The most recent episode has the Governor and Rick meeting for a showdown in a dingy barn. At first, I was expecting a few pithy comments, a quick draw, and the death of the Governor. Then I remembered I wasn’t watching Justified. This is the Walking Dead, where tension often gets ratcheted to eleven. Soon […]
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 […]
AMC’s lovable band of zombie slayers got a slight reprieve in this week’s episode fittingly named ‘Clear.’ Rick, Carl, and Michonne headed out of the prison for a daytrip to Rick’s hometown to supply up. A showdown with the unhinged Governor looms in the near future and for that they’ll need a few more bullets. […]
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 […]
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 […]