West-SIDE

Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I should write about love. Specifically, how I fall in and out of love with television shows. In the past, I've had love affairs with documentary series like The First 48 and Deep Sea Detectives. Well, now I have moved on to a new show, Gangland. It airs on Spike TV and it pretty much is exactly what you would expect: they spend an hour telling the story of one gang, from its origins to how it operates today. (This is the part I'm most interested in. Are they in Massachusetts and do they have a reason dislike anyone wearing Celtics colors? I would hate to get jumped because they mistook me for a rival gang member just because it's the playoffs.) Frequently, Spike will airs this show in a four or five hour marathon and when that happens it pretty much takes over my day. I think the most stunning aspect of this series is just how many gangs there are in the United States. Before I started watching this show I could probably only name three or four gangs. But, I've seen almost a dozen episodes of Gangland with no repeats - they're coming up with groups I've never heard of. Admittedly, I'm not from the roughest part of the world so my gang knowledge is limited and you don't know how loose the producers are with the 'gang' label, but I had no idea there were so many.

However despite the vast range of the gangs, from where they are located to the ethnicity of most of their members, you might find be surprised (though probably not) to learn every gang has pretty much the same story: group of people decided that robbing and selling drugs is much easier than getting a real job, so they start to do that. Everyone is having a wonderful time, making lots of money and convinced that the other people in the gang would do anything for them. Then the gang starts to get too greedy and too large, they get into fights with another gang over territory and money, someone either gets severely injured or killed, people get arrested and they proceed to flip on all those gang members they were promising to take a bullet for just before the commercial break. The people who are subsequently arrested (who are always the ones willing to talk on camera) are shocked at the disloyalty, realise that gang members are not the most reliable people and thus they leave the gang. I know how this is going to go every time and yet I still can't turn away.

If this show has done nothing else, it has made me realise why I was never asked to be in a gang (besides the obvious). It's all the little things that gang members have to do. For example, every picture you see of these gangsters, they are folding their fingers to represent various letters, animals or symbols. That's my problem - my fingers are not good for throwing up and holding gang signs. I tried a couple and, yeah, my fingers just don't bend that way. I would be the guy in the corner, saying things like, "Hey, fellows, I know we're the Crazy Sharks, but rather than the elaborate 'shark's mouth' hand sign we're doing now, couldn't our hand signal just be something simple, like 'We're #1?'" I doubt that would go over well. Also, it appears gang members have to be very good with spray paint and tagging their turf while I'm more of an accent wall kind of guy. But, just because I'm not in a gang doesn't mean I can't enjoy Gangland. I might even keep watching it for a couple of months before I move on to another TV series. That may seem harsh, but I told you - there is no loyalty in gangs.