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 […]
Downton Abbey’s dramatic third season finale was full of progress and change. The changes were subtle at first, before reaching an ending that changed the course of the show. At first, I was frustrated with this episode. Like the show’s patriarch, Robert, it seemed Downton was digging its heels at anything that strayed from a […]
“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 […]
Downton Abbey can be a wildly inconsistent show. When it’s good, it’s an award winning period drama with plots that focus on historical and class issues. When it’s bad, it’s a melodrama with pretty costumes and plots worthy of the most ridiculous soap operas. It still wins awards, but you catch my drift. This week, […]
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, […]
The final season of Fringe was not a misstep, but a plummet off a cliff of stale, forced ideas. I am being melodramatic in order to care, at all, about the meandering storylines and wasted potential of this season. I can pinpoint the precise moment when my apathy turned to rage: in the ninth episode, […]