October 16, 2013

Justified Season One

Over the last couple years I have heard a lot of good things about the FX show “Justified”. I wanted to check it out. When I cancelled cable last year I was even considering using some of that money I saved each month to buy the series on dvd or iTunes. I had enough other stuff to get caught up on and I didn’t pull the trigger. I’m glad I waited because seasons 1–3 of the series became available on the Amazon video streaming service for free with a prime membership.

I finished up the first season last week, and it is good. Timothy Olaphant does a great job as Raylan Givens. He is at the same time badass and broken. There were plenty of interesting supporting characters as well, but Raylan is what makes the show so good.

At the beginning, the show was very episodic in nature. It played sort of like any other hour-long police drama on network tv. The overall quality was better and the violence more severe, but it had the same formula. By the halfway point of the season it had more of a continuous story line and that is when it really started to shine. I got hooked into the drama, and sped through the second half of the season.
In the end I feel like the resolution was a bit anti-climactic [1]. There was also a recurring influence of this far-flug Miami drug cartel that acted as a strange unseen force pushing the plot along. [2]

This far into the series I don’t have too much to complain about. The show had to find its footing in the first season. I think it did that and I am looking forward to seasons 2 & 3. It appears that each season is going to be a mostly self contained plot that stretches from beginning to end, unless they change it up going forward.
I’m glad I started watching Justified. It is good tv. Hopefully the subsequent seasons come free on Amazon streaming, but if they don’t I will buy them.
  1. This seems to be a common theme.  ↩
  2. The first few moments in the pilot episode set up the Miami connection, but it seemed crazy these same people would have so much involvement in Raylan’s hometown in Kentucky.  ↩


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