This week’s Justified more than makes up for this season’s lulls. The Marshals go to war with Theo Tonin’s envoys over Drew Thompson, letting loose a thrilling torrent of barbs, blood and badassery. Not being a fourteen-year-old boy, I use the term “badass” deliberately and carefully, just as Justified delivers it. It comes not from […]
It was a straightforward, long-awaited Justified this week. In an opening scene, Raylan spells out that to “hash something out” comes from the French for cut; like hatchet, or as Raylan puts it: to cut through the bullshit. And that seems to be the intention of this episode. First and foremost – and huge spoilers […]
People are dropping like flies along the way towards Drew Thompson. It’s a murder-heavy episode, but the most important one comes first: Arlo Givens, Harlan County’s Worst Father, dies of a fatal meeting between scissors and heart. Like his son after him, Arlo goes out with pizazz, on his own terms. He dies fighting, and […]
Perhaps combined last weeks over-bloated Justified and this weeks light episode could have made one interesting story. The Drew Thompson Mystery does not appear to be complicated enough to pad out an entire season, and so Raylan faces yet more easily dispatched obstacles. To make up for Raylan’s strange storyline, Boyd attends a high society […]
“Footchase” reveals a key problem in Justified’s new direction: without a central villain to organize around, the episode drags along, weighed down by a mess of plots and characters. The Drew Thompson Mystery is interesting in previous meticulously balanced episodes, which the sixth episode certainly was not. The show struggles to balance the nebulous mass […]
After spending the first four episodes apart, Justified’s hero and anti-hero finally meet again, brought together by familial ties to this season’s increasingly complex central mystery. Appropriately, the episode is titled “Kin,” and after last weeks lull, it’s a return to form. Justified’s is built on the premise (thematically; very literally) that eventually everyone must […]
This weeks Justified was an inevitable lull. The plot this time around wraps up the loose ends created by more than a few birds flying the coop. The episode has little to do with the overall season, and winds up seeming a bit out of place with some badly delivered dialogue and inevitable outcomes. We […]
The title, “Truth and Consequences,” of this weeks Justified is an apt summary of the episode. Truths are revealed; consequences are felt. First: Raylan learns the truth about Lindsey. Now that Winona has left Raylan for Kevin Bacon, and the writers are, mercifully, not trying to spice up Raylan’s life with any kind of inner-turmoil, […]