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

did they swap out showrunners/writers or something?

Damn, they're picking up the pace.
poor mikey

I got hold of one of the Elmore Leonard Raylan Givens books recently. The 2nd one Riding the Rap. Found it in a charity shop. Hadn't been aware how much he'd appeared in print. The credits to the show mention a short story.
Anyway it's Leonard so it's quite readable.
Apparently there's a pre-Justified tv movie of the 1st book called Pronto. I looked for a torrent of it but couldn't find one. It stars someone who later turned up as a Justified character.

I don't remember not enjoying the last series before the current one. Was it widely panned?

Mikey's last second change of heart on Wynn's behalf seemed forced and false to me. What the hell did he think Katherine was going to do with Duffy when he (M) called her to give him (D) up -- give him a stern talking-to? This season is running out of steam (Givens is still too much a bystander in his own show), but still much better than last season. I figure Sam Elliott and Scary Babyface will get theirs in the next episode, then the final Givens/Ava/Boyd showdown in the finale.

Graham Yost was on Fresh Air last Thursday -- pretty good interview. Apparently Elmore Leonard was more hands-off than I would have guessed. He hated getting story notes when he wrote for the screen, so he didn't give out many himself.

If there was going to be a spinoff from this show, I wish it would be built on the Rachel Brooks character. A 2-front fight against the bad guys and racism/sexism from her own colleagues would be an interesting show. Mullen and Vasquez have both committed nut-punching offenses against her this season.

What are folks' thoughts on the idea of Wynn and Mikey as a couple? I feel like there were hints dropped, but obviously nothing definitive, ever. Still, some of the stuff they argued about felt like it went a little beyond boss/henchman.

I didn't get any sense of it until Mikey's "Hold me, Wynn" death, but that was more of a reference to the end of Reservoir Dogs than anything.

This season in particular has got a lot of humour from the fact that Wynn & Michael have an unhealthy intimate relationship for an employer and his employee/goon/manservant. The show has never been above gay jokes so it's possible they meant to creepily sexualise it for Smithers lols; in any case Michael's preposterous late burst of fealty to his abusive employer and subsequent fight was one of the most audacious things they've done so far in terms of violence implausibility & bad taste.

Personally I think this series has been fucking great. Steenburger & Elliot have been killing it & all the convolutions/side characters haven't killed the momentum the way they occasionally have before (despite the grand raylan/boyd endgamd being completely sidelined!)

My predictions a few episodes in were 1) Raylan will obv end up in that grave like they've been foreshadowing for fucking ever, and 2) this legal weed land grabbing plot is clearly just an excuse to have Raylan say "realitor" one more time this season. Ridiculously I was only right about one of those.

xp sorry I got a bit av club there I didn't really mean to say "audacious"

Finale tonight. I'm gonna miss it, but this has been a fine last season.

yeah, they went out on a high if occasionally absurd note after a dud of a prior season.
my money is on dead boyd and badly injured raylan going home to daughter and wife in florida, likely dead ava.

I'm betting on Boyd, Markham, Boon as the only casualties.

And possibly Wynn.

Markham for sure, gunslinger asshole kid for sure. I can't believe they're going to kill wynn; he's unkillable.
most of the marshalls should survive.

Art will likely live, as he had his near-death scare. I make no predictions on Raylan, Boyd, Boone, Markham, or Wynn.

I will throw my television through the window if they kill Rachel or Tim.

Boyd, Boone, Markham, Ava: dead
Raylan: alive if injured.
Wynn: Still living in the year 3000

Awwww, man. I'll be major bummed if they kill Ava. I love her with my heart.

she has burned a lot of bridges

i find rachel to be the weakest actor on that show by far and a general disappointment whenever she enters the storyline. they don't know what to do with her and she isn't helping.
killing tim would be a dumb move.
If they kill raylan, i wouldn't be shocked but it seems like they need closure with his daughter/wife if they go that route and i dunno how they manage it.

and I feel like they have to kill somebody who the audience would hurt for XP to myself

It would certainly take this already great season to a legendary ending if they have the balls to kills Ava and/or Raylan, amongst others.

Actually, I'm kind of convincing myself that Ava is gonna die. Boyd, too. Not Bonnie and Clyde style, but they're the two who want to get out of Harlan the most, and like the song says...

Raylan already got out. He's there by choice. He's not gonna die. Injured, yes.

yep.
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/04/justified-a-rebel-of-golden-age-television/390486/

So many shows add secondary characters who turn out to be poorly developed, or opt not to add any at all precisely because it’s so hard to do them right. But from the rollicking mafia man turned informant Wynn Duffy, to the ruthless Robert Quarles, to this season’s leathery, magnetic big bad Avery Markham (Sam Elliott, another actor born to be on Justified), the show’s recurring characters—its villains, especially—were rarely thinly written, and always a ton of fun.

I say rarely because the fifth season of the show was what can be best described as a creative misfire. Michael Rapaport, who played the main villain that season, was the show’s first and only serious miscasting. The plot, normally intricate and layered in the best way possible, became unnecessarily convoluted in the same way that many shows that are on the air for a while tend to do. Even at its worst moments, Justified was still a good show—certainly better than most—and it’s miraculous that it didn’t fail much more than just once, given how fearless it was at taking familiar TV conventions and turning them on their heads.

Well that was a lot more low-key and bittersweet than I was expecting. I liked it!

i'm gonna have to think on this one but yeah i think they made good decisions. not predictable!

best decision: Raylan/Winona not working out. absolutely true to both characters.

my girl said definitively "she wouldn't be with that guy" and then wouldn't elucidate

Has she already forgotten Gary?

the hat thing was very silly

The hat thing was poor judgement. The whole scene with Ava, I was distracted by the stupid hat with its stupid little tag on the brim.

Terrific show, terrific finale, and the first season where I didn't think "well that was good, but not season 2 good".

Anyway I am stoked they went for a happyish ending with the central cast all surviving, and somehow not being a copout at all. In fact it seemed like the best of all possible choices for an ending.

Been avoiding this thread cuz I still need to see the last season - want to do it binge style - but I finally got around to watching what I THOUGHT was an inxs doc I dvr'ed on Showtime which turned out to be the second half of an Australian tv miniseries about the band, chronicling the miniseries. Took me a sec to realize DEWEY CROWE was playing their manager, demanding they tour and screaming "you're not nick cave!" at hutchence after Max Q and "you're not grunge!" during Welcome to wherever you are. Very disorienting, even if I was vaguely aware he wasn't from the US.

Whoops, I meant to write "chronicling the post-kick years"

A few nights ago I watched Nell, for some reason. Nick Searcy and Jeremy Davies are both in it, and play characters pretty similar to those they play in Justified.

Anyway I am stoked they went for a happyish ending with the central cast all surviving, and somehow not being a copout at all. In fact it seemed like the best of all possible choices for an ending.

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, April 16, 2015 7:20 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this really impressed and stuck with me. especially in contrast to the Sons Of Anarchy finale.

Justified became a pretty entertaining circus of scenery-chewing character actors by the end. Boon was an especially fun character, considering that i'd previously only seen him as a total wimp on Parenthood and in a couple of horror movies.

just finished this up. final season was so good and the finale was perfect. such a weirdly heartwarming ending w boyd in the prison. those two had such great chemistry. really grew to love his interaction with his partner tim too. gonna miss this show a lot.

in retrospect, i was really happy with that ending.

I must cop to not really enjoying Elmore's novels, but I was missing Justified and picked up Freaky Deaky to get a fix. It's terrific - first Leonard book I really enjoyed. Maybe seeing his writing through the prism of Justified has fixed it for me - or maybe it's just a pretty good book. The hero is very Raylan-esque, kind of tough, sadsack asshole but very likeable. In fact he's much more like Raylan than the guy in Pronto or Riding the Rap.

Started watching this show a few weeks ago, waiting for Better Call Saul, and I'm in love with everything about it. I had some weird ill conceived idea about F/X television shows that was unjustified. Ha, anyway about to finished the second season and I foresee it only getting better.

it's one of the best shows of the past decade, full stop.

Re-watched Season 2 earlier this week myself (I own the first two on DVD, watched 3-6 via Amazon). Really solid, and even funnier than I remembered. I think I'm gonna re-watch Season 3 and see if I like it better than I did at the time (Neal McDonough's and Mykelti Williamson's characters both bugged me).

I always found it very satisfying

Loved every season

Def a rewatchable show

s4 is the best season imo

you can call any season you want the best season as long as you don't say the 5th season because then you're trolling

Or you're Michael Rapaport.

this show has the best ending of any recent show imo, the final scene is fairly tear-jerking

aye it was perfect

very satisfying ending

Best dialogue of any show

As mentioned above, seriously recommend Freaky Deaky (retrograde 80s sexual politics aside) for anyone missing the show