DVD Review: American Chopper (2003)



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American Chopper (2003)
Featuring Paul Teutul, Paul Teutul Jr, Michael Teutal and Vinnie
60 mins / Discovery Channel / Rated TVPG
by Alex Mestas 8/05/2003
More info: Discovery Channel

The Firefighter Bike

For Paul Teutul and his son Paul Jr., Orange County Choppers is all about the bikes. Their shop in Orange County New York is only a few years old, but thanks to some amazingly creative bike work and an immediately popular show on the Discovery Channel (their highest rated) OCC have propelled themselves to the top of the bike heap. They're easily bumping elbows with that other Discovery Channel "discovery", West Coast Choppers. Unfortunately, this review isn't about cool bikes and metal fabrication. I could blab on and on about how little I know about it, but how much I respect it. No - this is a review of one of the best reality shows on television.

Maybe it's the fact that unlike all those other folks on those other shows who are cast, the people in American Chopper aren't. There's not even the contrived contests and artificial time limits that are so heavily featured in all those other shows. There are timelines, but they're real timelines - a customer's bike, a special build for a motorcycle design competition. Mainly the show is just watching this family work and... scream very loudly at each other.

Paul Jr. working on the Jet Bike.

The screaming matches are exactly what you'd expect from a father and son team working so close together day in and day out. Besides that, it's a clashing of philosophy. Paul Jr. is messy, slow, inconsistent but wildly creative. His father is clean, wise and real angry. There's bound to be some friction there. But like all stable families, what starts as a yelling match (mind you, not the kind of yelling that you hear when you do something really wrong.) soon turns to jokes and slaps on the back. It remind me a lot of my family.

Each episode of American Chopper follows the creation (or part of the creation) of a bike and all the blood, sweat and tears that go along with it. It’s the perfect mix of mechanics, art, design and family dynamics.. The bikes kick ass and a nerd like me enjoys seeing how beasts such as these are put together - and the voyeur (or perhaps sadist) in me, likes seeing people fight and yell at each other.

TV Grade: A

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