BOOKS: Hamlet is The Son of Anarchy and Lion King

I watched the pilot episode of Sons of Anarchy from 2008; I don't know where the show goes beyond this episode, but one can guess.  As a pilot, a mission statement of what a show will be if it survives beyond it, this show intended to be Motorbike Hamlet.  I watched it to see just how Hamlet it is.  And it is.
+ Libraries are filled with writings about Hamlet; of language, parallel storylines, and the deeper meanings -- it is a holy text, (one would think the Writer carved it on stones at the top of a mountain).  So much of the text over all these years has masked the plot that SOA copies: a dude's dead dad started a motorcycle gang; presently the gang is at a moment of truth where it will either rise or fall down the food chain of tough guys, as the gang's new leader, (who had been second in command when the kid's dad was alive), knows well.
What I would guess comes next on this show is further muddied waters for this young protagonist as questions of his father's death arise, and he becomes suspicious that the new leader of the gang had something to do with it, (and, by the way, the new gang leader is dating the kid's mother); in stark relief the kid begins to see the leader no longer as a caring uncle reminding the kid he'll be king one day, but as a jealous second banana covetous of the juice, the crown, and the wife.

I don't know if this is where SOA goes, but it should, why stop with the Hamlet midway?
+ In the original folktale of Prince Amleth, there is no question that his uncle wants him dead, this is barbarian politics, (or monkey, or russian), the dead king's offspring can't be allowed to grow up and oust him.  In that story Amleth feigns mental illness, possibly retardation, so as to, like the mistletoe, seem as nonthreatening as possible: he sits about the castle for twenty years carving sticks that, like Loki's mistletoe darts, become the tools of revenge on his uncle.  Shakespeare's version takes the protagonist being under direct threat away, makes the uncle comforting, a machiavel rather than a khan  -- a curious thing to do when one is ramping up conflict, usually the more dire external threat, the better, in blood drama, but then this is why Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and the rest of the poets, prose-hacks, bards, and bit-harvesters, sit at the back tables in Valhalla.
Completely deconstructed, the Writer has laid bare his audience's revenge fantasies, those that have brought them to this genre -- whereas Amleth is a turtle caught under the claw of a lion, Hamlet is a lion amongst turtles, a morbid, depressed lion prince, (and speaking of Hamlet remakes: hakuna matata, baby).  There is no threat of harm directed at Hamlet.
Why?  Why take the threat away?  What did this open up for the Writer, that he sacrificed the heat of his plot?  Why did he take a potboiler, and refuse to boil?
The simple answer is that that is what this Writer always does, radicalizes tired genres by breaking them, and then writing his way out of it.  It is easy to be a hero like Amleth when the booker of the story stacks the odds against him, and makes it a survival story, whereas with Hamlet, if he does the right thing, and revenges the sins of his Uncle, he destabilizes the lives of everyone he cares about, and puts the survival of his clan on his shoulders, and Hamlet, as is plain when reading, is more poet than warlord.
+ There is another reason to break plot: to afford the Writer freedom to create what he wants.  In the case of Hamlet, every scene of this massive play is as if the Writer thought, I've already killed the obvious bit, where else can I go? -- and in this he fills the rooms of this castle up with bold new shit.  The last post, we were on the perfect opening scene of midnight soldiers on the rampart fearing ghosts and enemy armies, and after, the introduction of our royal family and parallel courtiers, of King Claudius, Queen Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, Ophelia, and also the prince in the inky cloak.  As Claudius gives a final speech on his dead brother, he eases his court as to the succession -- even the marriage to his dead brother's queen is simply smart politics, with enemy armies at the border.  Then he permits his top advisor's son to safely leave the state for university.  In a potboiler revenge there is no room for discussion of a secondary character's son's school schedule -- the Writer is alerting the reader, that neither ghosts nor norwegians can ground you as to the coming story, a completely new thing, an experiment that begins with trouble discerning hero from villain.  I don't know a person who doesn't like the King, and not in the way one likes other Shakespearean villains, like Richard or Macbeth, but because he seems decent, warm, honest, and right.  He is, in fact, a damn good King, maybe he's a bit of a drunkard like Robert Barathian, but he also has the sense of Ned Stark -- there was a time to mourn the old king, but now is his time to comfort his people as to their regret and more importantly their fears for the future -- he is stable, stout, and a good leader.  He has married the widowed queen not out of lust, but out of maintaining the strength of the state, and dampening chaos after the mysterious death of the old king.  That Claudius is arguably the best king in all of the works of this Writer is not called ironic, but Shakespearean.
+ So then here comes the Prince Hamlet, and never has a Simba slinked in so much like a Scar, taking the piss out of everybody.  You'd think he knew something was rotten in Denmark, but as yet he's not met an apparition, nor has he considered much beyond this party, no this is just Ham bein Ham, after a few too many drinks, lurking around a party, trapped in his home, he's a bit sharp working contrary to all the lovely comfort that's being sold.  Were you allowed to come to this story without hundreds of years of portrayal preceding it, you might very well think you were being introduced to the villain when Prince Hamlet's wicked tongue comes out.