My dad suggested that I watch Justified because I liked Deadwood and The Shield. Well, I’m 4 episodes into it and I see no similarities at all with those shows other than that two of the same actors are in it. Justified seems like a lightweight series in comparison, like a throwback to the cheesy cop shows on network TV from the early 90s that I can vaguely remember watching as a kid. The main character is one-dimensional and the supporting cast are all C-list players. There’s just…nothing compelling there, that I can discern.
However - I realize that the first season of a show is not necessarily reflective of the successive seasons. The first season is when the show creators are first figuring things out, and sometimes even really good shows have a hit-and-miss first season.
Is this going to get better - i.e. more intense, more serious, more like Deadwood and The Shield - or should I just give up?
Season 2 (with Margo Martindale as Mags Bennett) stands head and shoulders above the rest, as I recall. You could skip right past season 1 and give season 2 a go. (Looks like it’s 13 episodes.) My memory is that the greatness doesn’t truly manifest until the end of the season, but it’s from the slow build all season so I don’t think you can skip to the end of season 2. I say this just so you won’t expect to see an immediate and significant jump in quality in the first couple episodes of season 2.
If you end up loving season 2 (and by extension the show as a whole) you can always jump back to finish season 1, no harm no foul. But if season 2 still doesn’t do it for you, yeah, it’s probably not your show.
The two big changes from S2 onwards:
-It stops being an episodic case-of-the-week series and it starts having a seasonal storyline.
-It gives more and more importance to the Boyd Crowder character, to the point that Tim Olyphant starts becoming a supporting character.
The S1 of Justified is fairly episodic with a light arc welded onto it. It’s essentially bits-and-pieces of Elmore Leonard strung together.
S2+ get much better (but I thought S1 was still pretty good). It’s Elmore Leonard-based material. If you don’t like Elmore Leonard, then it might not be for you.
For me, the best shows have “those episodes”, the one where you are on the edge of your seat for pretty much every minute of the episode. For instance the big battles on game of thrones. When Gip Rosetti takes over in Boardwalk Empire. When you’re barely able to draw a breath the whole episode. Breaking Bad had a number of them. Al getting served a beating in Deadwood.
Justified has at least three of them, but not in the first season.
If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. For me, the beginning of the 1st ep in S1 was just about the most gripping entrée into any series I ever experienced. But different people like different shows.
I really dug the Boyd Crowder character, as well as many other characters introduced in later seasons. Sorry I forget the names, but the head of the black clan back in the hills. The dapper mob killer…
But if you don’t like it, cut your losses and watch something else.
I’ve read 3 or 4 Elmore Leonard novels, and man, I just cannot get his appeal. But Justified is one of my all-time favorite shows.
And everyone is right: go ahead and skip to Season 2. Mags is a wonderful villain, almost as good as Boyd Crowder becomes.
As the show goes on, the dialog becomes better, too. Olyphant never really showed off his comic chops on Deadwood (IIRC), but they start coming out in this show, and by the time he shows up in Santa Clarita Diet, he’s one of the funniest actors around. The repartee in Justified between Olyphant and his boss, or between him and Boyd Crowder, left me giggling a lot.
Yeah, I read a ton. And I like a lot of the character driven crime novels EL is known for. And a lot of the authors I like and respect seem to worship “Dutch.” But I find his books pretty “meh!”
Re: the OP - I tried to get into Deadwood, but never got hooked, and I never tried The Shield. So, different tastes…
And the characters I was trying to think of were Limehouse and Quarles… So many others. I had forgotten Margo Martindale, Amy Steenburgen, and Sam Elliott were recurring characters. Maybe I should rewatch the series…
It’s Mary Steenburgen, who is married to Ted Danson. Neal McDonough is pretty intense as Quarles, as is Michael Rapaport as Daryl Crowe. My favorite character by far, though, is Dewey Crowe, perhaps the most hapless and hopeless criminal to ever come along.
That’s a great quote, but it’s also a pretty good synopsis of season 4, including some major twists–might not be a great quote to put unspoilered in a thread for someone thinking about watching the show :).
I love Justified, I’ve watched the entire run through at least three times, probably more like five. It’s a go-to show for me and yeah, it does get intense AF and funny and complicated and the characters become so real you want to meet every one of them even though you know about 82% of them might shoot you dead just for looking at them funny. Patton Oswalt has one of the best roles he’s ever done in this show by a long chalk. And Wynn Duffy is just an amazing character–he gives Boyd Crowder a lotta competition.
