American Chopper
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| American Chopper | |
|---|---|
 American Chopper: The Series logo | |
| Starring | Paul Teutul, Sr. Paul Teutul, Jr. Michael Teutul Vinnie DiMartino Rick Petko Cody Connelly |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of seasons | 2 |
| Production | |
| Executive producers | Hank Capshaw, Craig Piligian |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | Discovery Channel(2003-2007) TLC(2007-) |
| Release | 2003 – present |
American Chopper: The Series is a Learning Channel reality television series produced by Pilgrim Films & Television Inc., and a video game published by Activision. This popular series is based around the founder of the company, Paul Teutul, Sr., and his son, Paul Teutul, Jr., also known as Paulie, as the two run a business creating custom motorcycles in their workshop, Orange County Choppers. The workshop is based in Montgomery, New York. One of their most famous bikes is the Black Widow Spider Bike.
The contrasting attitudes of the men and their propensity for sulking often lead to fiery but humorous verbal exchanges as they meet unusually short schedule deadlines for building distinct custom choppers.
Originally a show on the Discovery Channel, the series moved to Discovery's sister channel, TLC, on December 28th, 2006, starting off with a 18-hour marathon. Its first season on TLC will premiere on January 18.
Positions
Typically Paul Jr. works alongside fabricators and mechanics such as Vinnie DiMartino, Rick Petko, Cody Connelly (a BOCES student intern who left to attend motorcycle maintenance school, but has since returned), and Christian Helter to create dozens of custom motorbikes. Paul Sr. supervises the builds and has built motorcycles himself. Michael Teutul, commonly referred to as Mikey serves as the shop's custodian and webmaster, appears and provides comic relief, though has been seen doing metal work now and then because one of his early jobs was working at Orange County Ironworks.
The show also documents their personal and promotional activities ranging from magazine photo shoots to family holidays and custom bike shows.
Criticism
American Chopper has been on the receiving end of criticism from more traditional Discovery Channel viewers who point out that the show has nothing to do with the channel's theme of discovery and learning as well as being a low-brow show on a supposedly intellectual channel. In response to this the new commercials that advertise new seasons (including American Chopper) have had promotional messages. American Chopper's message states, "Let's all discover...the vision".
Video games
Despite the criticism, American Chopper continues to be a highly successful and popular show on The Discovery Channel. The series has also inspired two video games, including American Chopper 2: Full Throttle for the Nintendo GameCube, Sony PS2, and the Xbox.
The appeal of the show
Verbal battles - These occur mainly between Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. Since the premiere of the show the two have had endless arguments, mostly related to Jr.'s working pace, which Sr. considers too slow. Paul Jr. has also been known to arrive late to work, take long lunchbreaks, leave unexpectedly without informing anyone, and not cleaning up the shop on a regular basis.
Sr., however, has his own personality quirks; aside from the frustration he expresses over Jr.'s work ethic he is constantly critical of Jr.'s choices in design details, especially when a deadline for completion of a cycle is approaching. He also tends to get himself worked up over seemingly small problems (at least in Jr.'s view), most notably the cleanliness of the shop (Sr. prefers a clean shop). They also bicker about design elements, production deadlines, travel arrangements, and whose authority a design team will recognize and many, many other subjects.
Mikey seems to have a problem with authority but he rarely seems to fuss on the show. He is also able to calm Sr. down.
Outside of work - The cast members often participate in leisure activities together – as a group, the crew have hunted pheasant, gone skeet shooting, gone snowmobiling, fished for striped bass on the Hudson River and, in one of the earliest episodes, closed the shop for a few hours to go bowling.
Small business success - Although OCC itself started as a small business and was built and expanded by Paul Sr., it was not his first foray into this segment of the private sector. A few years before he started OCC he'd built a successful iron-working shop making wrought-iron fencing and other products. This business is now run by another of Sr.'s sons, Daniel. However, OCC is considered by many to be Sr.'s greater success because of the uniqueness of the cycles they build, his son's talent for original design ideas, the crew they've assembled and, of course, the television series.
FANtasy Bike
During 2005, Discovery Channel ran a contest that allows each of the 4 finalists to win a OCC motorcycle, with features specified by the winner, by sending in video to express the reason of wanting a bike. The winners of the contest are (in episode order): Jeff Clegg (Corporal Punishment), Susan Morisset (female snake bike), Joseph McClendon (custom hog), Bryan King (verterbrae trike). Each winner and the bike was made into a TV episode. 2 days were allocated for building each vehicle.