"Justified", pilot episodes, and the element of surpri-
Watched the Justified pilot a few days ago. There’d been some buzz about it I’d noticed, and, well, Timothy Olyphant is the kind of actor I would tune in just for himself. I wanted to like it. I did like it. It was enjoyable. It just wasn’t all that interesting.
To clarify: the main character, Raylan, was honestly likeable. He was even layered, somewhat, at the writing stage, and Olyphant always brings standout additional currents and intensity and ruthless humour and intelligence to any role I’ve ever seen him play. (To be fair, I haven’t seen Hitman 47, although I suspect it holds true even there.) The main character is a fairly strong construct, and has potential for increased complexity, which is usually a good idea. And Olyphant is duly doing his thing.
But a strong main character is not enough to carry a show, or, as it turns out, even a pilot. The writing was clunky. The other characters were standard and cardboard-thin, all existing solely to interact with Raylan, except for the antagonist, who manages a little more autonomy. Not only that, they exist solely to draw out some aspect of Raylan, or maybe set him up for a one-liner, making sure no one misses that Raylan is a cool, smart, badass mofo who shoots to kill, who’s cool and badass and did we mention badass and cool? Oh, and angry. He’s angry, too. Oh, and angsty. But in a cool way. Think Cool Hand Luke meets Dirty Harry.
Which - okay, fine, those can be fun characters. He is. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll love him. Olyphant has fun playing him, although sometimes I felt like his trademark simmering intensity was on automatic - but maybe that was just me projecting my own general lack of captivation on him. And while we have fun watching him, anyone who’s watched Deadwood has seen him absolutely shine playing the same character with very much better writing. Another problem: the almost geometrically placed segments of his personality, as reflected by the other characters, kind of hem him in on all sides, seriously hampering him from being able to go in interesting directions.
There are other (relatively) strong elements; the obvious love of that region of Kentucky, the music and down-home people and cooking, the bittersweet history of coal mining which informs the backbone of the relationship between Raylan and Boyd - his White Supremacist antagonist who likes money and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily in that order of preference. Raylan’s relationship with his ex is also fairly well realised, although predictable. The US Marshals bit is somewhat interesting, and I guess cool - but either way, Raylan’s cool, so we’ve got that covered.
Now, I knew it was based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, who seems to be very much of the “tell, don’t show” philosophy of writing, and that's a problem too. I hunted up the story online, “Fire in the Hole”, and skimmed it, and I have to say they did pretty well with what they had. They brought depth and intelligence to the two main characters where they could, although there wasn’t a lot they could do about the basic, episodic structure of the plot short of a total rewrite. I don’t know if they could have done something about the dialogue, like maybe not baldly stating almost every significant character turn, but they didn’t seem too worried about it. And they made everybody younger and sexier, which means we get to watch Timothy Olyphant swagger around in a Stetson, so well done there.
And, to give them the benefit of the doubt, I went and watched the second episode. Pilot episodes are curious creatures, and aren’t always indicative of the eventual outcome of the series. I don’t know heaps about the process and politics of it all, but I know that a pilot has to present the basic vision, tone, and style of the show being proposed. Various elements are tweaked according to feedback and requirements of the production company, so on and so forth, so the mix of contributing voices for the show is almost never the same as the pilot.
So, I watched it. At which point it became clear that, even if they weren’t totally determined to belt us over the head with the dialogue to make sure we don’t miss things, they weren’t going for much subtlety, either. They did make sure Raylan was minorly defeated early on, which was absolutely imperative, and a glaring problem with the pilot. Don’t panic, though; he stayed cool the whole way through it.
The main characters are still each only interacting in any real way with Raylan. The strongest single thread of the pilot, that of the protagonist-antagonist relationship between Raylan and Boyd, was lost, and quirky opponents were substitued in. Pretty sure that signals a shift of emphasis, from intense to “colourful”, in the criminal cases the episodes will be built around. And toward amusing, cool dialogue that’s a little too impressed with itself, a more laid-back Tarantino style. Complete with small time gormless baddies who you kind of just want Raylan to catch up with as soon as possible for their own good, before they die of their own stupidity. Memo to Writers: you don’t make Raylan more cool by making everyone else less cool. You’re just lowering the bar. (I’m going to stop using that word now.)
So it didn’t pull itself up out of the “meh” category. Those shows I will tune in for occasionally, when I think of it, for the fun. To be mildly diverted. Usually because of one or two elements are fairly enjoyable. Justified will float near the top of it, to be sure, mostly on Olyphant’s strengths; for comparison, Bones is fairly middling to low (for the grunts; Brennan annoys the crap out of me - talk about author avatars! - and Booth has his moments, but isn’t that interesting either), and Heroes is right at the bottom. (Sylar, and other occasionally entertaining bad guys. That is all.)
What every show in category "meh" has in common is its failure to surprise me. Didn’t in the pilot, and hasn’t in however many seasons I’ve seen since; the best they manage is to pique my interest somehow by trying something unexpected. But they don’t surprise me; they don’t break out of their box, or do anything more than bounce off the box’s wall intermittently.
For the record, SPN, Leverage, Deadwood ... I can’t think of any others at this point ... all did manage this, and in their pilot episodes. SPN did it with a single line, Leverage with a single scene, and Deadwood with the whole damn episode. They proceeded to live into the promise, each time, which was satisfying.
There’s also the category between the two, which contains shows that haven’t really surprised me but have enough strong writing, other story elements, or sheer chutzpah, to give them real interest. Category "huh", I guess. The new BSG, most of Whedon’s stuff, House (although that slipped down the ranks after a while), Hustle ... um ... can’t think of any others there, either, although I’m sure there are a couple. Oh, yeah, Rescue Me, too, although I never really got into it. But on that subject, I went on from Justified to watch the Sons of Anarchy pilot, mostly in the spirit of investigation.
Sons of Anarchy popped up on my radar in basically the same way Justified did. I spent maybe five, ten minutes on its website, and was pretty sure I knew what it was: a nicely judged rough-edged little mixture of sentimentality and brutality. Which it was. The pilot set up the broad strokes of the characters and relationships, but gave them depth, interconnectedness, and plenty of room to stretch and grow. I’m pretty sure that if I keep watching it, that’s exactly what it will deliver. I’m not likely to actually do that, because you need to find the criminal underbelly exciting and attractive to feel the main pull of the show, and I don’t. But it’s strongly constructed enough to keep my interest if I ever get around to it.
To clarify: the main character, Raylan, was honestly likeable. He was even layered, somewhat, at the writing stage, and Olyphant always brings standout additional currents and intensity and ruthless humour and intelligence to any role I’ve ever seen him play. (To be fair, I haven’t seen Hitman 47, although I suspect it holds true even there.) The main character is a fairly strong construct, and has potential for increased complexity, which is usually a good idea. And Olyphant is duly doing his thing.
But a strong main character is not enough to carry a show, or, as it turns out, even a pilot. The writing was clunky. The other characters were standard and cardboard-thin, all existing solely to interact with Raylan, except for the antagonist, who manages a little more autonomy. Not only that, they exist solely to draw out some aspect of Raylan, or maybe set him up for a one-liner, making sure no one misses that Raylan is a cool, smart, badass mofo who shoots to kill, who’s cool and badass and did we mention badass and cool? Oh, and angry. He’s angry, too. Oh, and angsty. But in a cool way. Think Cool Hand Luke meets Dirty Harry.
Which - okay, fine, those can be fun characters. He is. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll love him. Olyphant has fun playing him, although sometimes I felt like his trademark simmering intensity was on automatic - but maybe that was just me projecting my own general lack of captivation on him. And while we have fun watching him, anyone who’s watched Deadwood has seen him absolutely shine playing the same character with very much better writing. Another problem: the almost geometrically placed segments of his personality, as reflected by the other characters, kind of hem him in on all sides, seriously hampering him from being able to go in interesting directions.
There are other (relatively) strong elements; the obvious love of that region of Kentucky, the music and down-home people and cooking, the bittersweet history of coal mining which informs the backbone of the relationship between Raylan and Boyd - his White Supremacist antagonist who likes money and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily in that order of preference. Raylan’s relationship with his ex is also fairly well realised, although predictable. The US Marshals bit is somewhat interesting, and I guess cool - but either way, Raylan’s cool, so we’ve got that covered.
Now, I knew it was based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, who seems to be very much of the “tell, don’t show” philosophy of writing, and that's a problem too. I hunted up the story online, “Fire in the Hole”, and skimmed it, and I have to say they did pretty well with what they had. They brought depth and intelligence to the two main characters where they could, although there wasn’t a lot they could do about the basic, episodic structure of the plot short of a total rewrite. I don’t know if they could have done something about the dialogue, like maybe not baldly stating almost every significant character turn, but they didn’t seem too worried about it. And they made everybody younger and sexier, which means we get to watch Timothy Olyphant swagger around in a Stetson, so well done there.
And, to give them the benefit of the doubt, I went and watched the second episode. Pilot episodes are curious creatures, and aren’t always indicative of the eventual outcome of the series. I don’t know heaps about the process and politics of it all, but I know that a pilot has to present the basic vision, tone, and style of the show being proposed. Various elements are tweaked according to feedback and requirements of the production company, so on and so forth, so the mix of contributing voices for the show is almost never the same as the pilot.
So, I watched it. At which point it became clear that, even if they weren’t totally determined to belt us over the head with the dialogue to make sure we don’t miss things, they weren’t going for much subtlety, either. They did make sure Raylan was minorly defeated early on, which was absolutely imperative, and a glaring problem with the pilot. Don’t panic, though; he stayed cool the whole way through it.
The main characters are still each only interacting in any real way with Raylan. The strongest single thread of the pilot, that of the protagonist-antagonist relationship between Raylan and Boyd, was lost, and quirky opponents were substitued in. Pretty sure that signals a shift of emphasis, from intense to “colourful”, in the criminal cases the episodes will be built around. And toward amusing, cool dialogue that’s a little too impressed with itself, a more laid-back Tarantino style. Complete with small time gormless baddies who you kind of just want Raylan to catch up with as soon as possible for their own good, before they die of their own stupidity. Memo to Writers: you don’t make Raylan more cool by making everyone else less cool. You’re just lowering the bar. (I’m going to stop using that word now.)
So it didn’t pull itself up out of the “meh” category. Those shows I will tune in for occasionally, when I think of it, for the fun. To be mildly diverted. Usually because of one or two elements are fairly enjoyable. Justified will float near the top of it, to be sure, mostly on Olyphant’s strengths; for comparison, Bones is fairly middling to low (for the grunts; Brennan annoys the crap out of me - talk about author avatars! - and Booth has his moments, but isn’t that interesting either), and Heroes is right at the bottom. (Sylar, and other occasionally entertaining bad guys. That is all.)
What every show in category "meh" has in common is its failure to surprise me. Didn’t in the pilot, and hasn’t in however many seasons I’ve seen since; the best they manage is to pique my interest somehow by trying something unexpected. But they don’t surprise me; they don’t break out of their box, or do anything more than bounce off the box’s wall intermittently.
For the record, SPN, Leverage, Deadwood ... I can’t think of any others at this point ... all did manage this, and in their pilot episodes. SPN did it with a single line, Leverage with a single scene, and Deadwood with the whole damn episode. They proceeded to live into the promise, each time, which was satisfying.
There’s also the category between the two, which contains shows that haven’t really surprised me but have enough strong writing, other story elements, or sheer chutzpah, to give them real interest. Category "huh", I guess. The new BSG, most of Whedon’s stuff, House (although that slipped down the ranks after a while), Hustle ... um ... can’t think of any others there, either, although I’m sure there are a couple. Oh, yeah, Rescue Me, too, although I never really got into it. But on that subject, I went on from Justified to watch the Sons of Anarchy pilot, mostly in the spirit of investigation.
Sons of Anarchy popped up on my radar in basically the same way Justified did. I spent maybe five, ten minutes on its website, and was pretty sure I knew what it was: a nicely judged rough-edged little mixture of sentimentality and brutality. Which it was. The pilot set up the broad strokes of the characters and relationships, but gave them depth, interconnectedness, and plenty of room to stretch and grow. I’m pretty sure that if I keep watching it, that’s exactly what it will deliver. I’m not likely to actually do that, because you need to find the criminal underbelly exciting and attractive to feel the main pull of the show, and I don’t. But it’s strongly constructed enough to keep my interest if I ever get around to it.