't send one for free? Following up the basic questions would be nice.
 

One of the problems is that we have to take everyone's word for everything. Jr. says the bike business is pretty small and thus there are no non-OCC-affiliated vendors to use. Sr. complains that he doesn't cultivate his own vendor relationships. We are left not knowing which is true. At this point, I guess Sr. would rank out Sears if Jr. turned up with a bunch of Craftsman tools.

 

It was never clear why Vinnie left OCC, but I was under the impression it was because of Sr. Sr. says it was because of Jr., but you can't trust anything that comes out of his mouth anymore. I'm tired of him. Same as last season, he can't just get on with his own business. "We're here for a great charity opening. I'm so glad my sons aren't here." Just focus on the event and lose all of that. And, I was hoping Vinnie would say, "We say we don't want to drag Rick into this mess, so let's just can the t-shirt talk." It'll be interesting to see what exactly it means that Rick now has his own shop. On his myspace, he lists both his shop and OCC.

Sr. is pretty delusional, but you never know what they "choose" to air. However, he does give them a lot of material that makes him look bad. And yes, it was convenient for Sr. to drive over to Paulie's shop, however, it's not as staged as people think. Camera crews follow each of them ALL day. At the end of the day they send around 15 tapes over night to the editing crew in LA. There is nothing that isn't filmed during a day for them. When one of them goes on a ride, a truck with the crew follows them with 4 people harnessed in the back of the truck with steady cams. So if Sr. drove over to Paulie's shop, he could stop, all four of them jump out of the truck, and you have an instant crew for an interview. Sr. just has an ultimate ego and believes that nothing can be done without him. Vinnie never really stated why he left, but I think he got tired of the BS involved with the shop. In the earlier years Sr. used to get on Vinnie just like Paulie. At one time he even made Vinnie in charge of cleaning up the shop, regardless if it was his mess, and would send him home early if it wasn't clean. And Paulie appears to be lazy at times, but in the early seasons it was him and Vinnie at the shop at 2 AM working on bikes and no one else.

 

For those interested:

 

 

When the show started filming Jr. was just getting his shop started. However, prior to Sturgis he built two bikes three weeks. One of which is Geico, which is being used/will be used in their TV commercials for the motorcycle insurance. The bike looks pretty great. Much better than the recent OCC stuff. His other bike is a web themed bike called "Anti Venom". I wouldn't be surprised if the next season only has Jr's shop and no OCC.