TV SHOWS / SERIES - Seen any good ones lately? Please feel free to post reviews / feedback / trailers / articles / TV news / all that shit ...
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch
Official Trailer
Debuts October 14, 2025
Sam Fisher is back and this time, the mission is personal. From the creator of the "John Wick" franchise comes Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, only on Netflix on October 14th. Starring Liev Schreiber as Sam Fisher & Kirby Howell-Baptiste as new Splinter Cell agent Zinnia McKenna
Official Trailer
Debuts October 14, 2025
Sam Fisher is back and this time, the mission is personal. From the creator of the "John Wick" franchise comes Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, only on Netflix on October 14th. Starring Liev Schreiber as Sam Fisher & Kirby Howell-Baptiste as new Splinter Cell agent Zinnia McKenna
Jimmy Kimmel vs. the FCC: Can Disney Escape This Mess? - The Ringer
Matt and Bill Carter discuss the suspension of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after portions of Kimmel’s monologue on Monday sparked outrage among some ABC affiliate groups and FCC chairman Brendan Carr. They discuss Disney’s decision to pull Kimmel off the air, Trump’s celebration, and where this will go.
www.theringer.com
Disney Plus subscribers quit in droves over Jimmy Kimmel axe
Kimmel's show was suspended after he made remarks about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk
www.newsweek.com
Emmy-winning ER drama ‘The Pitt’ shines a light on compassionate teaching
‘The Pitt’ offers compelling insights about what it means to teach with and through trauma that are relevant for education in schools and at post-secondary levels at large.
theconversation.com
What 'Billionaires' Bunker' Finale Says About Extreme Wealth
Netflix's soapy post-apocalyptic thriller from the creators of 'Money Heist' can be sneakily profound
time.com
Penguins Unite! Colin Farrell and Danny DeVito on Lusting After Catwoman, Staying Sober and How ‘It’s Always Sunny’ Is Like ‘I Love Lucy’ on Acid
Colin Farrell and Danny DeVito talk about their shared history playing Batman villain The Penguin.
variety.com
TV Premiere Dates: 2025 Calendar
Check out our 2025 TV premiere dates calendar for when new shows air and when your favorite shows return!
www.denofgeek.com
| DATE | SHOW | NETWORK |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, September 18 | Black Rabbit | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 18 | The BA***DS of Bollywood | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 18 | Platonic: Blue Moon Hotel | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 18 | Reasonable Doubt | Hulu |
| Thursday, September 18 | The Case Against Adnan Syed Part Five (9:00 p.m.) | AMC |
| Friday, September 19 | Haunted Hotel | Netflix |
| Friday, September 19 | Billionaires’ Bunker | Netflix |
| Friday, September 19 | Lego Star Wars Rebuild the Galaxy: Pieces of the Past | Disney+ |
| Sunday, September 21 | Tulsa King Season 3 | Paramount+ |
| Monday, September 22 | The Voice Season 28 (8:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Monday, September 22 | Brilliant Minds Season 2 (10:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Monday, September 22 | Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen (12:35 a.m.) | CBS |
| Tuesday, September 23 | Murder in a Small Town (8:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Tuesday, September 23 | The Lowdown (9:00 p.m.) | FX |
| Tuesday, September 23 | Doc Season 2 (9:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Wednesday, September 24 | The Guest | Netflix |
| Wednesday, September 24 | Slow Horses Season 5 | Apple TV+ |
| Wednesday, September 24 | Hotel Costiera | Prime Video |
| Wednesday, September 24 | The Golden Bachelor Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Wednesday, September 24 | Survivor Season 49 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Wednesday, September 24 | The Floor Season 4 (8:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Wednesday, September 24 | Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | The CW |
| Wednesday, September 24 | 99 to Beat Season 1 (9:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Wednesday, September 24 | Shark Tank Season 17 (10:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Thursday, September 25 | House of Guinness | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 25 | Wayward | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 25 | Alice in Borderland Season 3 | Netflix |
| Thursday, September 25 | English Teacher Season 2 | Hulu |
| Thursday, September 25 | Hell’s Kitchen Season 24 (8:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Thursday, September 25 | Law & Order Season 27 (8:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Thursday, September 25 | The Amazing Race Season 38 (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Thursday, September 25 | Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test Season 4 (9:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Thursday, September 25 | Law & Order: SVU Season 27 (9:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Friday, September 26 | Ángela: Limited Series | Netflix |
| Friday, September 26 | Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 6 (8:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Friday, September 26 | 20/20 Season 48 (9:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Friday, September 26 | Dateline Season 34 (9:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Friday, September 26 | The Savant | Apple TV+ |
| Friday, September 26 | Dora Season 4 | Paramount+ |
| Saturday, September 27 | 48 Hours Season 39 (10:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, September 28 | America’s Funniest Home Videos Season 36 (7:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Sunday, September 28 | 60 Minutes Season 57 (7:30 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, September 28 | Wonderful World of Disney (8:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Sunday, September 28 | The Simpsons Season 37 (8:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Sunday, September 28 | Universal Basic Guys Season 2 (8:30 p.m.) | Fox |
| Sunday, September 28 | Krapopolis Season 3 (9:00 p.m.) | Fox |
| Sunday, September 28 | Bob’s Burgers Season 16 (9:30 p.m.) | Fox |
| Monday, September 29 | Epic Ride: The Story Of Universal Theme Parks | Peacock |
| Tuesday, September 30 | Nightmares of Nature: Cabin in the Woods | Netflix |
| Tuesday, September 30 | Chad Powers | Hulu |
| Tuesday, September 30 | Nightmares of Nature: Cabin in the Woods | Netflix |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Love Is Blind Season 9 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Shifting Gears Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Chicago Med Season 11 (8:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Abbott Elementary Season 5 (8:30 p.m.) | ABC |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Chicago Fire Season 14 (9:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Wednesday, October 1 | Chicago PD Season 13 (10:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Friday, October 3 | Monster: The Ed Gein Story | Netflix |
| Friday, October 3 | Marvel Zombies | Disney+ |
| Saturday, October 4 | Saturday Night Live Season 51 (11:30 p.m.) | NBC |
| Sunday, October 5 | Maigret (9:00 p.m.) | PBS |
| Sunday, October 5 | The Gold Season 2 (10:00 p.m.) | PBS |
| Sunday, October 5 | Smiling Friends Season 3 (11:30 p.m. ET) | Adult Swim |
| Tuesday, October 7 | True Haunting | Netflix |
| Wednesday, October 8 | Secrets of the Dead: The Rise & Fall of the Colosseum (10:00 p.m.) | PBS |
| Thursday, October 9 | 9-1-1 Season 9 (8:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Thursday, October 9 | 9-1-1: Nashville (9:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Thursday, October 9 | Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 (10:00 p.m.) | ABC |
| Friday, October 10 | The Last Frontier | Apple TV+ |
| Sunday, October 12 | Matlock Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, October 12 | Elsbeth Season 3 (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, October 12 | The Chair Company (10:00 p.m.) | HBO |
| Monday, October 13 | Solar Opposites Season 6 | Hulu |
| Monday, October 13 | The Neighborhood Season 8 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Monday, October 13 | DMV (8:30 p.m.) | CBS |
| Monday, October 13 | FBI Season 8 (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Monday, October 13 | Watson Season 2 (10:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Tuesday, October 14 | NCIS Season 23 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Tuesday, October 14 | NCIS: Origins Season 2 (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Tuesday, October 14 | NCIS: Sydney Season 3 (10:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Wednesday, October 15 | Murdaugh: Death in the Family | Hulu |
| Wednesday, October 15 | Loot Season 3 | Apple TV+ |
| Thursday, October 16 | The Diplomat Season 3 | Netflix |
| Thursday, October 16 | Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy | Peacock |
| Thursday, October 16 | Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Thursday, October 16 | Ghosts Season 5 (8:30 p.m.) | CBS |
| Friday, October 17 | Fire Country Season 4 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Friday, October 17 | Sheriff Country (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Friday, October 17 | Boston Blue (10:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, October 19 | Tracker Season 3 (8:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, October 19 | The Road (9:00 p.m.) | CBS |
| Sunday, October 19 | Haha, You Clowns (11:45 p.m.) | Adult Swim |
| Friday, October 23 | Nobody Wants This Season 2 | Netflix |
| Sunday, October 26 | Talamasca (9:00 p.m.) | AMC |
| Sunday, October 26 | It: Welcome to Derry | HBO Max |
| Tuesday, October 28 | Nightmares of Nature: Lost in the Jungle | Netflix |
| Wednesday, October 29 | Selling Sunset Season 9 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, October 29 | Hazbin Hotel Season 2 | Prime Video |
| Wednesday, October 29 | Star Wars Visions Season 3 | Disney+ |
| Wednesday, October 29 | Down Cemetery Road | Apple TV+ |
| Thursday, October 30 | The Witcher Season 4 | Netflix |
| Sunday, November 2 | Robin Hood (9:00 p.m.) | MGM+ |
| Sunday, November 2 | I Love LA (10:30 p.m.) | HBO |
| Monday, November 3 | St. Denis Medical Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Tuesday, November 4 | Squid Game: The Challenge | Netflix |
| Thursday, November 6 | All Her Fault | Peacock |
| Friday, November 7 | Happy’s Place Season 2 (8:00 p.m.) | NBC |
| Friday, November 7 | Maxton Hall – The World Between Us Season 2 | Prime Video |
| Friday, November 7 | Pluribus | Apple TV+ |
| Wednesday, November 12 | Selling the OC Season 4 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, November 12 | Palm Royale Season 2 | Apple TV+ |
| Thursday, November 13 | Last Samurai Standing | Netflix |
| Thursday, November 13 | Unicorn Academy – “Winter Solstice” | Netflix |
| Thursday, November 13 | The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 3 | Hulu | Disney+ |
| Sunday, November 16 | The American Revolution (8:00 p.m.) | PBS |
| Monday, November 17 | Gabby’s Dollhouse Season 12 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, November 19 | The Mighty Nein | Prime Video |
| Thursday, November 20 | Jurassic World: Chaos Theory Season 4 | Netflix |
| Monday, November 24 | Bel-Air Season 4 | Peacock |
| Wednesday, November 26 | Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 | Netflix |
| Monday, December 1 | CoComelon Lane Season 5 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, December 10 | Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 2 | Disney+ |
| Monday, December 15 | The Creature Cases: Chapter 6 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, December 17 | Fallout Season 2 | Prime Video |
| Thursday, December 18 | Emily in Paris Season 5 | Netflix |
| Thursday, December 25 | Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 | Netflix |
| Wednesday, December 31 | Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 3 | Netflix |
Renée Zellweger Hilariously Spoofs Martha and Gwyneth on TV
Zellweger’s spot-on send-up of the lifestyle mavens is the best part of this new season of “Only Murders in the Building.”
The Jimmy Kimmel Saga and America’s Free-Speech Crisis - The Ringer
Matt Belloni joins the show to talk about Jimmy Kimmel’s punishment, what happened behind the scenes at ABC and Disney, Bob Iger’s legacy, and what it means that media companies are bending the knee to the Trump administration, which is clearly using its position to punish free speech.
www.theringer.com
Jimmy Kimmel vs. the FCC: Can Disney Escape This Mess? - The Ringer
Matt and Bill Carter discuss the suspension of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after portions of Kimmel’s monologue on Monday sparked outrage among some ABC affiliate groups and FCC chairman Brendan Carr. They discuss Disney’s decision to pull Kimmel off the air, Trump’s celebration, and where this will go.
www.theringer.com
Toward a Unified Theory of Motorcycle Gangs
With the introduction of the Dark Hearts, ‘Task’ joins a long history of Hollywood’s fascination with biker clubs
www.theringer.com
Who’s Having the Worst Time on ‘Task’?
The first episode of HBO’s latest crime drama introduces us to Tom and Robbie, two men who are really going through it
www.theringer.com
What 'Billionaires' Bunker' Finale Says About Extreme Wealth
Netflix's soapy post-apocalyptic thriller from the creators of 'Money Heist' can be sneakily profound
I been debating about watching this when it popped up in my recommendations.
I might watch it around the holidays when I’m clearing out shit I got stacked up.
Toward a Unified Theory of Motorcycle Gangs
With the introduction of the Dark Hearts, ‘Task’ joins a long history of Hollywood’s fascination with biker clubswww.theringer.com
Who’s Having the Worst Time on ‘Task’?
The first episode of HBO’s latest crime drama introduces us to Tom and Robbie, two men who are really going through itwww.theringer.com
Been debating about watching this too.
I got shit I need to get caught up on.
Hollywood needs another strike so that I can catch up on shit.
Haha!!!!
It's good. 2 episodes in thus far. It's a slow burn, but well acted.
I hear you re: catching up on shit. I slowly chip away at things, lol.
My mom said IF she breaks a leg, then she can rest up / catch up on stuff. She broke her hip just over 5 years ago and the rest / rehab allowed her to catch up on some stuff. She mostly checks out stuff from DVR / streamers / Tubi, and I update her flashdrive for her and her common law boyfriend a few times a year. Stuff she's requested, as well as movies or TV series I think they'll enjoy ...
I Don't Care if You Hate Westerns, Everyone Must Watch Timothy Olyphant's 97% RT FX Classic at Least Once
Timothy Olyphant in Justified
By Laila Elhenawy
2 days ago
Television goes in constant cycles of rebirth. Genres come, go out of style, and disappear, only to return in different forms. The Western occupies a particularly conflicted position. This genre is historically the signature voice of American storytelling, and it has become synonymous with dust-pale cliche: lone sheriffs, gun battles with outlaws, and frontier moralities across open-ended horizons.
For many contemporary viewers, the Western has the feel of an artifact, its tropes more akin to a museum piece than a living art form. In this uncertainty rides Justified, the Timothy Olyphant-starring FX masterpiece that revitalizes the Western genre while also transcending it. With its near-perfect 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, Justified demonstrates genre labels collapse when a story commits itself to tight writing, subtle performances, and a location that breathes authenticity.
On the surface, Justified follows U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. He looks and sounds like he has stepped off a John Ford screen, despite the contemporary setting of Kentucky.
The show plays with the iconography of the Western, cowboy hats, law officers and simmering standoffs, while rooting itself in the rhythms of crime noir and the thickness of family saga. What results is less a genre exercise than a meditation on identity, morality, and survival in twenty-first-century America. Whether the viewer idolizes or despises Westerns, Justified demands attention. Its world won't be dismissed, and its characters won't be ignored.
The Western traditionally depends on binaries: hero versus outlaw, order versus chaos, civilization versus frontier. Those binaries once carried immense cultural potency, shaping mid-twentieth-century cinema and television into moral parables where audiences could identify with the righteous and recoil at the wicked. By the twenty-first century, however, such clarity no longer persuades. The myth of the lone gunslinger, the noble sheriff, or the faceless bandit feels like a relic of an older America that no longer recognizes itself in those neat divisions.
Justified understands this cultural shift, and in that understanding resides its brilliance. It does not discard the Western. Instead, it remixes it for modern sensibilities. Kentucky becomes a substitute for the desert, opioid pushers and coal barons replace cattle rustlers, and family dynasties fill in for faceless gangs.
At the center of this reimagining stands Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens, a character who embodies the paradox of modern Western identity. Every gesture he makes alludes to Western myth: the tilt of his hat, the unhurried drawl, the hand poised just close enough to his holster to suggest perpetual readiness.
He is an image designed to evoke memory, to call back the John Waynes and Gary Coopers of cinema past. Yet Raylan is no indestructible hero. He is vulnerable, volatile, and, more often than not, reckless. Olyphant performs this duality with uncanny precision, building a marshal who looks like the past but thinks in the present. He is a hero built on contradiction, not certainty.
The setting itself acts as a character, proving that Appalachia is not a mere backdrop but a crucible. In the hills of eastern Kentucky, history weighs on every decision.
Generational poverty, cultural pride, and deeply ingrained codes of loyalty permeate all interactions. As a result, Raylan's return is enacted within a place shaped by declining industries, families bound together by complex loyalties, and a society in which neighbor and outlaw overlap. Appalachia shapes decisions to the same degree as any badge or gun. Here, survival will often require morality, and Raylan's role as marshal places upon him the necessity of always bargaining with powers larger and older than federal power. This choice of setting allows Justified to stage the Western not as nostalgia but as an ongoing struggle.
Dialogue That Cuts Sharper Than Any Shootout. The redefining of the Western in Justified does not stop at setting and character. The show carries over into the realm of dialogue, where the show's literary roots are positively unmistakable. Derived from the work of Elmore Leonard, Justified lives on words that are used as projectiles. Leonard's creed is the maxim of distillation: characters are defined, not through exposition, but through what they do, how, and what they say. Raylan Givens' and Boyd Crowder's conversations give the best demonstration of this wordplay combat.
Boyd, played by Walton Goggins with unnerving charm, turns both adversary and mirror image. Their exchanges are fewer confrontations and more sophisticated games of chess played out in Southern drawls. Every line is layered with meaning: history, threat, love, and betrayal in one. The audience leans forward, sensing that behind Boyd's sly grin or Raylan's blank comeback, there is richness of feeling and danger that cannot be communicated in any shootout. A standoff in Justified doesn't typically begin with bloodshed; it begins with dialogue, and dialogue has never had the ability to destroy worlds.
Leonard's work has always thrived on humor infested with menace, and the series honors that heritage. Raylan can joke around just before drawing his firearm, and Boyd can preach like a country minister as he schemes a crime. Tonal variety ensures that no line ever appears to be arriving. Characters may move from one-liner repartee to killer menace in the space of a heartbeat, always keeping audiences off balance. Supporting actors are part of this gaggle of voices. Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) is caught between survival and aspiration, using words with calculating purpose, slicing through power structures that slide beneath her feet. Every sentence of hers is tainted with calculation, a perpetual game of risk and reward.
Mags Bennett, TV's scariest, chilling villain, swaddles violence in the reassuring rhythm of motherly counsel. Her words disarm before they destroy, offering apple pie and family warmth while plotting betrayal with chilling calm. Each character, no matter how minor, has a voice that completely belongs to them, a testament to the writing staff's dedication to Leonard's ideals. The particularity of these voices contributes to the depth of the show's world. Unlike most procedurals, where characters exist mainly to offer exposition, Justified communicates through words.
Their dialogue is not just deliverers of plot; it is declarations of identity, of background, of culture. To hear Boyd sermonize or Mags soothe her children is to understand how deeply Appalachia sings in rhythms. The cadences and dialects ground the show there, reminding viewers that language is geography. Justified saves dialogue as spectacle, proving that the Western is not quiet or bullet-laden in its ability to generate tension. The Western is no longer a visual genre but now a verbal genre, an art of speech and an art of movement.
Morality, Legacy, and the American Condition
Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) from Justified (2010) looks disbelieving.
Credit: Property of FX
Raylan Givens wears the badge of a U.S. Marshal, but his brand of justice never reaches legal righteousness. The show places him in a constant struggle between his responsibilities as an officer and his personal desires. He shoots from the hip, bends the rules when expedient, and defines "justice" as considerably less a universal ideal than a personal mantra. Along the way, Justified deconstructs the clichéd Western image of the flawless hero, replacing it with a character whose contradictions mirror the complexity of modern law enforcement. The ethical ambiguity is most evident when the show compares Raylan to its villains.
Villains in Justified are far from caricatures. They emerge rather as products of place, created by cycles of poverty, addiction, and institutional neglect. The series suggests Appalachia manufactures lawmen and outlaws in equal quantities. When Raylan engages these people, the conflict appears more like two sides of the same cultural coin than good versus evil. His violent predisposition is theirs; his charm is theirs; his stubbornness is theirs. The audience can't help but question whether Raylan's difference is one of character or situation. Mags Bennett embodies moral dualism.
She gently soothes a child in one episode, and chillingly arranges for an assassination in another. This dualism cannot be reduced. Similarly, Raylan's dealings with Boyd Crowder also follow the show's moral inquiry. Boyd, also a native of Harlan County, and their shared potential make potential confrontations all the more complex. Their relationship suggests that the line between lawman and outlaw is vanishingly thin. Audiences watch Raylan struggle with the recognition that, in other contexts, he could have been Boyd.
By laying these moral complexities out on the screen, Justified does something more than a great story. It challenges the greater American condition. The Western has traditionally served national allegory, acting out the struggle between progress and tradition, disorder and order. Justified updates that allegory to our fractured times. The law arrives here not as benefactor but as contested power, distrusted by the populace and soiled by its own champions. Upholding the law is not equivalent to performing justice; it's about facing institutional imbalances that law itself produces. The series consistently dramatizes the tension between personal liberty and institutional power.
Raylan believes in personal codes, but personal codes often clash with federal obligations. Criminals call for independence, but independence often leads to cycles of abuse. In dramatizing such tensions, Justified registers anxieties about authority, identity, and membership that play across America. By basing its moral dilemmas in character, conversation, and setting, Justified moves beyond genre trickery. It becomes an examination of the culture that produces and consumes it.,Justified occupies the intersection of tradition and innovation. It uses the swagger of frontier fiction, and then buries those conventions in the plot contrivances of modern crime drama.
The payoff isn't nostalgia but renewal. Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens is this equilibrium in human guise. He is a man with echoes of what existed before walking through now, both archetype and subversion. Walton Goggins's Boyd Crowder is his counterpoint opposite, a foe whose dialogue and profundity turn every scene multi-tonal. Appalachia is wherever they are and springs to life as more than a backdrop. It's where honor and poverty and corruption and survival meet. With every episode, the series will not permit the Western to be without meaning. The genre is not a relic, but a living entity that can reveal to us the fault lines of modern America.
Justified's narrative, taken from Elmore Leonard's school of writing, increases confrontation dialogue to greater levels of explosion than any shoot-out. Its characters will not be stereotyped as having contradictions that mirror the complexity of life. Similarly, its moral dilemmas echo throughout Appalachia, restating the dilemma between power and freedom, convention and vision, law and justice. This is the reason the show's 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating is not hyperbole but evidence of art. To watch Justified is to see storytelling that breaks down taste barriers, genre walls, and time barriers. It invites skeptics, aficionados, and lost viewers alike to witness its world once, and by doing so, it demonstrates that the Western is reimagined.
We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.
Fan
I tried to watch Justified when it was airing, partly because some of the exterior scenes were shot down the road from me (Green Valley substituting for Kentucky countryside). It was just too hard boiled for me - lots of violence and crude language with few likeable or redeeming characters. I understand it's supposed to be a modern Western but it's nothing like a John Wayne movie (not that I liked the Duke). Also as this article states, Justified is driven by its dialogue whereas in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western for example, it's totally driven by the characters' actions - not a word spoken for ten minutes or more, that's my type of Western!
2025-09-20 12:08:40
Timothy Olyphant in Justified
By Laila Elhenawy
2 days ago
Television goes in constant cycles of rebirth. Genres come, go out of style, and disappear, only to return in different forms. The Western occupies a particularly conflicted position. This genre is historically the signature voice of American storytelling, and it has become synonymous with dust-pale cliche: lone sheriffs, gun battles with outlaws, and frontier moralities across open-ended horizons.
For many contemporary viewers, the Western has the feel of an artifact, its tropes more akin to a museum piece than a living art form. In this uncertainty rides Justified, the Timothy Olyphant-starring FX masterpiece that revitalizes the Western genre while also transcending it. With its near-perfect 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, Justified demonstrates genre labels collapse when a story commits itself to tight writing, subtle performances, and a location that breathes authenticity.
On the surface, Justified follows U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. He looks and sounds like he has stepped off a John Ford screen, despite the contemporary setting of Kentucky.
The show plays with the iconography of the Western, cowboy hats, law officers and simmering standoffs, while rooting itself in the rhythms of crime noir and the thickness of family saga. What results is less a genre exercise than a meditation on identity, morality, and survival in twenty-first-century America. Whether the viewer idolizes or despises Westerns, Justified demands attention. Its world won't be dismissed, and its characters won't be ignored.
The Western traditionally depends on binaries: hero versus outlaw, order versus chaos, civilization versus frontier. Those binaries once carried immense cultural potency, shaping mid-twentieth-century cinema and television into moral parables where audiences could identify with the righteous and recoil at the wicked. By the twenty-first century, however, such clarity no longer persuades. The myth of the lone gunslinger, the noble sheriff, or the faceless bandit feels like a relic of an older America that no longer recognizes itself in those neat divisions.
Justified understands this cultural shift, and in that understanding resides its brilliance. It does not discard the Western. Instead, it remixes it for modern sensibilities. Kentucky becomes a substitute for the desert, opioid pushers and coal barons replace cattle rustlers, and family dynasties fill in for faceless gangs.
At the center of this reimagining stands Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens, a character who embodies the paradox of modern Western identity. Every gesture he makes alludes to Western myth: the tilt of his hat, the unhurried drawl, the hand poised just close enough to his holster to suggest perpetual readiness.
He is an image designed to evoke memory, to call back the John Waynes and Gary Coopers of cinema past. Yet Raylan is no indestructible hero. He is vulnerable, volatile, and, more often than not, reckless. Olyphant performs this duality with uncanny precision, building a marshal who looks like the past but thinks in the present. He is a hero built on contradiction, not certainty.
The setting itself acts as a character, proving that Appalachia is not a mere backdrop but a crucible. In the hills of eastern Kentucky, history weighs on every decision.
Generational poverty, cultural pride, and deeply ingrained codes of loyalty permeate all interactions. As a result, Raylan's return is enacted within a place shaped by declining industries, families bound together by complex loyalties, and a society in which neighbor and outlaw overlap. Appalachia shapes decisions to the same degree as any badge or gun. Here, survival will often require morality, and Raylan's role as marshal places upon him the necessity of always bargaining with powers larger and older than federal power. This choice of setting allows Justified to stage the Western not as nostalgia but as an ongoing struggle.
Dialogue That Cuts Sharper Than Any Shootout. The redefining of the Western in Justified does not stop at setting and character. The show carries over into the realm of dialogue, where the show's literary roots are positively unmistakable. Derived from the work of Elmore Leonard, Justified lives on words that are used as projectiles. Leonard's creed is the maxim of distillation: characters are defined, not through exposition, but through what they do, how, and what they say. Raylan Givens' and Boyd Crowder's conversations give the best demonstration of this wordplay combat.
Boyd, played by Walton Goggins with unnerving charm, turns both adversary and mirror image. Their exchanges are fewer confrontations and more sophisticated games of chess played out in Southern drawls. Every line is layered with meaning: history, threat, love, and betrayal in one. The audience leans forward, sensing that behind Boyd's sly grin or Raylan's blank comeback, there is richness of feeling and danger that cannot be communicated in any shootout. A standoff in Justified doesn't typically begin with bloodshed; it begins with dialogue, and dialogue has never had the ability to destroy worlds.
Leonard's work has always thrived on humor infested with menace, and the series honors that heritage. Raylan can joke around just before drawing his firearm, and Boyd can preach like a country minister as he schemes a crime. Tonal variety ensures that no line ever appears to be arriving. Characters may move from one-liner repartee to killer menace in the space of a heartbeat, always keeping audiences off balance. Supporting actors are part of this gaggle of voices. Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) is caught between survival and aspiration, using words with calculating purpose, slicing through power structures that slide beneath her feet. Every sentence of hers is tainted with calculation, a perpetual game of risk and reward.
Mags Bennett, TV's scariest, chilling villain, swaddles violence in the reassuring rhythm of motherly counsel. Her words disarm before they destroy, offering apple pie and family warmth while plotting betrayal with chilling calm. Each character, no matter how minor, has a voice that completely belongs to them, a testament to the writing staff's dedication to Leonard's ideals. The particularity of these voices contributes to the depth of the show's world. Unlike most procedurals, where characters exist mainly to offer exposition, Justified communicates through words.
Their dialogue is not just deliverers of plot; it is declarations of identity, of background, of culture. To hear Boyd sermonize or Mags soothe her children is to understand how deeply Appalachia sings in rhythms. The cadences and dialects ground the show there, reminding viewers that language is geography. Justified saves dialogue as spectacle, proving that the Western is not quiet or bullet-laden in its ability to generate tension. The Western is no longer a visual genre but now a verbal genre, an art of speech and an art of movement.
Morality, Legacy, and the American Condition
Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) from Justified (2010) looks disbelieving.
Credit: Property of FX
Raylan Givens wears the badge of a U.S. Marshal, but his brand of justice never reaches legal righteousness. The show places him in a constant struggle between his responsibilities as an officer and his personal desires. He shoots from the hip, bends the rules when expedient, and defines "justice" as considerably less a universal ideal than a personal mantra. Along the way, Justified deconstructs the clichéd Western image of the flawless hero, replacing it with a character whose contradictions mirror the complexity of modern law enforcement. The ethical ambiguity is most evident when the show compares Raylan to its villains.
Villains in Justified are far from caricatures. They emerge rather as products of place, created by cycles of poverty, addiction, and institutional neglect. The series suggests Appalachia manufactures lawmen and outlaws in equal quantities. When Raylan engages these people, the conflict appears more like two sides of the same cultural coin than good versus evil. His violent predisposition is theirs; his charm is theirs; his stubbornness is theirs. The audience can't help but question whether Raylan's difference is one of character or situation. Mags Bennett embodies moral dualism.
She gently soothes a child in one episode, and chillingly arranges for an assassination in another. This dualism cannot be reduced. Similarly, Raylan's dealings with Boyd Crowder also follow the show's moral inquiry. Boyd, also a native of Harlan County, and their shared potential make potential confrontations all the more complex. Their relationship suggests that the line between lawman and outlaw is vanishingly thin. Audiences watch Raylan struggle with the recognition that, in other contexts, he could have been Boyd.
By laying these moral complexities out on the screen, Justified does something more than a great story. It challenges the greater American condition. The Western has traditionally served national allegory, acting out the struggle between progress and tradition, disorder and order. Justified updates that allegory to our fractured times. The law arrives here not as benefactor but as contested power, distrusted by the populace and soiled by its own champions. Upholding the law is not equivalent to performing justice; it's about facing institutional imbalances that law itself produces. The series consistently dramatizes the tension between personal liberty and institutional power.
Raylan believes in personal codes, but personal codes often clash with federal obligations. Criminals call for independence, but independence often leads to cycles of abuse. In dramatizing such tensions, Justified registers anxieties about authority, identity, and membership that play across America. By basing its moral dilemmas in character, conversation, and setting, Justified moves beyond genre trickery. It becomes an examination of the culture that produces and consumes it.,Justified occupies the intersection of tradition and innovation. It uses the swagger of frontier fiction, and then buries those conventions in the plot contrivances of modern crime drama.
The payoff isn't nostalgia but renewal. Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens is this equilibrium in human guise. He is a man with echoes of what existed before walking through now, both archetype and subversion. Walton Goggins's Boyd Crowder is his counterpoint opposite, a foe whose dialogue and profundity turn every scene multi-tonal. Appalachia is wherever they are and springs to life as more than a backdrop. It's where honor and poverty and corruption and survival meet. With every episode, the series will not permit the Western to be without meaning. The genre is not a relic, but a living entity that can reveal to us the fault lines of modern America.
Justified's narrative, taken from Elmore Leonard's school of writing, increases confrontation dialogue to greater levels of explosion than any shoot-out. Its characters will not be stereotyped as having contradictions that mirror the complexity of life. Similarly, its moral dilemmas echo throughout Appalachia, restating the dilemma between power and freedom, convention and vision, law and justice. This is the reason the show's 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating is not hyperbole but evidence of art. To watch Justified is to see storytelling that breaks down taste barriers, genre walls, and time barriers. It invites skeptics, aficionados, and lost viewers alike to witness its world once, and by doing so, it demonstrates that the Western is reimagined.
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Fan
I tried to watch Justified when it was airing, partly because some of the exterior scenes were shot down the road from me (Green Valley substituting for Kentucky countryside). It was just too hard boiled for me - lots of violence and crude language with few likeable or redeeming characters. I understand it's supposed to be a modern Western but it's nothing like a John Wayne movie (not that I liked the Duke). Also as this article states, Justified is driven by its dialogue whereas in a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western for example, it's totally driven by the characters' actions - not a word spoken for ten minutes or more, that's my type of Western!
2025-09-20 12:08:40
Chief of War season finale
Jason Momoa directed the hell out of this episode. The entire series was great but what an incredible finish. The battle and fight sequences reminded me of sequences from Braveheart and The Last of The Mohicans. Hopefully the series will get a season 2 approval.
Black Rabbit
Four episodes in and I think the show is able to get around its hurdles of good brother,bad brother cliches due to the great performances of Jude Law and Jason Bateman and also trying to tap into some The Bear energy with the rest of the cast including my wife in another life Cleopatra Coleman. Its mostly involving as the brothers square off at times especially about money, as one has dreams of more success and one tries to get out from under the thumb of a local gang to which money is owed.
Jason Momoa directed the hell out of this episode. The entire series was great but what an incredible finish. The battle and fight sequences reminded me of sequences from Braveheart and The Last of The Mohicans. Hopefully the series will get a season 2 approval.
Black Rabbit
Four episodes in and I think the show is able to get around its hurdles of good brother,bad brother cliches due to the great performances of Jude Law and Jason Bateman and also trying to tap into some The Bear energy with the rest of the cast including my wife in another life Cleopatra Coleman. Its mostly involving as the brothers square off at times especially about money, as one has dreams of more success and one tries to get out from under the thumb of a local gang to which money is owed.
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