Justified is a very good show.
With that said, I've been contemplating exactly why I like it.
I've decided that I don't care very much about the main character, his girlfriend, or his friend in jail. Though I don't necessarily dislike them either. And I'm usually only slightly invested in the investigation of the week.
I think that I enjoy the... structure of the show, I guess. I'm not sure it's the right word for it. Basically, I'm really interested in the people that populate this world.
Sometimes it's the good guys - like the black, female, and very competent Marshals agent, who has admitted that she resents Rayland for arriving out of nowhere and jumping ahead of her on the totem pole, which she believes is because he's male and white.
But even more often, I find myself really liking the bad guys of the week. They, and the friends and family surrounding them, feel real to me. They're people who do bad things, often for really stupid reasons, but that doesn't necessarily make them completely bad people. (Though some of them are.) Lots of them seem like they'd be people you'd like if you worked with them or met them at a friend's barbecue. They mostly don't go to jail in a blaze of bullets, but instead get taken to jail and then released for now with a lawyer and a court date. These people are most likely going to prison for a few years, but they, and their loved ones, are more likely to be shown as resigned to it, rather than shouting about their innocence or threatening the Marshals who doing their job arresting them, like they would be in a lesser show.
This entry was originally posted at http://risha.dreamwidth.org/10608.html.
I've decided that I don't care very much about the main character, his girlfriend, or his friend in jail. Though I don't necessarily dislike them either. And I'm usually only slightly invested in the investigation of the week.
I think that I enjoy the... structure of the show, I guess. I'm not sure it's the right word for it. Basically, I'm really interested in the people that populate this world.
Sometimes it's the good guys - like the black, female, and very competent Marshals agent, who has admitted that she resents Rayland for arriving out of nowhere and jumping ahead of her on the totem pole, which she believes is because he's male and white.
But even more often, I find myself really liking the bad guys of the week. They, and the friends and family surrounding them, feel real to me. They're people who do bad things, often for really stupid reasons, but that doesn't necessarily make them completely bad people. (Though some of them are.) Lots of them seem like they'd be people you'd like if you worked with them or met them at a friend's barbecue. They mostly don't go to jail in a blaze of bullets, but instead get taken to jail and then released for now with a lawyer and a court date. These people are most likely going to prison for a few years, but they, and their loved ones, are more likely to be shown as resigned to it, rather than shouting about their innocence or threatening the Marshals who doing their job arresting them, like they would be in a lesser show.
This entry was originally posted at http://risha.dreamwidth.org/10608.html.