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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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

Damages Concludes Season 2 with Great Acting and Surprises

Tip-top Season 2 finale for Damages on FX last night, with some excellent surprises.

We've been treated for the whole season to scenes of Ellen shooting Patty. At first, we didn't know it was Patty. But then we saw Patty was indeed the person Ellen was talking to, and, worse, waving a gun at. In the past few episodes, we've seen Patty staggering out of the apartment, bleeding ... and the FBI guy phoning in that Ellen had shot Patty.

But could Ellen really have killed Patty like this? She had motive - she was sure that Patty had tried to kill her last year. But would she shoot Patty, unprovoked, at point blank range?

Turns out, in a well-plotted and motivated twist, that Ellen didn't shoot Patty at all - she fired over her head. So why was Patty bleeding? She had been stabbed in the elevator on the way to see Patty, which also explains why she had looked so shaken during her ensuing conversation with Ellen.

Also surprising but well motivated and very satisfying was the way Wes (well played by Timothy Olyphant) not only walked away from killing Ellen, but became her defender, and even saved Patty's life (after the FBI guy left to bleed to death in the elevator on the way down, after Ellen had left).

So Damages can chalk up a second powerful season. With especially superb acting this year by William Hurt and John Doman - who was great as the Acting Commish on The Wire - speaking of which, it was good to see Clarke Peters (the incomparable Freamon on The Wire) play a political, ruthless bad guy this time on Damages.

Other special shoutouts - SNL's Darrell Hammond as the demented killing machine the Deacon - I hope he comes back next year. Ted Danson was great again as Frobisher, and Michael Nouri as Patty's husband (now thrown out, like just about everyone else in Patty's life). Rose Byrne was attractive as Ellen, but the character felt a little more limited in range than in the first season. (It may well that she won't be back in the 3rd season).

Glenn Close was incomparable this season, as she was last, and I'm looking forward to more of this in Season 3.



See also: Lying about Damages ... 2.2: A Good World of Hurt ... Damages 1-10

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