The Morning After: All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues

The mark of a great show is it’s ability to develop a supporting cast of interesting, fully-realized characters. So far, the 2nd episode is the only one that didn’t really work for me, but the rest have all managed to be very good. Being from a small, rural town myself, the characters seem very realistic, and it’s nice to see human elements of all of them, even if it’s only a stand alone episode.

Excellent dynamic between Barry and Olyphant, look forward to more of their interactions.

Definitely enjoying Justified and make a point to watch each week. It’s much more smartly written than most of the other “law enforcement” shows I’ve tried to watch in the past. The humor alone is worth coming back for. Pike’s response last week to Raylan’s question “Are you armed?” toward the end of the episode had me rolling.

I do get frusterated at times with the general arc of individual episodes. Last week’s seemed to end very abruptly and it seems like I have to make some assumptions along the way to fill in what I feel are missing plot points. This may get better as the season rolls along and I have more information to work with, just at the moment it can be kind of jarring.

Overall though it’s a very solid show and I’ll be coming back each week.

“I do get frusterated at times with the general arc of individual episodes. Last week’s seemed to end very abruptly and it seems like I have to make some assumptions along the way to fill in what I feel are missing plot points. This may get better as the season rolls along and I have more information to work with, just at the moment it can be kind of jarring”

I agree completely with this point. in the case of the pilot and last week’s episode, I thought each could have easily been 90 minutes or even 2 hours, given the quality of material and acting. I wish series’ could be more flexible with runtimes, but I won’t hold my breath on that happening anytime soon. Of course, having a stand-alone episode spread over 2 parts defeats the purpose, so I suppose we should be happy with what we have. Better to cut things out to get to an hour than try to stretch a thin premise too long.

This show or at least’s last night’s episode was dense; a lot of story, enough for a feature film and feeling like one but told in 45 minutes. The structure is interesting and unusual for those used to the law and order/CSi type shows: we get predominantly dialogue and setting the scene; the show lingers to overhear its characters. It’s character driven not plot driven so it can play with the pacing. Towards the end of the episode I looked at my clock and was surprised that it was only 10:45; it felt longer than that, but in a good way. I also like how 40 percent of the dialogue between Givens and really anybody else is about the hat. Also in each of the previous episodes, GIvens shot people. In this episode he didn’t fire once.

You Didn’t See That Coming Fun Fact: On Tavis Smiley the other night, Olyphant revealed that before he was an actor he studied painting. Maybe he can do an action movie with Kathryn Bigelow.