Thought s5 of Justified was the weakest yet. Didn't like Rapaport nor the character itself much at all tbh. And I'm a huge Justified fan. It was still better than 95% of everything else on tv but yeah weak season by Justified standards

I kind of agree with you. I'm 4 eps in and while I like it, I was expecting to love it with all the praise that's been heaped upon it. I'm a bit disappointed so far.

Heh, well I had the complete opposite reaction. I thought the seasons got progressively worse after season 2 and then season 5 knocked it out of the park, mostly because of Rapaport. I do like all the seasons quite a lot though.

mags tho.

Justified for me is 2, 1, 5, 3, 4. I also think it's one of the top 15 shows of all time.

I agree with 2, 1. I'm only halfway through 5 now. I had country relatives as strong-willed as Mags, but working for good not evil.

AMC's Halt and Catch Fire is shaping up as good tv so far.

Just binged through Fargo. Loved it.
BBThornton was so good. Cranston level even. (though not the arc of Heisenberg)
And the rest were no slouches.

To say the latest season of justified was the best season of the series hurts my brain

Martin Freeman was exceptional in his performance, as well, and I thought his was the best performance in the show. That said, I think Freeman should win Miniseries for Lead, Thornton for Supporting, and Tolman for Supporting should have a really good shot at winning. It's rare for 3 completely different types of performances in the same show to be at such a high level. It speaks to both good acting and good writing.

Yeah, I don't know about awards.
I suppose it's to the actors credit that I hated Lester so much. Got on every last nerve. I don't recall hating WH Macy so much. (But it's been forever since I saw the movie)

I'm gonna start Fargo pretty soon. Meanwhile, I'm late to the party but I'm loving Hannibal so far (I'm a little past the mid point of season 1). Very well done show, kinda surprised of the violence/gore for a network show.

That was my impression as well. I saw a few episodes and tapped out because I didn't want to see new and creative violent gory ways for somebody to die every episode. It seemed really well done and I'm probably just turning into a p***y in my old age, but signing on for seasons worth of that level of gore just felt bad for the soul.

Nhl, yeah, I'm a pretty big fan of Martin Freeman, but wow did he make me hate Lester with a passion. Macy was very unlikable in the movie, but there wasn't enough character development on him to make him the completely detestable guy that Lester is. We were meant to empathize with Lester from the start (vs. Macy's character starting off as a bad guy), and well, that's as much of a spoiler as I'm willing to give. FX's Fargo should be required TV watching for anyone on the planet.

Barca, I'm someone who can't stand gore, but there's no way I'm not watching Hannibal (and no it doesn't get any easier as it goes on, in fact, it gets worse). In my opinion, it's the best series on TV (I don't watch everything), at least of what I'm watching. Everything else I really like (as of this point in the year) in dramas, besides Person of Interest, is more like a miniseries or is a miniseries. And it is, by far, the goriest show in the history of network TV.

3 episodes into the first season of Rectify. Really liking it so far. Great writing and I think the lead actor is excellent. In fact the acting is pretty great across the board.

3 new shows I have checked out this summer are The Last Ship, Tyrant and Brooklyn Taxi. They all suck! Halt and Catch Fire is only new summer show that I like so far even and though it has some annoying aspects I want to see what happens next. Haven't seen The Leftovers yet but figure HBO will come through.

In honor of July 4th I rewatched the John Adams miniseries this week. So good!

Have been binge-watching Scandal this last week. It's been fun. It's not great and it certainly has a ton of plot holes, but it's been a fun ride so far.

I am also following the latest season of 24 which has also been fun.

House of Cards was great.

True Detective

It was ok. It could have been way juicier but they flacked out and chose the tried and true path.

Every cop show focuses on high infidelity rates within law enforcement, alcholism/ drug abuse, and family drama. This show isn't any different.



mcconaughey does a good job, so does the cast. definitely worth a look.

I'm not sure what cop shows you've been watching, but almost no cop shows focus on that stuff. There are a handful of shows that build in family/personal backstory, but in most cases those tend to be not great shows. In a show like Law & Order, you could be with those characters for 10 years, and maybe get one or two throwaway backstory lines thrown in (mentioning a divorce, or a problem with a kid, etc.), but those were a rarity except in the Briscoe/Curtis years. Two shows that did a lot of that stuff were Hill St. Blues (I think) and NYPD Blue. Most procedurals care about the cases not the detectives, and most people who watch procedurals feel the same way.

The way True Detective handled the way two people and the people they knew were affected by one case in such a dramatic way was what took that show to the level it was. It might be overrated, and it certainly had some issues, but it was not "ok" on any level. It should make just about anyone's top 3 favorite shows of the year, what rank it would be in there would come down to taste.

ya not to mention the acting and cinematography were elite.
you could tell a boy meets girl story that we've seen a million times but if you do it like before sunrise it still works.

I think your description of Woody and strong feelings towards him are indicative of how well written that part was and how great of a job Woody did with it.

I thought the show jumped the shark in a bad way after the 6th episode, but up until then I thought it was as engrossing as any show I'd ever seen. Phenomenal acting.

the wire. the shield.

I said "ok" because I associated all of woodys scenes with stuff thats already been covered in the wire and the shield. I watched the wire and a few episodes of the shield v recently, so everything about woody was just ya ok been there saw that before.

While the acting and cinematography was amazing (better than the wire and the shield), the time spent on woody didn't address anything new or ground breaking. Thought it would have been better to spend the time on something else.

That's the problem with covering such a long period of time. The case died because the people involved did. They would have had to do a completely different style of show to satisfy your spoiler desires. They decided to focus on two guys and the impact of one really effed up case on them and the people they know that they thought they solved but really didn't. MM arguably gave the best TV performance of the last 20 years, and is the closest thing there is to a lock for an EMMY win. WH took the police caricature, an underachiever (there was great debate in another thread about whether Hart was a good or bad detective, which was solved by the end of the season), and completely got the character to a totally different place from where it started. I don't think he did anything that warrants a nomination, but he did really good work by the end of the show, on a character that was utterly detestable from the start.

NYPD Blue kind of started the whole thing like what you see in The Wire and The Shield, so they're not really indicative of that genre as a whole (that type of show maybe covers 5-10 percent of the genre). Since the creator is now "embroiled" in a plagiarism thing, it shouldn't surprise you that he picked parts of the police genre to lift from other places that he liked.

yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all.

They wouldn't have had to alter the show much in order satisfy some of my spoilers.



clyd- in addition to my post #422, WH character was airbrushed, very unrealistic imo. I could go on but's just more negative stuff. I'd rather not.