A thread for JUSTIFIED, a TV show on FX starring Timothy Olyphant

otm - or lack thereof in that case!

― rocky dennis horror show (Pillbox), Wednesday, February 6, 2013 10:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it was definitely a reaction, just an amazingly restrained one in a classic wynn brody stylee. loved it.

i mean wynn duffy

but yeah, it was definitely nice to see the mists begin to dispel around the longer arc this episode. i guess i was pretty meh on his barmaid gf and her whole deal

This show is, was and remains awesome. However ... anyone else getting, per Ebert, a "Principle of the Unassigned Character, formerly known less elegantly as the Law of Economy of Character Development" vibe from Patton Oswalt?

This principle teaches us that the prominent character who seems to be extraneous to the action will probably hold the key to it.

This show is not lacking for local color, so it seems weird to suddenly assign a prominent role to a recognizable actor, especially since we have never seen that character before, which is strange, given how often he keeps popping up and overlapping with Raylan this season. Factor in the amount of effort they've taken to paint him as a bumbling fool, and I wouldn't be shocked if he were some mastermind key to the whole disappearing man/drugs mystery.

I don't think that's going to be the case.

I'm hoping one of the last remaining unused Deadwood alum plays Drew Thompson, assuming he winds up still being alive. (Brad Dourif? Titus Welliver? Ian McShane?)

Needs to be William Sanderson.

Oswalt clearly has to play a bigger role than he has now, given how much screen time he's had (more than Raylan's pregnant ex-wife, even, who was AWOL til this ep). Hopefully it won't be the "bumbling deputy shows up and saves the day at the last minute, but dies doing it" variety. His lack of hesitation in stabbing that girl in the foot implies there's more to him than comic relief.

have it on pretty good word that aaron carter is gonna play drew thompson

drew's party (come get it)

have it on even better authority that all the members of new kids on the block, NSYNC and Backstreet Boys will play an inbred hill family gang in the future.

fatone would be sick on this show

You won't be seeing much of Winona, she's a regular on The Following now.

I'm afraid to read the thread because I'm a few episodes behind, but I am enjoying the fact that the little kid from Jurassic Park is the preacher guy.

Patton Oswalt's acting bothers me.

Just wait til they let him switch it up, drop the doofus routine, and go all bad guy on you. Mark my words ...

You won't be seeing much of Winona, she's a regular on The Following now.

Oh, give it a few months.

They shoot it around Los Angeles – one of my friends up in the more mountainous section of Pasadena said that there were signs on his street saying that they shouldn't be alarmed if they heard gunfire or explosions because they were shooting Justified.

I really like this season! That is all.

Yep - replacing the "big bad" (I hate that phrase) with an ongoing mystery plot is a nifty idea to stop the show repeating itself. Although I guess the last season was kind of a deconstruction of that sort of concept anyway (by the end Quarles is a totally feeble antagonist).

Also:

http://i.imgur.com/612fNNo.jpg

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Tweek

i love this show. raylan givens seems so aware that he is the main character of a tv show and therefore can't die. i keep expecting him to turn to the camera and raise his eyebrows like tom selleck on magnum pi.

lool otm

yeah, this is some peak efficiency shit going on here where everything moves so swiftly and is so carefully calibrated that you're surprised when the episodes over
i count seven, maybe eight, simultaneous plot threads developed in this episode. doing that and still being comprehensible is tough.

finally "caught up" with this show for the first time ever. still diggin' it.

forks otm: i'm really impressed with how many threads they've got going...and they just keep adding new ones! olympic storytelling, lol

yeah, this is some peak efficiency shit going on here where everything moves so swiftly and is so carefully calibrated that you're surprised when the episodes over

See also: Elmore Leonard.

i probably wound up watching s3 and s4 so far in a two week period. It's funny how, obviously, a lot has happened in that period, and on another level, not much. "A bunch of criminals tried to outsmart each other, Raylan and Boyd got caught up in it, but managed to get out ok."

The only real evolution is how everyone at the Marshal's office just seems to accept they're going to be focused on Raylan's shit now, and not get little one-off episodes about other work they allegedly do.

thank god; the one offs with those guys mostly suck
except for the chief, who is cool

i miss when i didn't know whether a character would come back or not. ie, stephen root initially seemed like a one off. but i don't think anything's particularly "sucked" in any season.

yeah i didn't think they sucked

I actually really like the way the other marshals connect to the show, whether underscoring latent racism or the bond of army experience or at the very least the leverage of power that being a local boy always provides, no matter how qualified the alternative.

i liked how ron eldard said "oh." when the other marshall dude asked him where he served

what i really like about justified is they realized they painted themselves into a corner with winona and ava so they just rewrote both characters from scratch and then plotted from there. at the time it pissed me off but it's paid off handsomely

solo character ep i thought kinda sucked: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1649574/

Yeah that one is prob the weakest single ep they've done, though as I recall it still has a couple of good moments.

I'm always happy with more Rachel.

im always amazed that anybody ever knows any of the names of any of the characters in tv shows except maybe the lead

xxxpost -- that was in reference to the one-offs.

i guess in a sense those one-offs worked to help establish a world, and once they did that, it's kind of hard to bring in new characters other than have them be traveling hooligans either low on the totem pole, or from up high interacting with wynn duffy. even bringing in patton oswalt required this whole "oh hey i'm the constable you've never met before but i've been here the whole time" exposition (i similarly love that the motivating incident for s4 appears to be a serious marshal's office case coincidentally found in RAYLAN'S DAD's WALL).

still, i just love the idea of a show so confident that it can throw in little one-off tangents that have only the slightest obvious connection to the ongoing narrative.

yeah, this is some peak efficiency shit going on here where everything moves so swiftly and is so carefully calibrated that you're surprised when the episodes over
See also: Elmore Leonard.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 9 February 2013 18:49 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not trying to challops here, but I think this show does Leonard better than Leonard does.

Leonard has said as much, at least as far as this character goes. That's why he brought him back for another book.

Thought the most recent episode was relatively week. a lot of plot, but not a lot of motion, and it seemed really short when it ended abruptly with the proposal. Or should I say, proposal slash death warrant.

Kind of loved the proposal scene, but yeah, the rest was a bit "off," even the dialogue.

was particularly bummed to have a new group of thugs introduced and dispatched without actually getting to know them at all. Also disquieted by the decision to bring a showkiller like Gerald McRaney into the Rogues' Gallery instead of another 90s indie cinema figure.

but, y'know, #season4problems

I'd have been happy with McRaney as Drew Thompson, actually. love that dude and thought he was a bit wasted here.

Incidentally, the sheer number of supremely entertaining and/or superlative adaptations based on or inspired by Leonard books and stories sort of belies the supposition that "Justified" is uniquely special. "Out of Sight," "Hombre," "3:10 to Yuma," "Get Shorty," "52 Pickup" etc. - Leonard FTW.

making an entertaining TV show inspired by a short story is pretty different than making a film

When they tried to embellish the world of Get Shorty we got Be Cool.

Yeah, but there's more shit going down behind the scenes in a major Hollywood production than a relatively under the radar show. Point being, "Justified" has been pretty consistent from episode one, and that's the one based on the story. There hasn't been a lot of character development or anything. "Justified" has been awesome and awesomely entertaining just running around in circles

Also, honestly, "Get Shorty" was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld with a script by Scott Frank, with an across the board A-list cast. "Be Cool" is pretty much B-list across the board, from the director down. Even Travolta had just done "Pulp Fiction" when "Get Shorty" came out. "Be Cool" followed "The Punished," among many pieces of late career shit. Never read "Be Cool" the book, but I have a feeling the source material was not the problem.