Justified's Finale and Future Possibilities

Justified concluded its 6th and final season tonight with about as perfect a show as you could want, which touched all the bases and then some.

Raylan goes down in an old-fashioned gun fight, but lives because the bullet went through the top of his hat and just grazed his head.   Meanwhile, he killed the gunslinger who drew on him - not Boyd, who was never as fast as Raylan with a gun.

Indeed, Boyd had earlier declined to draw on Raylan, when Raylan goaded him, because Boyd was too smart for that.  He knew Raylan would kill him in any quick duel.   So Boyd played the only card he had, telling Raylan he would have to kill Boyd in cold blood if Raylan wanted him dead, Boyd betting that Raylan was too decent deep down to do that, and Boyd figured right.  He goes off to prison instead of a grave, and Raylan gets to do the right thing by Art.

Back to the old-West-like draw in which Raylan is grazed:  Ava uses the opportunity to escape from Raylan yet again, and she stays out of his sight for four years.    When Raylan catches up with her he learns she has a boy - Boyd's boy - but even before that it's pretty clear that Raylan wasn't there to bring Ava in.  He just wanted to show her he could find her.   A great ending for these two characters.

And Raylan does one last thing for Ava: he goes to see Boyd in prison with a convincing story that Ava is dead.  Boyd apparently believes him, and that's where this great series ends.

But does it?  Is the story really over for these characters?   Well, Boyd is if nothing else preternaturally clever, and I'm thinking he'll sooner or later see some kind of hole in Raylan's story and realize Raylan was lying.   Meanwhile, we've seen that Raylan's not with Winona in Florida, and I'm still thinking he has some love for Ava, so - well, he can always go back out to California to be with her.

Who knows what the future will bring.  As for the past, Justified can be counted as one of the best shows in our current golden age of television.  I didn't review it here as often as I should have.   I'll miss it.

See also Justified 6.1: Low-Flying Duck ... Justified 5.1: Finest Words Around ...  Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd Quotes Asimov and Keynes



crime involving squirrels

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Justified 6.1: Low Flying Duck

Justified returned for its final season this week, with a crackling strong episode that got right to the core of the entire series, and will no doubt dominate these concluding episodes: Raylan vs. Boyd.

And although it was good to see Raylan back with his patented style and swagger, the center of gravity in this episode belonged to Boyd, who not only delivered the best line of the night - "I'm so hungry, I could eat the ass out of low flying duck" - vintage Justified - but killed poor Dewey.

Coupled with the silently powerful last scene of Boyd looking at Ava as she sleeps, the killing of Dewey says it all about what we can expect from Boyd this season: he's a survivor, if nothing else, and he's not going to let anything or anyone get in the way of that.   He was looking at Ava with something other or more than love.  There was just a hint of evil gleam in Boyd's eyes - superb acting, as always, by Walton Goggins - and this is telling us that, yes, Boyd could even sacrifice Ava if he got any inkling that she was working against him.

And, in fact, in the other most telling scene of the episode, Raylan is doing just that to Ava, applying his customary maximum pressure on her to work with him against Boyd.  This, I've got to say, puts Raylan in not the best light.  Surely he knows that, if Boyd gets wind of what Ava is doing, he could well kill her.   And Raylan thinks, what, that's ok?  Or that he's so omnipotent he could stop that?   A hazardous game to play, with someone else's life.

At this point, Boyd likely has no specific idea of what Ava may be up to.  But his instincts are right on target in being uncomfortable about Ava.   And if she makes even one mistake, well ...

Meanwhile, it was good to see everyone else back in motion in Justified, including Art, who's recovering, and Winona, with her and Raylan's adorable little baby.  Winona also gets off a memorable line, wondering aloud what could be more important to Raylan than spending this precious time with his little baby.  What, indeed, is the story of Justified.

See also Justified 5.1: Finest Words Around ...  Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd Quotes Asimov and Keynes



different kind of crime

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Intelligence 1.6: Helix meets Rectify and Justified

Intelligence 1.6 zoomed into Helix territory last night, with a sharp story that had Gabriel, Riley, and Cyber Command on what looks like a bio-terror virus-gone-wild case, but turns out to be our own military up to no good on behalf of what one general sees as a greater good for our country.

But the best part of the plot is the puzzle of the set-up in which Patient Zero turns out to be someone we just saw getting the death sentence in Texas, so how can he be the vector of an epidemic which started after he was dead?   Turns out our military spirited him away after injecting him with something not immediately lethal, to use him as a guinea pig for development of a vaccine for a possible terrorist attack via horrendous virus.

Some nice resonance in this twist on capital punishment to Rectify and last season's The Killing, and the contribution to viral fiction - writ large not only in Helix but of course The Walking Dead and even in National Geographic's Zombie Earth specu-docu-drama, where, believe it or not, I had a brief walk-on appearance as an "expert" - was good, too.

And speaking of welcome interconnections, it was great to see Nick Searcy as the wrong-minded General Carter, whose plan for the vaccine goes awry when the condemned prisoner escapes from the military lab, and becomes Patient Zero as he mixes into the crowd.  It's been a good week for Searcy, who put in one of his best performances on Justify last week, as Chief Deputy U. S. Marshal Mullen makes like the inimitable Givens in a diner.  (I'm glad I finally got a chance to mention Justified and Rectify in the same post.)

Back to Intelligence, we also find out more about how Gabriel came to be embedded with his chip, including that two previous candidates died and another wound up paralyzed in the process.  He did it in the hope it would help him find Amelia, we learn again, but with her gone now, he admits to Riley that he thinks all the time about whether it was all worth it.

Intelligence is shaping up as one of the best new shows on television this season.

See also Intelligence Debuts ... Intelligence 1.2: Lightning Changes ...Intelligence 1.3: Edward Snowden and 24 ... Intelligence 1.4: Social Media Weaponry ... Intelligence 1.5: The Watch

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Like biological science fiction? Try The Silk Code

Justified Season 5 Premiere: The Finest Words Around

A good laconic, trash-talking, smart and sassy debut of Justified season 5 last night.  Among the high points -

• Raylan electing to talk to Winona and see their baby via Skype, rather than in person, even though Raylan is not very far away in Florida.  Sort of says it all about Raylan's inability to fully relate emotionally, and come to terms with the people he loves, doesn't it?  It was a quiet, very powerful scene.
• Wendy Crowe - sister of villain Darryl Crowe - catching Raylan's and everyone's eye.  A good addition to the cast and a good potential romantic interest for Raylan.
• Speaking of Darryl Crowe - he's played by Michael Rapoport - an excellent character actor in league with Timothy Oliphant, and therefore good to see.
• Boyd continuing not to take any guff from anyone, as he pursues his business of getting Ava out of prison and making his money - yes, in that order, as Boyd sufficiently demonstrates.

The strength of Justified has always been its nonstop wise-cracking dialogue - probably the best word play on television - and this was in no short supply last night.  Not only Raylan and Boyd, but even the lesser characters have no shortage of quick and cutting observations - about life, the world, our popular culture, and of course each other as they go about their police and criminal business. They're also always up on appropriate current events, as Raylan's partner in Florida demonstrates when he taunts a bad guy whose boat has not quite been revved up for its trip to Cuba about the "old lady" who recently swam the distance.

So we've got alligators in Florida, drug dealers in Detroit, and who knows what else joining our customary vortex in Kentucky on Justified this year, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd Quotes Asimov and Keynes




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Under the Dome 1.9: The New Woman

Leave it to Under the Dome to pull a rabbit out of a hat - or a major new powerful character we haven't seen before - in episode 1.9, with the summer series three quarters over.   Well, in all fairness, she did play an important role in the very first episode.  Barbie was talking to her on the phone when he was burying Julia's husband Peter.

This gives some plausibility to how Maxine got into the dome - she was already in Chester's Mill when the dome descended - though of course she could have been anywhere in the world on the other end of the phone connection to Barbie.  And the phone call doesn't explain why we haven't seen her since then.   Maxine says she was watching Barbie and Big Jim, but how come nobody saw her watching?

A big point in Maxine's favor, however, is that she's played by Natalie Zea, of not only Justified but The Following fame.   This opens the possibility that Raylan Givens or Ryan Hardy may next show up under the dome - nah, I'm only kidding - but Zea does lend a punch to every role she plays.

Could she be the fourth hand?  That's the title of this episode, and the question it ends on.  Angie, Joe, and Norrie account for the other three, so who is the fourth?  With any luck, it's not any of the many characters who have gone on to a better place beyond the dome - whether by stray or intended bullets or whatever reason - because getting their hand on the egg in the barn would be difficult.  One place to look is into who has gone into a fugue and talked of pink stars falling, as Joe and Norrie and now Angie with the monarch butterfly on her arm have just done.

The surrealistic poker game continues, with the search for a fourth of a kind.

See also Under the Dome: Superior Summer Science Fiction ... Under the Dome 1.2: Adrenaline and Seepage ... Under the Dome 1.3: Way Under ...Under the Dome 1.4: Good Night for Junior, Until ... Under the Dome 1.5: vs the Bomb ... Under the Dome 1.6: Sentient Biosphere ... Under the Dome 1.7: The Nucleus ... Under the Dome 1.8: The Monarch

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Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd quotes Asimov and Keynes

I've been quietly watching and much enjoying Justified on FX the past few years - it's that kind of show - but decided it was time to bestow a review upon it.

I picked a good time.  The first episode of the 4th season had Boyd Crowder (played by the brilliant Walton Goggins of The Shield fame) delivering not one but too sage literary allusions, both from among my all-time favorite writers and thinkers.   Isaac Asimov got a Boyd shout-out about death being nothing - Asimov of the Foundation and robot series (and, in my view, the best science fiction writer in history) - followed by quote from John Maynard Keynes, whose economics (government spending is the way out of recession and depression) I and nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman very much agree with.  Krugman, by the way, is also a big fan of Asimov's Foundation series, and while I'm at it, I should mention that another quote from Keynes - "when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, Sir?" - is among my all-time favorite quotes.

See, that's the kind series Justified is.   You can get a universe of profundity and allusions in just a grain of a scene or conversation.  Boyd's erudition is approaching that of the legendary drug boss Stringer Bell on The Wire (who had Adam's Smith's Wealth of Nations on his book shelf).  And Boyd's relationship with Raylan Givens (well played by Timothy Olyphant) - Boyd's a white-knight with dark surges criminal and Raylan, his cousin, a US marshall - is one of the best two-sides of a coin relationship in TV drama today.  In fact, family is the primary mechanism of Justified, with Raylan's father and on-again-off-again wife also propelling the show.

As with previous seasons, the plots at the beginning are diffuse and gradual.  There's not much point in my even telling you about them.  But like tectonic plates, you can rest assured that they will come together with explosive power by the end of the season to make a uniquely satisfying piece of television narrative.

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Hey - here's a postcard Isaac Asimov sent to me when I sent him an essay I had written about the Foundation series in 1979:

And here are two of my own science fiction novels:

"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"There's a delightfully old-fashioned feel to The Plot to Save Socrates. . . . Levinson's cool, spare style reminded me of the writing of Isaac Asimov. . ." - Colin Harvey, Strange Horizons

Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max

How can a bullet in one body have bone traces with two different ages, one old and the other one really really older?  This might have been the makings of a good science fiction story - look for that next week - but in Bones 7.11 this was entre to a fine West Virginia Hatfield vs. McCoy family feud, and a custom of putting shards of bone from a hallowed ancestor into bullets.

Bones continues its mix this season of good science mystery and heart warming family reassembly.  Tonight it was Bones' father's turn, on hand to meet and take care of Christine, after she was suspended from day care (an honor!) because of Bones' keeping  too close tabs on the day care center.

Max and Bones have had a difficult relationship, to say the least.  He left his daughter when she was a little girl, and Bones has found that hard to forgive.  He's been ferociously loyal and protecting of Bones in the series, weaving in and out of the law to do that.   Bones love him, but still doesn't trust him.  So of course he seems to have disappeared somewhere with Christine, even though it was only a slipped-out-of-pocket phone, which can happen to anyone.

Booth's innate sense of what is right for his new family is better than ever, and he sees how good Max is for Christine as well as Bones.   He gets two nice long kisses from Bones, early in the episode, as reward - and in public, on a case, which makes this even sweeter.

The only unsettling thing in this otherwise soul satisfying episode are the tainted truffles ingested by Hodgins and Daisy.  Personally, I would never eat a wild mushroom for fear of being poisoned, though for all I know I already have in some restaurant.   So far, my brain is still enjoying Bones, and for that matter, Justified, which this jaunt to West Virginia reminded me of ....

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates




"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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