And we're back . . .

 . . . so I just finished watching the 1st season of Justified and I was ultimately unimpressed.  Before I get to my big thesis, some stray observations:

1) Walton Goggins is brilliant . . . most of the time.  But a lot of his performance as Boyd Crowder is straight out of the Billy Bob Thorton handbook, (minus the head cocked slightly to the side) and Billy Bob Thorton creeps me out because he looks like this guy who's dating my mom.

2) Enunciate, Mr. Olyphant.  I'm from Oklahoma City, and half the time I can't understand a damn thing you say.




I Hate You Like Anakin Skywalker Hates Sand

  3) Ava is now number three on the list of TV Women I Utterly Loathe.  Rita (Dexter) is number two, and Mara (The Shield)  has the proud place as Public Enemy #1.  For the record, Corinne (The Shield) is Number Four.

But my real problem with the show, I realized (other than that it's boring as sin) is that it, like Dexter, The protagonists don't have anything to care about, therefor, they lack vulnerability and connection.


In the first episode of The Shield we learn two things about Vic--he has a family and his team is also his best friends, and he will do anything, literally anything, to protect them. Later on, when Shane takes center stage, we feel for him because we believe he's doing all these bad things to protect his friends, his horrible, shrewish wife and his newborn son. These characters, as horrible, unlikable and damned as they are, are real in the sense that they are vulnerable, they have people they care about, they have something to lose.
Raylan and Dexter don't have these things.

The first season of Dexter is so great because despite Dexter's "I can't care about anything because I'm a monster boo hoo hoo" attitude, he does care about someone--the mysterious killer who keeps leaving dismembered Barbies in his freezer. He is fascinated, so we are fascinated. By the second season, though, the novelty has worn off, and his fascination/caring/murdering Lila is just half-heated leftovers of the season before.
In Justified, Raylan is such a badass that he lives in a motel. He can pack up and go at any point. Sure, he bangs Ava, and Wynonia, but generally, the audience gets the sense that he doesn't give a fig about anyone or anything other than his stupid cowboy hat.

THIS in contrast to Boyd.  There's a scene where the other prisoners have him pinned up against the wall, and he's clutching his Bible, but not in an overwrought community-theater/Frightened Inmate #2 sort of way, like "please don't hit me, I'm a man of God!" . . . he's holding it tightly to his skinny chest, with a look in those small, dark eyes that says, "I'm scared, but I have faith that my God will protect me." And sure enough, someone comes to his rescue.

Point is, Boyd has something to care about, so we care about him. It's a small, beautiful scene, and Goggins plays it sublimely.



Neither Could Kenny Johnson in a Leather Jacket



Sons of Anarchy tried to give the main character something to care about, (a premature crack baby) which was a good start, but it's such a poorly written show that even a half-dead baby couldn't save it.

HOWEVER, the reason people love Justified and Dexer is because they are pure wish-fulfillment. "I wish I could murder bad people!" "I wish I could wear a cowboy hat and shoot bad guys!" "I wish I didn't have to care about my nagging wife and my yelling kids." "I wish I lived in a motel and could just pack up and leave." Dexter and Raylan are living out our fantasies, and we've confused that with good writing because it makes us feel placated instead of making us feel something that might confuse or hurt us.

So keep your sexy badasses . . . and I'll keep my handsome screw-ups.

TV Withdrawl

. . . So Ian and I finished The Shield. I didn’t cry as everyone expected me to, probably because I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I sat and thought about it for a few minutes, finished my beer (Gritty’s IPA) and got on Amazon to order Season One.



Pictured: The Greatest Movie Ever



That was a few weeks ago. In the meantime, Ian and I have been trying to find a new show to fill the void and so far, nothing’s working. It’s like trying to quit heroin. I sat through not one, but two additional second-run showings of Predators, two nights in a row, just to get my Walton Goggins fix. We watched Chrystal, (Does Billy Bob Thorton have more than one expression? Does he ever do anything other than stand with his head slightly cocked, looking puzzled/deep? I don’t care if he hung out with Warren Zevon, I’m not buying his “genius” for another damn minute). We watched Randy and the Mob. We watched The Accountant. I considered watching Saving Grace for my Kenneth Johnson fix, but Ian stopped me before I hurt myself and those around me.

Fuck You, Fuckers

We thought The Wire would be good. We liked Homicide (the book and the show) and recognized a lot of the cast from Homicide and Oz, but by the second episode, we didn’t know a single character’s name, or what was going on other than that the writers felt liberated to use the word “fuck” in every fucking other fucking word. James fucking Ellroy fucking does this too, and it fucking annoys the fuck out of me. See how it bogs down the sentence? I get it, The Wire ran on HBO and I get it, people curse. I think “fuck” is one of the greatest words in the English language. But if you use it too much, the meaning gets lost—not just of the word, but of the whole sentiment you’re trying to convey. Vic Mackey never dropped a single f-bomb and you knew that he meant business. Meanwhile, Cop ____ on The Wire says it every other word, and I still feel like a kitten could kick his ass.

We sent that back and got Sons of Anarchy, which was written by The Shield co-producer Kurt Sutter and ran on FX. Jay Karns had a short run of the cast, and Dutch-Boy was Ian’s Shane, so he was all tingly about that. And Ron Pearlman as a biker dude? Awesome. How could this possibly suck?

Sons of Anarchy is a soap opera with motorcycles. All they do is stand around talking about the jobs they’re going to pull—running guns to the 1-9ers (Shield shout-out!) and then generic-looking dirty-blonde biker-protagonist mopes around because his baby-momma did a bunch of drugs and now he’s got this preemie baby and I think he is either or used to bang the lady doctor with the tramp stamp and he is sad because he doesn’t want to do bad biker stuff anymore. Yawn.



Not JK Simmons

Also, I kept thinking Ron Pearlman was JK Simmons, and then I was

Not Ron Pearlman

disappointed when I realized that it was just Ron Pearlman, who may be awesome but has too dry a screen presence to convey any sort of tension.

We barely even made it to the Jay Karns episodes, and I didn’t get to see Kenneth Johnson all covered in grease.



Mike brought over Burn Notice, which is, for now (until Justified comes out on DVD) filling the void. It’s a PI show, which I can dig, and I like the narrative voice. Bruce Campbell is pretty great. It’s clever without being quirky, even if the girl is driving me crazy. She’s ugly as sin and unforgivably annoying. We’re also trying our hand at Doctor Who and The Commish, so wish us luck.