Justified Review

The room's guiding rule was a bracelet asking what Elmore would do, and it shows in every scene, because nobody here says anything plainly when a story will do instead. Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens with a stillness that reads as courtesy and functions as threat, and Walton Goggins turns Boyd Crowder from a first episode disposal into the reason the series lasted six years, a man in love with the sound of his own sentences and dangerous precisely because of it.

Margo Martindale's second season as Mags Bennett is as good as antagonist writing gets, a matriarch running a hollow through hospitality and apple pie. The structure is a season arc laid over standalone hours, and the standalone hours vary, with the fifth season notably losing its way in Florida. The photography is workmanlike and the show does not care. This is a talking series, and the talk is better than almost anything else on television. The finale lands a last exchange that justifies the entire run.