TV Tuesdays Free Talk

I've been rewatching Justified over the past fortnight or so, not having seen it since it first finished airing 10 years ago. I just finished the third season today; this show is so damned quotable lol, it's great fun. I'd never really heard of Elmore Leonard before, and I haven't seen anything else of his that's been adapted to screen, but the characters are so well written that this has piqued my interest in his books. And of course, there are stellar performances from just about every actor on set. I remember the quality being consistent all the way through the first six seasons, so I'm chomping at the bit to get through the next three. I did watch the recent spinoff/seventh season, City Primeval, late last year and thought it sadly wasn't up to the same standard at all, so I won't revisit that.

I also finished Samurai Jack today. I'd been watching it over the past 3-4 months as it had been recommended to me as possibly the best Western animated show ever. It's... okay. Top marks for visual style and fight choreography (in the original 4 seasons at least), but it's a pretty standard action cartoon otherwise, and my expectations were probably way too high. I can see why it was so beloved when it was initially airing - taking such direct inspiration from film cinematography would have made it more sophisticated than almost every other Western cartoon at the time - but it was still essentially just a kid's show. When I was initially bored with it during the first season, everything I read online said it was worth it for the payoff in season five, and I had seen clips of the Daughters of Aku chase/fight before, so I held out hope. Nonetheless, I found that last season quite a letdown outside of those early episodes. You can tell it was a different team for the final season, as the style of storytelling was noticeably different. Even having skipped some episodes here and there, I'm pretty disappointed overall that I spent time on it.