Justified: City Primeval

Sometimes you come across a show that's just perfect, and while it must be tempting to capitalize on its success, it would probably be better to let it be. Because how do you compete with perfection ?

I never bothered to watch "El Camino", because I didn't feel that "Breaking bad" needed a sequel, so maybe it was good or maybe not. I don't know and I'm never gonna find out.

But here we are. A new chapter in the Raylan Givens story.

As expected it doesn't in any way come close to the original. The strenght of "Justified" was grounded in the multitude of great characters surrounding Oliphant and Goggins, and that it took a cop show and turned it into an epic rural saga.

Goggins made his villain a man you despised and loved at the same time. A bad guy with a multilayered personality.

Sadly Damsell is no Boyd Crowder. He's just a bad guy to the bone, and "City Primeval" is just another regular " catch a killer" cop show.

That being said it's not bad. Raylan is still a cool guy and I actually couldn't help myself enjoying it.

But while I rated the original 10, this deserves only a 7.

Worth a watch though.

What used to make Justified great was the excellent and charismatic villains along with witty repartee dialogue between Raylan and said antagonists, with some good action and plot twists sprinkled in. This series has a less compelling villain who is quite obvious in his machinations and struts around in his white briefs far too often for my taste. He's hardly ever on screen with Raylan so the dialogue is minimal.

We also get some side characters who are inserted for little reason like his supposedly 15-year-old daughter Willa, played by Timothy Olyphant's real life daughter who is 20 and it shows. She can raise her voice an octave but we still have eyes. The writers do her no favors, she just plays the usual bratty and disobedient teen girl trope that is seemingly in every show now, and doesn't move the plot forward in any way but rather acts as a drag on it with distracting annoyance.

The love interest for Raylan is so far off from Ava Crowder or Winona Hawkins that it just doesn't come across as believable. Raylan is probably out of almost every woman's league but in this case it's really a bridge too far.

Neither the plot nor the dialogue are all that clever. Raylan gets in a few quips but it just seems like they stole the lines from the original Justified and repurposed them here. It's great to see Raylan on screen again and Sweety (Vondie Curtis-Hall) is also a lot of fun to watch so I still give this a 6, but when they're off screen it's a 3 or 4. Were they justified in making this show? Mostly not.

I love all things Timothy Olyphant, the original Justified and I love the Raylan Givens character. What I can do without is the Willa character. I find her to be annoying and unnecessary. I know it's only 2 episodes in, but she's added nothing to the show at all, except teenage disobedience. This character is an obvious ploy and someone we're supposed to care about when she's abducted or otherwise harmed. Maybe the impetus for Raylan to break a law, become angrier, show vulnerability, etc. Either way she's irritating and the least the writers could've done was make her character likable. I'm still gonna watch because of Mr. Olyphant and the rest of the cast, but I really hope her character has less screen time.

It's a good thing the writers are currently on strike; that means you can get new ones when the strike is over! The way they wrote the character Willa is horrible . Please send her back to Florida or whatever.

Vivian, if you read this, please know that this is just your first gig. You have your dad's smile, but you were miscast into this role that is setting you up for a lot of criticism. I can't wait to see you in roles that actually make sense.

The good part of this show is that it still has Timothy Olyphant doing Raylan. There are also some really good supporting actors in this show. I have hope that this show will get better and "justify" itself.

Raylan Givens is back and he's as awesome as ever, but the show still falls down when it comes to the other characters and the overall plot.

The lack of complexity within the plot is the biggest problem. The main villain just wanders about with no real plan or central goals, and honestly he would be better as the chief henchman of a much smarter, more ambitious villain. That lack of powerful central villain, makes the lesser bad guys far less impactful then they should have been.

Carolyn and Sweety are interesting characters on their own, but their personal struggles take up screen time and don't add much to the plot. (The original Justified was great because everything connected back to Raylan, Harlan or the US Marshall service in one way or another.)

The corrupt cop storyline is also a big let down. The cop is not corrupt enough to bring any real tension to the story.

The plot needed a corrupt cop acting against the investigation throughout. I wanted to see them actively tampering with evidence, silencing witnesses through murder or threats, I wanted to see them in secret meetings with other bad guys, passing along information and taking bribes from them. Instead we see the cop clumsily trying to pin the crimes of the villain on an innocent person, and they're so bad at it, that all their colleagues instantly know what they've done.

Willa (Raylan's daughter) is another disappointment. Her "little girl voice" is grating, and she seems very naive for a 15 year old, and especially for a law enforcement officers daughter. We see her exploring the secluded graffiti laden back streets of Detroit, all by herself with zero thought for her own safety. A strange man shows up at her hotel, claiming to know her dad, and she instantly believes him. Honestly if they recast the character as a 10 year old I wouldn't know the difference.