Movie Box Review

Here's some welcome if unsurprising news:  F/X has renewed JUSTIFIED for a 4th season.  The show, now at the midpoint of Season 3 (the finale airs April 10) drew a 0.9 last week in 18-49s, which isn't Walking Dead crazy high, but is still a very solid number for a scripted cable series (outscoring such prominent shows as Royal Pains and Psych), and up a bit from last year.  

While the show isn't quite at last season's creative level--replacing a spectacular villain like Margo Martindale's Mags Bennett is no easy task--Justified is still one of the smartest, most entertaining crime shows on the air, with terrific lead performances from Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as his sometimes homicidal frenemy Boyd Crowder.  It would be too bad, though, if the recent news that Natalie Zea (who plays Raylan's ex- and sometimes not-so-ex-wife) has taken a network pilot means she'll be bolting the show.  Luckily, with cable production schedules being what they are, that's not necessarily inevitable.

FX's Elmore Leonard-inspired crime drama JUSTIFIED really hit its stride in its second season last year, and now it's back, trying to build on that very solid success.

WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  The redoubtable Mags Bennett (Emmy-winner Margo Martindale) has gone to her grave, and so has her corrupt sheriff son.  (Her other son, the more psychotic Dickie (Jeremy Davies), is in jail.)  Along the way, Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and his ex-girlfriend Ava (Joelle Crowder), who's now married to Raylan's frenemy Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), were both shot.  Boyd intended to kill Dickie for shooting Ava, but Raylan arrested Dickie instead.   Also, Raylan's ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea), with whom he's back together on an unmarried basis, is pregnant.

WHERE WE ARE:  Justified is in no rush to jump into its third chapter, and the season premiere, written by series creator Graham Yost and Fred Golan, and directed by Michael Dinner, eases its way in, serving mostly to introduce a new set of villains.  They're led by Robert Quaries (Neal McDonough), a smooth but ruthless representative of the Detroit Mafia who sees opportunities in Raylan's part of Kentucky.  Also on hand is Fletcher "Ice Pick" Nix (Desmond Harrington, from Dexter), who has his own version of the kind of game Javier Bardem liked to play in No Country For Old Men.  And at least temporarily, old bad guy Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns) is part of the black-hat team.  

A crime show that manages to find a truly great villain sometimes dispatches the character at its own peril--just look at Dexter, which has spent 2 seasons trying to recover from the loss of John Lithgow's chilling Trinity--and few villains in recent years have been as terrifying and nuanced as Martindale's Mags Bennett.  (The next show to face this challenge will be the Gus Fring-less Breaking Bad.)  At first glance, Quaries seems like a much more standard piece of bad-guyery, all expensive suit and corporate-type strategy despite his hidden pistol; a representative of the 1% rather than Mags' 99%.  But Justified has earned every benefit of the doubt, so we'll see if he develops some shading.

More promising is the down-home story.  The show has taken the interesting tack of having Raylan come back from his shooting a little less than his best, and even though we know in the end he'll come through, it has the effect of making him warier and more vulnerable than he's been before.  Meanwhile, Boyd has already manipulated himself into a position to take revenge on Dickie Bennett (the fact that Raylan didn't see that coming is another sign that he's not the man he used to be), and Ava has proven herself an extremely worthy surrogate for Boyd during his jailhouse absence.

Justified is a great sleeper of a show, demonstrating weekly that a rural setting and genre storyline don't preclude incisive writing or smart plotting, and its ensemble cast has some of the best chemistry on television. It's a pleasure to welcome Raylan and company back.

Mad Men - 1:2

Boardwalk Empire - 11:4

The Good Wife - 5:1

Game of Thrones - 14:1

Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Dexter - 33:1

Mad Men - 1:1

Boardwalk Empire - 7:5

Game of Thrones - 5:1

The Good Wife - 8:1

Friday Night Lights - 11:1

Dexter - 20:1

Mad Men has won 3 years in a row:  can it match The West Wing and Hill Street Blues with 4?  Maybe so, but it's going to be an awfully close race against HBO's Boardwalk Empire  Mad Men's not-so-secret weapon may be its episode The Suitcase, the 2-hander for Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss that was one of the best hours the show has ever aired; but this being an industry award, it could be hurt by the extended and very public AMC/Matthew Weiner travails that didn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth.  Boardwalk could also be hurt by the support for HBO's other nominee Game of Thrones (although that's probably too much of a genre show to win outright).  The Good Wife, a marvelous show in its own right and the only pure network nominee (Friday Night Lights being an NBC/DirecTV share), is a possible dark horse here.  Friday Night, which richly deserves a statuette, is probably getting an "attaboy" pat on the back on its way out the door.  Dexter's season was markedly inferior to its previous one with John Lithgow as the monstrous Big Bad, and is probably out of the running.

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 4:11

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 23:10

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 14:1

Michael C. Hall, Dexter - 14:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 16:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 20:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 8:5

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 3:1

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 6:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 12:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 14:1

The most important name here is the one that's absent: because of AMC's scheduling, Bryan Cranston wasn't eligible for Breaking Bad after 3 wins in a row, opening the way for what will probably be a tight race between Hamm (who's never won) and Buscemi.  The knock against Hamm has been that his Don Draper is too self-contained to appeal to Academy voters, who like their Oscar counterparts prefer their performances big; here again, Mad Man's Suitcase episode may make the difference.  If Friday Night Lights has a chance for any surprise win, it's would be Chandler here.  Olyphant was even better on Justified this season than he was the year before, but it's not an award type role.  Laurie will have a better shot next year if this turns out to be the show's last.  Hall will be hurt by Dexter's sub-par year--and by the fact that he plays, you know, a serial killer. 

Bookie Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife - 15:20

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men - 3:2

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 6:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 12:1

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order:  Special Victims Unit - 25:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife -1:1

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men -2:1

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 8:1 

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 12:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 25:1

The biggest shock of last year's Emmys was Kyra Sedgwick's win over Julianna Margulies; The Good Wife continues to be a superb show, Margulies is a well-respected former winner, and it's likely the Academy will make amends for its oversight.  Moss has the best chance of unseating her, once again because she's got that episode of Mad Men that could almost have been designed as an Emmy showcase.  One can never underestimate the Academy's attraction to performers of a certain age, which puts Bates in the running as a dark horse.  Britton has deserved this award every year Friday Night Lights was on the air, but no one ever said awards were fair.  Enos has little chance of winning for a show whose finale left many viewers angrier than they'd been since the end of Lost, and Hargitay has won already, with no one seeming to think she needs another.