Hey, Huckleberries: All Things American Western

[Craig H]

And season 3 of Justified is in the books and I'm shook. piranesi, you need to make it through to season 3, if just for how the season finale ends. By that, I mean the last 10 minutes.

 

I'm so, so shocked.

[Craig H]

Justified

 

Season 4

 

PATTON

 

MOTHERFUCKIN'

 

OSWALT

[John from Cincinnati]

And his go bag. 

[Craig H]

I'm sad he's yet to show up again.

[driver]

Pretend you're a doctor and have some patience, he'll be back.

[piranesi]

I'm loving how chaotic the end of season two is getting.  You kind of assume all year that this one particular standoff is coming, but it ends up being about four different standoffs all splintering off from the center.

 

One thing that bugs me, though, is

Gary hiring Wynn to kill Raylan and Winona

 

That seems way out of character.  I was kind of thinking he was going to

 

hire Wynn to kill him (Gary) as some sort of insurance thing to prove his love or something, given his holding a gun to his own head a few episodes before.  I think that would have been more believable and you could still have it go south the same way and have Raylan chase him off.

[Jrag]

Justified power rankings:

 

4. Raylan

3. Wynn Duffy

2. Boyd

1. Wynn Duffy's eyebrows

[piranesi]

Boyd scored Ava and her Holly Hunter accent while Raylan is stuck with high-maintenance Winona (at least where I'm at now).  That has to put Boyd ahead.

 

I mean, Natalie Zea is fucking hot and has an awesome nose and wild hair.   But goddamn, Winona is a pain in the ass. 

[Jrag]

Boyd is always ahead.  The only argument for Raylan is that he is considerably more entertaining when dealing with Wynn Duffy.  The flummoxed eyebrows to normal eyebrows ratio is at an all time high in these scenes.

[piranesi]

I kind of love how shitty everybody's hair is.  It's comforting, you know.

[Jrag]

The Boyd Crowder Hair Threat Level is actually a thing, by the way.  Some people believe that you can tell when Boyd is going to do something crazy by the wildness of his hair.

[Execproducer]

The Outlaw Josey Wales remains my favorite Western by far. It is insanely quotable, has Chief Dan George being Yoda before Yoda was cool and Clint Eastwood?

Mind if I quote this for my TOJW thread for the movie club? It will make it feel like I got a reply.

[J.H.]

Oh by all means but be mindful of my "?" at the end of that sentence since the answer carries over to the next paragraph

 

James

[Execproducer]

Oh by all means but be mindful of my "?" at the end of that sentence since the answer carries over to the next paragraph

 

James

I meant the whole thing, of course.

 

*edit* Never mind, I see you posted something.

[piranesi]

Finally finished season two of JUSTIFIED.  I think the thing that amazes me the most about great shows is how the writers manage to get you to care about characters that you know are really only serving a specific "plot" purpose.

You know, as soon as you met Dickie, Mags, Coover, Doyle, and Loretta what plot role each one filled, kind of how each would end, and what the whole group together symbolized in the story.  But somehow they still managed to make each of them deep enough  that you, if not exactly cared or sympathized with, at least understood most of them as more than just "main villain" or "dimwit monster" or "kid in danger".  

Turning recognizable formula types into little individual tragedies, so that when say Coover is killed, you see in his face a series of emotions and you know what they come from.  When Loretta is holding a gun on Mags, she is way more than just "kid in over her head" even though they only had maybe what a dozen scenes with her to work through.  She's a real character and also another reflection of Raylan and Boyd.

 

Mags could have just been a funny psychopath, but in her own mind she too was a tragic protagonist.  Her tragedy was essentially the tragedy of the mountain itself.

It's been a little less successful with the main "good guys" although Art's completely losing his faith in Raylan is a nice touch.  You know how some shows, even pretty good ones trade on such conventions that you figure you could put it together like a puzzle once the main plot conceit is given to you.  But this was one of those things where as you're watching you really have to admit to yourself "I couldn't write this.  Even with all the pieces given to me.  This is too tight and too clean and somehow still too deep.  I couldn't have gotten all these characters to this point with the amount of scenes they have to do it in."

[EVA]

Besides being just a really well told story filled with awesome characters talking awesomely, what put JUSTIFIED over the top to me was when it hit me, at some point in season 2, how sound sociological theory was underpinning everything going on in Harlan. I probably spent too many words on it on one of the old versions of the board, so I won't get into it again, but I feel like the series could be somebody's stealth treatise on, like, structural functionalism and social reproduction and shit. So much of the main action is the result of characters filling roles and performing necessary actions to sustain established Harlan society or being punished by the structures of Harlan for failure to fulfill their roles or otherwise acting against its interests.

Harlan and Westeros are the most fully realized fictional societies on TV, by a wide margin. (Yes, I know Harlan is a real place, but JUSTIFIED's Harlan is not THE WIRE's Baltimore.)

[Jingus]

That's better.  Now go fucking finish it.

 

People who dislike OUATITW are the worst kind of people.

Okay, I regret not having been able to do it all in one sitting. DAMN. Even though I love TG,TB,ATU, I do believe this is easily the better film. Truly haunting, it blew my mind how many of my favorite later movies were clearly influenced by this. "Oh, so THAT'S where Tarantino got his EVERYTHING (but most especially, the entire Slowing It Down Makes It So Much Better routine)!" That's how ya do it: lure 'em in with pure beautiful hypnosis, and then when the time for the big emotional/artistic punch comes, you knock their fucking head off with a baseball bat. Especially how it's functionally almost more of a mystery than a western, with those last two big reveals (the flashback and the fate of Cheyenne) that should've been corny groaners but somehow feel they take on the weight of the legends; nobody does that double-kick-in-the-balls-at-the-end-of-the-movie trick better than the Italians, do they? And learning about all the references and in-jokes in my standard post-viewing IMDB/Wiki/RottenT's browsal, that just makes it all the better. Shit, it did the nigh-impossible and made me want to go back and rewatch The Quick and the Dead again, just for its tangential relationship with this film's ending (I callously laughed at the little girl's marksmanship the only time I saw the movie, many years ago).

[Craig H]

I am now completely caught up on Justified. Season 5 was the weakest of the bunch, and that's mainly because of all the surrounding that fucking kid and how much i fucking hate Michael Rapaport. God damn he's awful. I'm also not the biggest fan of Dewey. In any event, the way the season ends is awesome and it sets up what should be a bad ass season 6.

 

Is season 6 supposed to be the final season?

[J.H.]

Season 7 is the final season for Justified. Just have to wait until January

 

James

[EVA]

I am now completely caught up on Justified. Season 5 was the weakest of the bunch, and that's mainly because of all the surrounding that fucking kid and how much i fucking hate Michael Rapaport. God damn he's awful. I'm also not the biggest fan of Dewey. In any event, the way the season ends is awesome and it sets up what should be a bad ass season 6.

 

Is season 6 supposed to be the final season?

I was pretty critical of season 5 when it aired. For me, it was the first time the show really stumbled and didn't seem certain of what it was doing since the end of the 1st season. I'm thinking they stuck around a season too long. I bet by the time season 6 is over, we'll look back at this one and say they could've skipped about 75% of it.

I actually LOVE Dewey, but there came a certain point where I was like, "Okay, I've had enough Dewey to last the rest of my life." Save for...

Jeremy Davies' triumphant return as Dickie Bennett. Those two scenes with Dewey and Raylan were incredible, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

A lot of people here felt it was better than I did, though. I'm anxious to rewatch it when it hits DVD/streaming.

[Craig H]

Yeah, those scenes were awesome.

 

As for season 5, I mean, it was good, but man, compared to seasons 2, 3, and 4, it was really weak. I actually didn't think season 4 was THAT special, but it was really good.

 

Actually, I take that back. I couldn't remember season 4 that well, but you know what, that's a great season of TV. From moment 1 of that season and they introduce the mystery behind the guy who fell with the parachute, it was really good. The unraveling of that mystery was very well done as well and it included some HUGE moments with Arlo and others. HOWEVER, when the mystery behind Drew Thompson is revealed, it just lacked a certain amount of oomph. I don't know, that soured me a little bit because EVERYTHING was done so well, but that reveal was...rough. I also just wanted them to waste that fucking junkie because I was sick of the season being about her. Whatever though, it was really good.

 

Season 5 just felt aimless and it had major casting issues for me, namely:

• I don't like Amy Smart and there's a reason why she has trouble finding good work.
• I dislike Michael Rapaport even more. The most I've liked him was in Big Fan and that's only because he gets humbled in a major way.
• TOO MUCH DEWEY.

That said, there was a lot I liked. I love Art. I really, really love that character and when he and Raylan have the falling out, I was legit sad. On the other hand, fuck, just let Raylan do his thing and be cool about it. Jesus...Raylan is responsible for so much scum being dead or behind bars and Art can't stop fucking griefing Raylan.

 

Back to the overall feel of season 5, it was just aimless for a good portion of it as they meandered around trying to be slick storytellers. Anyway, shit got better as the season went on, but the episode with Wendy and Kendall's real dad was the WORST. The absolute fucking worst.

 

Whatever. It's an awesome show and the way season 5 ends is great. It's beyond great, but there's going to be two more seasons? For real? Well, I'll just say this. I remember when I thought 2 more seasons of the Shield was dangerous, but seeing how the penultimate season ended and how the final season played out was perfect. I just hope they get back to what worked so well for seasons 2 through 4 and forget most of season 5 ever existed.

[Jingus]

Finishing up my Deadwood rewatch, one thing still bugs me AGAIN that I've never understood: why did Hearst (presumably) have his cook's son killed? It's a minor enough character that it's not worth spoiler tags, but I've never gotten the point of clipping that particular loose end. The kid did nothing wrong, by the evidence we're given; his only transgression was getting slightly upset when Hearst accused him of trying to run a con game, when he was apparently offering an honest business offer. And it's certainly not like Hearst himself is gonna haul ass all the way to Liberia to oversee that operation like he's doing in Deadwood, so some kind of local partnership would be needed. Why immediately kill the first messenger that the locals sent? They'd probably tell him to go fuck himself, and find a different powerful backer to help dig their mine, and that backer would inevitably be a competitor to Hearst. How's he expect to profit from this? Especially since he would know damn well that it would forever destroy his relationship with his favorite servant, the one person he actually seems fond of, who treats him like any other human being.

[Control]

I never got the impression that Odell's proposition was legit. It has been a while since I watched it, but I thought it was presented as a pretty straightforward con.

[Jingus]

Just having watched it, the show seems to be saying that the proposition is real. Odell apparently brought all the necessary proof, a piece of the gold and assayer's papers and asked Hearst to send his men back with him. Where's the con? They never did anything to indicate that he wasn't acting in good faith, he stuck to his story with nary a contradictory word.

[piranesi]

At first I got the sense that Hearst somehow knew immediately that the gold wasn't from where Odell said it was. 

 

But even if it was real, I think Hearst just didn't want an extra person there looking to get paid or be a partner.  Once he knew where it was and that it was real, Odell was nothing but a potential nuisance. And one that was even easy to get rid of since he has virtually no standing in the legal system.