Justified: Season Three (2012)

Showrunner: Graham Yost

The same thing is true of every season of Justified, the first 10-12 episodes are pretty good but not great, but then the last couple episodes are flat-out outstanding and make the rest of the season better in hindsight. In the case of the third season, it's really just the final episode (final scene if you want to get specific) that crosses the "great television" threshold. As great as that final episode is, it's not enough to retroactively make the whole season great, though I certainly have a better opinion of the other episodes now. The third season is not quite as good as the second, but maybe a bit better than the first. It's uneven, but it's wildly entertaining.

The main villain of the season, Quarles, was a bit too cartoonish sometimes for my taste, but he provided some great Tarantino-esque moments that made the show all the more easier and fun to watch.  It's really at the end of the season that we find some meaningful information about him that connects him to the overall theme of fatherhood and specifically the shadows a father casts over their son. The reason the show has been faltering a bit in my view has been the lack of focus on its main character, Raylan Givens. There are many supporting characters on the show now, and it has all now become about them, rather than Raylan. Like the great pilot episode in the first season, the final episode this season was about Raylan, and that is why the episode was great. If more of the show involved Raylan's issues with his family, his work, and his temperament and including them in the main plot, the show would be much better. As it stands, the show has never failed to be entertaining, and so I cannot deny its quality.

Grade: B-