Justified - "Slaughterhouse"

Season 3, Episode 13

“He just saw a man in a hat.”

Last night’s Justified was the show as it’s best, delivering a top-notch hour filled with tension, intrigue, and most importantly pathos, the main ingredient that seems to have been lacking this season. But instead of waxing on once again about Raylan has been so marginalized in such a busy season filled with perhaps one too many antagonists, let’s instead just celebrate the finale for returning the show’s focus to its ostensible main character, and through doing so providing the show a clear foot forward.

Justified - "Coalition"

Season 3, Episode 12

 “They make for some strange bedfellows, don’t you think?”

Last week, I went on and on about how “Measures" was fascinated with the darker side of Raylan, and it was a piece that essentially saw me reveling in the cynical, darker side of Justified. But what I perhaps forgot – and what tonight’s episode certainly reminded me – was that among the various offerings on FX, Justified is perhaps the lightest drama show on the network. The show isn’t afraid to be funny when it wants to be, or to have antagonists that are mostly pathetic, and all the more enjoyable for it. In fact, the more I think about, the more it occurs to me that last week’s episode may have been an aberration from the norm (albeit an enjoyable one) while tonight saw a return to that lighter normalcy, just in time for the seasons to close out a mostly enjoyable season.

Justified - "Measures"

Season 3, Episode 11 

“I'll clean that up.” 

Is Raylan Givens an anti-hero? That's a question that's been bumping around the internet lately, usually under the guise of other conversations, but it's one that I think is important to understand when talking about the show, and about the character's somewhat diminished role this season. Certainly Raylan has a morality that lines up with the average Western World philosophy more often than not, but he's also a deeply angry man, one who is more prone to violence than most. Obviously he is purposefully drawn in such an ambiguous manner that the show wants us to think about this, but how you see Raylan probably says a lot about how you view the show in general, and answering that question becomes key in “Measures.” 

Justified - "Guy Walks into a Bar"

Season 3, Episode 10 

“You are a conquistador, but we are not your savages.” 

If Justified's main problem is the fact that it spends too much time on the villains, and not enough on the heroes, it's going to have to make that dynamic work for the better, and that's exactly what “Guy Walks into a Bar” did, even if it did so in a bit of a roundabout manner.

Justified - "Loose Ends"

Season 3, Episode 9 

“You always bring broken things in here, tryin' to fix 'em.” 

I've been loathe to admit this both because I was trying to give the show the time to get over this hurdle on it's own time, and because I would hate to go against the critical consensus and thus in anyway be “wrong”, but I haven't really loved this season of Justified like I loved season two. I mean I still really enjoy this season, but I don't love it, and that's a crucial distinction that I feel I has to be made in criticism. I believe the reason for this is that while last season gave Raylan a direct connection to the criminal world – thus making it more weighty and intense – this season has mostly seen him removed from the action. There's been a lot of genius plotting that I can appreciate, and individual moments of tension that grip me, but as a whole I just don't feel the same pull that I did last year.  

So it's only fitting that the week that I finally acknowledge what's hindering my complete enjoyment is also the week where the show offers up hope of a fix. 

Justified - "Watching the Detectives"

Season 3, Episode 8 

“It seems you dodged another in a long series of bullets.” 

In the midst of a great and tension-filled season, Justified somehow managed to keep that tension going while also fixing one of those trouble areas that's somehow way too easy for people to overlook: the show's focus on Raylan. 

Justified - "When the Guns Come Out"/"The Man Behind the Curtain"

Season 3, Episodes 6-7 

“This here's the carrot. What's the stick?” 

Perhaps my favorite part of any serialized narrative – especially those that are only season-long in length – is the point where it all starts coming together, where the story bits start coalescing into a more recognizable whole. As a fan of serialized television, it feels like a payoff seeing those bits that I couldn't make heads or tails off coming into focus and showing their worth, a validation of the time I spent watching the show as worthwhile. For Justified specifically, this moment is perhaps the second biggest of any season, right after whatever explosive resolution the writers come up with. The show is rightly invested in giving viewers an organic story worth watching, and while it makes for a great payoff, it also makes for frustrated early viewing, and that makes these episodes something of a relief as well.

Justified - "Thick as Mud"

Season 3, Episode 5 

“I'm a desperate man.” 

Playing off of the recent world building that the past two episodes have done, “Thick as Mud” uses that same mentality by giving us an episode that wouldn't in theory seem like it could work, but excels and pops when on scree. And it's all thanks to the show focusing on one characters, perhaps the most pathetic in it's entire roster: one Dewey Fuckin' Crowe.

When we first met Dewey back in the pilot, Raylan quickly got the jump on him, handcuffing him to the steering wheel of the car that he was driving and busting up his nose in the process. Ever since then, Dewey's come to represent the the worst of the Harlan crime world – he's dumb, overly complacent with being a second (or third, or fourth) fiddle to whatever criminal enterprise he happens to be a part of, and he'll follow any slight charismatic criminal leader anywhere, often to his own detriment. To that end, centering an episode around such a pathetic figure would seem to be a risky move on the part of a show that often asks us to bask in the badassery of the characters on screen, but it's a gamble that paid off by giving us one of the best – and funniest – episodes that the show has ever produced. 

Justified - "Harlan Roulette"/"The Devil You Know"

Season 3, Episodes 3-4

One of the things that's impressed me so much about this season of Justified is how, over the past two episodes especially, it's begun to cull the inhabitants of the world that it's build over the prior two seasons, to the extent that it's becoming something like the drama equivalent of The Simpsons, or perhaps more appropriately, Parks and Recreation. It's an important step for the show to take, because it means that anytime that the show needs to rely on a standalone cases – as it's done every episode so far this season – it can use characters that we already know, and having these personalities drive the cases, and that makes them far more interesting. 

Justified - "The Gunfighter"/"Cut Ties"

Season 3, Episode 1-2 

“Not much call for cowboys these days.” 

Within television criticism, there is this inherent fascination with something that many refer to as “The Leap”, that moment where a television show stops being good, and starts becoming great. For many, Justified's second season was the show's Leap, as it left those things that were bogging it down (specifically, the overabundance of standalone cases in relation to the seasonal arc) behind, and began to tell far more involving, character-based stories that made the show shoot to the top of many critic's top ten lists. It's a bit of a head-scratcher, then, of what to make of the first two episodes of this third season. If the show already made The Leap, what do we call it when it seems to be getting even better?

Justified: "Bloody Harlan"

Season 2, Episode 13

A fantastic end to a fantastic season

Justified: "Reckoning"

Season 2, Episode 12

The show’s finest – and quietest – hour

Justified: "Full Commitment"

Season 2, Episode 11

An episode that’s mostly setup fails to step up in the standalone plot

Justified: "Debts and Accounts"

Season 2, Episode 10

A busy episode sees everyone dealing with consequences.

Justified: "Brother's Keeper"

Once I try waking up a passed out man using bong water, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump…

Justified: "The Spoil"

Once I make my own educated guess as to what Mag’s secret plan is, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump….

TV Newsline: FX renews our faith in television

After the sadness of last week's cancellation of Lights Out (and the still lingering sadness some may have over the cancellation of Terriers, like this blogger does), FX has finally been able to deliver some good news, as it announced today that it has renewed the current "ass kicking" show, Justified, for a third season.

(For those of you still wondering, no word yet on the future on Archer, though expect that news any day now.)

Justified: "Save My Love"

Once I figure out how much money I could get for my dirty gym clothes, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump….

Justified: "Blaze of Glory"

Once I learn the difference between dynamite and road flares, I'll offer up a review of last night's episode, after the jump...

Justified: "Cottonmouth"

Once I accustom myself to referring to weed as “herbal relief,” I'll offer up a review of tonight's episode, after the jump....