I just recently re-watched all six seasons of Justified and so this is a retrospective review. I was a fan of the show when it was on for the first time and also remember feeling that it started to decline around season four and hating the last two seasons. In fact, I remember being really angry about the direction of season five and feeling that it betrayed everything I had loved about the show.
Watching it now with a bit more objectivity, I found season four still really good in many respects, and even the last two seasons well-crafted. But my original assessment stands and here's why: In its heyday (seasons 1-3) what made Justified delightful was the southern gothic western/romantic fantasy that it presented. At its heart were the figures of Raylan (the gunslinger lawman) and Boyd (the outlaw), and their antagonistic bromance, as well as the respective love stories of Raylan and Winona, and Boyd and Ava.
Of course both Raylan and Boyd are archetypes - fantasy figures of a totally unrealistic sort. So from the outset it was clear Justified was serving up an entertaining romantic western-fantasy story, though spiced up with black humor and set in a modern, edgy version of the south. The first three seasons ended with Boyd and Raylan being thrown into some set of circumstances where they had to fight their way out together, with Raylan always having to admit some grudging sense of obligation to Boyd.
It was also kept very clear that the only real difference between the two was that Raylan had a badge. Both had gangster fathers, and Raylan was (arguably) more violent and angry than Boyd. In fact, Boyd, for all his own crimes, was always a more sympathetic character than Raylan. Boyd was the more honest of the two, and didn't lie to himself or others about the kind of person he was. Raylan, on the other hand, was devoid of self-awareness, or at least was in permanent, angry denial of his true nature. Where Boyd was honorable, Raylan was backstabbing, never hesitating to use deceit to get his way and always using "the law" as a pretext for acting out his grudges.
But this was all okay, so long as the stories being told maintained that interesting tension between good and evil in both Raylan and Boyd, and never let either one get too much of the upper hand. And Raylan's less admirable qualities were balanced by his affection for Winona. At least until season four, when Winona abruptly leaves him for no apparent reason (if I recall correctly, the actress who played her suddenly left the show, which would explain her being written out in a way that didn't seem to jive with the direction they'd been developing up till then).
This was the beginning of the end for Raylan as a sympathetic character, and it's a shame it happened, because following this, he becomes a philanderer, going through a string of Winona-lookalikes, a deadbeat dad, refusing to even to visit his baby daughter, and increasingly just an obnoxious, self-righteous dick: constantly harping on the evil deeds of the criminals he goes after without ever perceiving his own. The callous way he manipulates Ava in season 5 is particularly egregious. By the end of that season, Raylan has lost all his charm and you really just kind of hate him, which seems like a weird move on the part of the showrunners.
But the real nail in the coffin was the treatment of Ava in season five, and in particular, the fact that they split Boyd and Ava apart. That's what actually made me angry at the time, as the love story of Boyd and Ava was hands down my favorite thing about the show. And it's not just that they broke them up, but that they did it in the ugliest, most cynical way possible. But this reflects a general tendency of the show, detectable already in season four: that it took a darker turn. There were still laughs and funny characters, but also more violence, and violence of an increasingly brutal sort - especially against women.
Season five sees a lot of this, and it starts to leave a nasty taste in your mouth. There was violence in the first three seasons of course, but it was more of the classic western shoot-out sort. In season five you see attempted rape and men beating women black and blue. So the whole show took a rather cynical, ugly turn. And it's hard to comprehend why they'd do this, unless maybe the showrunners felt they needed to up the ante on the sex and violence to counter slipping ratings or something like that. But it changed the tone of the show, and not for the better. Justified wasn't fun anymore.
And when they brutalized Ava in prison for a whole season, only have have her buy her freedom back by betraying the man she'd been about to marry - that was the nail in the coffin for me. It was like the showrunners decided to take a giant crap in their fans' cornflakes - determined to spoil everything for everyone. So by the end of the series, all that had been built up in the first three seasons was demolished: all your favorite characters were either dead, imprisoned, or miserable. All the love stories had fallen apart.
It was like the writers were determined to show us that life is crap and all dreams must die in the end. Which might be fine, if the show had been billed from the start as dark, gritty realism. But it started out as a fun, clever but goofy neo-western lark about a handsome marshall who gets to go around shooting whoever he likes and a clever, beguiling hillbilly outlaw who builds a criminal empire. So what the heck? Justified was great for a while, and always really in good in some ways. But it's a shame it ended on such a downer.
Watching it now with a bit more objectivity, I found season four still really good in many respects, and even the last two seasons well-crafted. But my original assessment stands and here's why: In its heyday (seasons 1-3) what made Justified delightful was the southern gothic western/romantic fantasy that it presented. At its heart were the figures of Raylan (the gunslinger lawman) and Boyd (the outlaw), and their antagonistic bromance, as well as the respective love stories of Raylan and Winona, and Boyd and Ava.
Of course both Raylan and Boyd are archetypes - fantasy figures of a totally unrealistic sort. So from the outset it was clear Justified was serving up an entertaining romantic western-fantasy story, though spiced up with black humor and set in a modern, edgy version of the south. The first three seasons ended with Boyd and Raylan being thrown into some set of circumstances where they had to fight their way out together, with Raylan always having to admit some grudging sense of obligation to Boyd.
It was also kept very clear that the only real difference between the two was that Raylan had a badge. Both had gangster fathers, and Raylan was (arguably) more violent and angry than Boyd. In fact, Boyd, for all his own crimes, was always a more sympathetic character than Raylan. Boyd was the more honest of the two, and didn't lie to himself or others about the kind of person he was. Raylan, on the other hand, was devoid of self-awareness, or at least was in permanent, angry denial of his true nature. Where Boyd was honorable, Raylan was backstabbing, never hesitating to use deceit to get his way and always using "the law" as a pretext for acting out his grudges.
But this was all okay, so long as the stories being told maintained that interesting tension between good and evil in both Raylan and Boyd, and never let either one get too much of the upper hand. And Raylan's less admirable qualities were balanced by his affection for Winona. At least until season four, when Winona abruptly leaves him for no apparent reason (if I recall correctly, the actress who played her suddenly left the show, which would explain her being written out in a way that didn't seem to jive with the direction they'd been developing up till then).
This was the beginning of the end for Raylan as a sympathetic character, and it's a shame it happened, because following this, he becomes a philanderer, going through a string of Winona-lookalikes, a deadbeat dad, refusing to even to visit his baby daughter, and increasingly just an obnoxious, self-righteous dick: constantly harping on the evil deeds of the criminals he goes after without ever perceiving his own. The callous way he manipulates Ava in season 5 is particularly egregious. By the end of that season, Raylan has lost all his charm and you really just kind of hate him, which seems like a weird move on the part of the showrunners.
But the real nail in the coffin was the treatment of Ava in season five, and in particular, the fact that they split Boyd and Ava apart. That's what actually made me angry at the time, as the love story of Boyd and Ava was hands down my favorite thing about the show. And it's not just that they broke them up, but that they did it in the ugliest, most cynical way possible. But this reflects a general tendency of the show, detectable already in season four: that it took a darker turn. There were still laughs and funny characters, but also more violence, and violence of an increasingly brutal sort - especially against women.
Season five sees a lot of this, and it starts to leave a nasty taste in your mouth. There was violence in the first three seasons of course, but it was more of the classic western shoot-out sort. In season five you see attempted rape and men beating women black and blue. So the whole show took a rather cynical, ugly turn. And it's hard to comprehend why they'd do this, unless maybe the showrunners felt they needed to up the ante on the sex and violence to counter slipping ratings or something like that. But it changed the tone of the show, and not for the better. Justified wasn't fun anymore.
And when they brutalized Ava in prison for a whole season, only have have her buy her freedom back by betraying the man she'd been about to marry - that was the nail in the coffin for me. It was like the showrunners decided to take a giant crap in their fans' cornflakes - determined to spoil everything for everyone. So by the end of the series, all that had been built up in the first three seasons was demolished: all your favorite characters were either dead, imprisoned, or miserable. All the love stories had fallen apart.
It was like the writers were determined to show us that life is crap and all dreams must die in the end. Which might be fine, if the show had been billed from the start as dark, gritty realism. But it started out as a fun, clever but goofy neo-western lark about a handsome marshall who gets to go around shooting whoever he likes and a clever, beguiling hillbilly outlaw who builds a criminal empire. So what the heck? Justified was great for a while, and always really in good in some ways. But it's a shame it ended on such a downer.