Justified, "Blind Spot": Don't make me a target

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as you think we're going to banter here...

"You think there's never going to be any consequences for this?" -Art

Raylan Givens began this series as a man in control - of his emotions, of predicting the actions of his opponents, and of winning any and every fight. As we enter the second half of this first season, his return to Kentucky, and the various headaches from his past that have come with it, now has him as a man in control of very little, save for his usual good aim and skill in a fight. He can keep it together when dealing with the amateurs and low-level thieves and killers he's faced in recent episodes, but put him in a room with Boyd Crowder as Boyd goes on about the Good Book, and all of Raylan's cool, all of his training, goes out the window, and he becomes every bit a 21st century Seth Bullock. His relationship with Ava has opened up all kinds of blind spots - to how he's risking his career, and to the dangers still posed from the Miami mob over his shooting of Tommy Bucks - and all of a sudden, Raylan looks less a superman than a mortal, fallible one.

After last week's episode tried to split its focus between a routine Raylan case and all the ongoing storylines, "Blind Spot" was devoted entirely to the various messes Raylan finds himself in, with Art, with the Crowders, and with Miami. And while I've quite enjoyed a bunch of the self-contained stories the show has done, there's no question that it's more intense, and more fun, when we're dealing with stories and characters continuing from week to week.

Walton Goggins was tremendous tonight (as was Timothy Olyphant at showing Raylan losing his cool). Goggins can go pretty broad at times, as he did in the series pilot, but ever since Boyd had his jailhouse conversion, he's been doing some really small, interesting work with the character. As Goggins plays him, you're never quite clear how much of the born-again thing is real and how much is Boyd just playing an angle. After all, Raylan told us in the pilot that Boyd was too smart to buy into the white supremacy nonsense, and was just doing it as a way to get over. It's entirely possible that's what he's doing here - that he knows it gets under Raylan's skin, and even that he knows he can survive whatever the other prisoners throw at him - but there's also a weird conviction to it. If it's all an act, would he really let things in the prison laundry go that far, not knowing his father was nearby and ready to save him?

And speaking of big, bad Bo Crowder, give a big welcome to Mr. M.C. Gainey, boys and girls. When I said a few weeks ago that the producers had to get a really imposing actor to play Bo after the off-screen build-up, Gainey (aka Tom Friendly from "Lost," among many, many bad-ass roles) was the kind of guy I had in mind.

We're very clearly pushing towards some kind of ultimate confrontation between Raylan, the Crowders and Miami in the second half, and I'm looking forward to every minute of it.

Some other thoughts:

• Better late than never, but I was glad to see Ava finally acknowledge that it's kind of a big deal, emotionally, that she killed her husband. Up until now, Ava's been temptress first, character second, and between the early scene in her bedroom and then her initiative in stopping the bad guys at the end, she seems both more like a real person and more like a good match for Raylan.

• And speaking of which, note Winona trying to mark her territory by going on and on with Ava about all the burdens of having been married to Raylan.

• Getting back to Seth Bullock, in an interesting bit of casting, the hitman from Miami was played by Ray McKinnon, who played the doomed reverend on "Deadwood" season one. Not only does he have history with Olyphant, but he and Goggins teamed up for "The Accountant," a 2001 short film that won both men an Oscar (and led to me sitting at home asking, "What on earth is Shane from 'The Shield' doing at the Academy Awards?").

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Justified, "The Collection": Art, gallery

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I can't keep staring at your nipples...

I was less troubled than many of you by the more self-contained natures of the early installments of "Justified," but "The Collection" was an episode where the arc stories were a whole lot more interesting than Raylan's case of the week. And that's despite a very strong guest cast (Brett Cullen, Tony Hale, Katherine LaNasa and the ever-reliable Robert Picardo) in that portion of the episode.

Part of the problem is that this is already the third story in six episodes about a group of thieves double-crossing and trying to kill each other. While that's a staple of crime fiction in general and Elmore Leonard books in particular, Leonard's books come out with much less frequency than episodes of "Justified," and by the time LaNasa's character started blackmailing Hale, all I could think was, "Oh, this again? And so soon?"

And unless an episodic story is executed as well as the Roland Pike one from "Long in the Tooth," it's just not going to stack up well next to Raylan's ongoing problems with his father, his ex-wife, his boss, the Crowder family, etc., etc., etc., and this was an episode that featured movement on all those fronts. One of the advantages of serialization is that, done right, we grow more invested in characters and their stories with each passing week, and that means the stories that aren't continuing have to work even harder to make an impression. It's not a coincidence that the one scene from the art forgery plot that really stood out for me was when Picardo showed Raylan his collection of burned Hitler paintings, because it was such an obvious parallel to how Raylan has built an entire life on defying Arlo Givens and men like him.

But in terms of the ongoing stories, "The Collection" worked splendidly. After Raylan dropped bodies in three of the first five episodes, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone started looking into him, and why not smilin' David Vazquez? And how much worse will said investigation become if Raylan's relationship with Ava screws up Vazquez's case against Boyd Crowder? (Always nice to have Walton Goggins back, by the way.)

And after noting last week that I was starting to forget Natalie Zea is even on the show, Winona was back in a big way here, asking Raylan to look into some shady people her new husband is involved with, and then showing up at Raylan's place to show us a bit of the crazy chemistry that led him to break into her house at the end of the pilot episode.

So Boyd's back (and has some dirt on Arlo), Winona needs Raylan's help, Raylan's in all kinds of trouble at work, and Ava has no interest in running away from Bo Crowder. With this many plates spinning, the show is clearly embracing its serialized qualities. Ultimately, that's a good thing.

A few other thoughts:

• As Raylan was questioning Brett Cullen about all the possible murders being committed, I got an odd Columbo vibe off of Raylan - albeit a Lt. Columbo who'd just as soon put a bullet between his suspect's eyes as trick him into incriminating himself.

• I understand that "Justified" is being done on a basic cable budget, and that therefore some corners have to be cut, but the cheapness of the green screen effects whenever two characters are having a conversation while driving has become really distracting. If they can't afford something more convincing, they need to start placing those conversations in some other setting. Maybe Raylan starts walking a lot?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Justified, "The Lord of War and Thunder": Raylan at the bat

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I get my dignity back...

"But our stories are our own, huh? We all got our cross to bear." -Arlo Givens

The early episodes of "Justified" dropped so many ominous hints about Raylan's father that the episode introducing Papa Givens was going to have a lot to live up to. Fortunately, "The Lord of War and Thunder" was up to expectations, thanks in part to the casting of ace character actor Raymond J. Barry as Arlo, in part due to Timothy Olyphant putting Raylan's more laid-back qualities aside for an episode and unleashing that anger we all know he plays so well.

In particular, I loved the scene where Raylan goes to Perkins' house and tells the story of his childhood. It wasn't because of the content of the speech, since a lot of the Givens family backstory was already strongly implied (as I've said, Graham Yost characters tend to spell out more than is necessary), but because of how Olyphant played it. In that scene, Raylan wasn't talking to Perkins, and was barely even talking at him. In that moment, Raylan was alone with the ghosts of his childhood, and anyone else in the room was irrelevant, except as someone whose ass Raylan could kick if they were dumb enough to make him.

And it's also a mark of both Olyphant's performance and the way Yost and company have written the character that he did not, in fact, go off on Perkins or his nephews when the opportunity arose. Raylan's angry, but he grew up in the home of a man who couldn't control his anger. And just as Arlo vowed to be the opposite of his own father, Raylan the son of a criminal not only went into the law, but made himself into a man with a tight leash on his own fury. He can let it out when necessary, but usually he does it in a controlled manner. He has his code, and he makes sure his opponents know it; if they follow his rules, they get a pass, and if they don't, he can always tell himself it's their own fault they're dead.

(And, really, can you blame him after seeing the little cemetary outside his childhood home? We all figuratively have a gravestone waiting with our name on it, but Raylan had to grow up looking at a literal one. It'd make any man angry and death-obsessed.)

After the last few episodes were largely self-contained adventures of Raylan and the other Marshals, "The Lord of War and Thunder" suggested that "Justified" may have room for some longer-term storytelling, after all. Not only does Raylan vow to put Arlo back in prison, somehow, but we're reminded that Boyd has a very large family, and most of them - including papa Bo (who will also require great casting, after the build-up here) - aren't too happy with either Raylan or Ava. And I liked the way this episode flipped the format, with the more serialized and personal plots taking the forefront but with an engaging, and brief, episodic story about Raylan playing gardener to catch a fugitive. If the series can be fluid about its format - standalone-only if the story's good enough to carry the hour (like last week's fugitive dentist plot), and a mix when it's not - I'll be very pleased.

A few other thoughts:

• These days, with most shows operating on a tight budget where only a handful of actors are budgeted to appear in every single episode, the idea of who is or isn't a "regular castmember" is less aesthetic than it is contractual. Still, when Winona turned up in the scene where Ava met U.S. Attorney David Vazquez, I shrugged and said, "Oh, yeah, Natalie Zea is on this show." She appeared briefly in the pilot and the second episode, wasn't in episodes 3 and 4 at all, and did a scene and a half here. I like Zea fine, but I enjoy Olyphant's chemistry with Joelle Carter so much that I don't exactly miss her when she's not around.

• Yost brings in another familiar face from a past project, casting Rick Gomez (who was wisecracking George Luz in "Band of Brothers," as well as the older brother of Josh Gomez from "Chuck") as Vazquez. Given all the talk about both the Crowder family and the legal problems that would come from Raylan and Ava having a relationship, I'm expecting/hoping to see a lot more of Gomez down the road.

• Couple other guest stars of note: Eddie Jemison from the "Ocean's Eleven" films (but better known in the Sepinwall household for this series of Bud Light commercials) as Glen Perkins, Linda Gehringer as Raylan's knife-wielding stepmom, and Brent Sexton (Damian Lewis's ex-partner from "Life") as the cop from Raylan's hometown.

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Justified, "Long in the Tooth": Don't fear the repo

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I have the ceviche...

As I've said before, FX sent episodes 1, 2 and 4 out for review while last week's "Fixer" was held due to post-production issues. So since I loved the pilot (which had the Elmore Leonard story to borrow from) and didn't love the second episode, "Long in the Tooth" served as a kind of tie-breaker, and the episode that convinced me that Graham Yost and company can make an Elmore Leonard show even without specific Elmore Leonard source material to lean on.

"Long in the Tooth" had that nice mastery of tones that typifies Leonard (and his literary descendants), with the ability to mix both comic violence like Rolly repossessing the d-bag's fillings with much darker violence like Rolly and Mindy with the coyote, and to mix self-aware pop culture discussion like the hitmen debating "Pulp Fiction"(*) with more iconic uses of pop culture imagery like Raylan's Wild West gunfight with the two hitmen on a lonely desert road.

(*) The reference to the scene where Vincent Vega accidentally shoots Marvin in the face was an amusingly reflexive moment. Leonard characters often talk about pop culture (in part because it gives Leonard an excuse to say what characters look like without using the kind of descriptive language he hates), and that's one of the traits huge Leonard fan Quentin Tarantino incorporated into his own writing, even before Tarantino directly adapted Leonard with "Jackie Brown."

It had my favorite guest performance/character to date with Alan Ruck(**) as Rolly. In "Riverbrook," I got frustrated whenever we cut away from Raylan and back to the bank robber and his motley crew; here, Ruck was as much fun to watch as Tim Olyphant. And Clarence Williams III (who played one of the bad guys in the film version of Leonard's "52 Pick-Up") was amusingly cranky - and racist and sexist and unapologetically offensive in just about every way - as the guy who swapped cars with Rolly.

(**) And even though it's been nearly 25 years since "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," as soon as Rolly sacrificed himself to the sniper's bullet, I said to myself, "He's not dying; he just can't think of anything good to do."

"Long in the Tooth" wasn't perfect. The episode introduced the idea of Raylan having to sit back and let Rachel take lead, then abruptly dropped it halfway through so Raylan could be solo and have his duel in the sun. Raylan having to suppress his innate Raylan-ness for the sake of a higher-ranking, equally competent Marshal actually sounds like a fun idea (albeit the sort of thing that probably plays better as a change-of-pace episode for season two or three), but you either follow through with it and give it a payoff, or you don't do it.

But it was still quite a lot of fun, extremely compelling and hopefully a signpost towards more good things to come.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Justified, "Fixer": Straight outta Lexington

A quick review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I second-guess your neck hair...

FX actually sent "Fixer" out for review a few weeks after I'd watched the 1st, 2nd and 4th episodes, and there's always the worry that the odd episode out was held back because it wasn't very good. But I'm told the issues here were just post-production-related, and I found "Fixer" to be quite a bit stronger than last week's "Riverbrook."

As with the Elmore Leonard books (and the many crime authors influenced by Leonard), the style is going to be to split the action between Raylan and his quarry. I didn't think it worked last week because the bank robber and his motley gang weren't all that interesting. I liked this combo of inept, backstabbing thieves much more, particularly David Eigenberg as the titular fixer and Page Kennedy as one of those classic Leonard-style bad guys who becomes obsessed with living up to some pop cultural ideal of violence (in this case, dying because he's too distracted trying to prove himself as a quick draw artist).

The parallels between the Fixer and Raylan in their desires to get out of town, ASAP, weren't overdone, and the theme gave us some extended quality time with an off-duty Raylan flirting with, and eventually succumbing to the charms of, the lovely Ava. I like to joke that Timothy Olyphant plays every role like he can't wait to put a bullet through his co-stars, but he's doing very well in Raylan's more relaxed, charming and, yes, romantic moments.

One question: this is now two bodies that Raylan's dropped in three episodes (and he just barely avoided killing Body). Are you okay if the series maintains (or even accelerates) this body count rate? It's one thing for Raylan to get chewed out for his supervisors about this over the course of three books published many years apart, but as an ongoing part of a weekly series? I don't mind it (certainly, plenty of TV show heroes have racked up an even bigger/faster kill rate), but I wonder if anyone does.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Justified, "Riverbrook": You, me and Dupree

A review of the second episode of "Justified" coming up just as soon as I talk to a one-time exotic dancer...

Of the four episodes of "Justified" I've seen, "Riverbrook" was definitely the weakest of the bunch - not bad, but a definite comedown from the thrills, chills and laughs of the pilot, and not as strong at working without an Elmore Leonard safety net as the third or (particularly) fourth episode.

Again, you can't underestimate how big an issue that is. Graham Yost borrowed large chunks of Leonard's dialogue from "Fire in the Hole" for the pilot, and while I think it would have been folly to try creating Leonard soundalike dialogue going forward(*), there's definitely less snap to a lot of the banter in this one.

(*) Jason Smilovic and company did okay with that on "Karen Sisco," but in general Leonard's authorial voice is so distinctive that a bad imitator would stick out much worse than not trying to copy him at all.

There were still some very funny moments, like the party guest calling for "Freebird," or Art giving Raylan a hard time about losing his gun, badge and hat to Cooper the bank robber. And some cool running gags, too, like Tim the ex-sniper telling Raylan about he learned to create "stories" about each of his potential targets, until the idea caused some snipers (and, it's implied, him) to have some killer's remorse, which led to the great payoff where Tim described his story about Dupree: "Yeah, if he does anything out of line, I get to shoot him."

My problem with the episode, I think, came largely from the Cooper/Dupree/Shirley side of things. Given the nature of a Marshal's job, and the way that Leonard himself structures most of his stories, the bad guys have to be as important to every story as the good guys. And that can work if Raylan's quarry is played by someone as instantly-colorful as Walton Goggins (who returns briefly as Boyd at the top), or if the writing for the guest characters is really spot on (as it is in the fourth episode). But Cooper was never a compelling enough character for me to want to spend long stretches of the episode with him, and away from Raylan. Tim Olyphant sets such a high bar that the show is going to need to be really smart with how it writes and casts the guest stars, or else the show is going to tip heavily to one side.

(That, or they'll need to rethink how they apportion screen time, and that has its own pitfalls; if we're not in any way invested in Raylan's targets, then things get repetitive.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Justified, "Fire in the Hole": Bazooka Boyd

I reviewed "Justified" in today's column, but I'll have a few specific thoughts on the pilot episode coming up just as soon as I put out an APB on Cab Calloway...

"You make me pull, I put you down." -Raylan Givens

Because "Fire in the Hole" was already an Elmore Leonard short story, Graham Yost had a lot of the hard part done for him going into writing the pilot. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book - and you can usually tell when it's not(*) - as is most of the plot. Some tweaks are made for the sake of this being an ongoing series - Givens' dad is now a criminal (in the story he was another coal miner), and Raylan goes against his code by letting Boyd live (which means Walton Goggins can return) - but most of this is pure Leonard, and rightly so.

(*) I like Yost a lot, but he does have a tendency to hit the audience over the head with certain thematic points, whether it was Speirs telling Lipton "Hell, it was you, 1st Sergeant!" at the end of Yost's famous "The Breaking Point" episode of "Band of Brothers," or here Givens' ex-wife Winona telling him "You do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don't see it, but honestly? You are the angriest man I've ever known." That makes a nice promo moment and all, but honestly? When you cast Timothy Olyphant, the anger isn't just implied, it's so overt that no one should ever discuss it like it's some big secret or revelation.

Because Olyphant is who he is and does what he does, and because the part of Givens fits him so well, a lot of the fun of the series comes from seeing how cops and crooks alike with more contemporary attitudes react to this walking, shooting throwback to a very different time. The scene in and then outside Ava's house, where poor Dewey Crowe was completely baffled by Givens (and got a busted nose for underestimating him), was one of the pilot's highlights. (Right after FX first picked up the show, back when it was still called "Lawman," that was the scene they showed the critics to give us a sense of how cool it would be; that was a very good call.)

This isn't quite a one-man show, though, and I liked what little we saw of some of the other regular and recurring players: Nick Searcy as the only kind of boss who could probably tolerate Raylan long-term, Joelle Carter as unapologetically homicidal Ava and Jacob Pitts (also currently playing Hoosier in "The Pacific") and Erica Tazel as the two junior but capable members of the team.

And Walton Goggins just chewed up the meal that was Boyd Crowder, didn't he? Not the subtlest of performances (certainly as compared to some of his late work on "The Shield"), but like the rest of "Justified, a lot of fun.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

'Justified' review: Sepinwall on TV

Yesterday, I ran an interview with Elmore Leonard about why FX's "Justified" is one of the few adaptations of his work that he's happy with (and talks a lot of trash about the ones that displeased him). Today, I have a review of why I like the show:

Raylan Givens is a man with a code.

"I want you to understand: I don’t pull my sidearm unless I’m gonna shoot to kill," Givens tells an opponent.

Later, he puts it in even simpler terms: "You make me pull, I put you down."

You can read the "Justified" review here. I'll have a separate post up tonight at 11:11 p.m. (FX pilots often tend to have weird running times) with some more specific thoughts on the pilot. Click here to read the full post

Elmore Leonard talks 'Justified,' 'Get Shorty' and a lot of bad adaptations: Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I interview legendary author Elmore Leonard about FX's "Justified" (based on a character from several Leonard books) and about why Hollywood has had so much trouble adapting his books in the past. Elmore can talk some smack.

I'll have a review of "Justified" (which I really like) tomorrow morning. Click here to read the full post