JUSTIFIED "A Murder of Crowes"

Article first published as JUSTIFIED Review on Seat42F.

FX’s JUSTIFIED gets a change of scenery in the season five premiere, “A Murder of Crowes.” It hasn’t left Kentucky behind, as that is where the episode begins, but the world is expanded a little as Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) travels to Florida and Boyd (Walton Goggins) and Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns, now a series regular) head to Detroit. It’s an exciting way to start the year!

Both of these trips are connected to the main story, as it has played out over the past few years. Boyd is missing some drugs he expected to be shipped in from Michigan, and so is trying to figure out what has happened. Fans of the series are familiar with the particular gang Boyd deals with (played by Dave Foley, Will Sasso, and others), and whatever happens, whether Boyd gets his supply or not, there will be implications back at home.

Boyd may be a little distracted since Ava (Joelle Carter) is still in jail and he’d like to clear her name. This cannot be done from several states away, and so it isn’t long before Boyd heads back, leading to a very tense confrontation near the end of the hour.

At the same time, Raylan goes south to find Dewey Crowe’s (Damon Herriman) family. Dewey’s brothers (Monk’s Jason Gray-Stanford and Boston Public’s Michael Rapaport) and sister (Alicia Witt, Friday Night Lights) have gotten mixed up with a Cuban (Amaury Nolasco, Prison Break) who is bad news. Partnering with Deputy Sutter (David Koechner, Anchorman 2, The Office), Raylan tries to play nice with the kin of his foe.

JUSTIFIED has never been stronger than when Raylan comes across a family of criminals. Margo Martindale headed up a fantastic clan of no-good scoundrels previously, and it looks like season five’s Crowes are poised to be just as enticing.

The casting choices for them are terrific and the story is open-ended enough to run for awhile. Plus, bringing in the Florida Crowes ties the tale to an important recurring cast member (who himself had good development this week), making it feel like a natural part of the established mythology.

Though, it’s also awesome when Boyd and Raylan clash, and that’s little in evidence in “A Murder of Crowes,” with the two on completely different paths. I assume that will come later in the season.

The other central figure in Raylan’s existence, besides Boyd, is Winona (Natalie Zea). Without giving anything away, the dynamic between the two of them has definitely shifted since the last we saw them together. It makes one wonder what kind of person Raylan is, and if he will always make the right decisions, as he usually seems to do. This, more than anything, illustrates Raylan’s flaws, Winona being a weakness for him, and that’s an interesting area to explore in our hero’s psyche.

There are already quite a few guest stars listed in the preceding paragraphs, but those are just the tip of the iceberg. In the first hour alone, besides everyone mentioned above, we get Stephen Root (King of the Hill, Boardwalk Empire), Karolina Wydra (House M.D.), Sam Anderson (Lost, ER), and more. It’s a very impressive roster, and it means we’ll have a very full year of players and plot.

You may notice that several of these names are primarily comedic actors. That doesn’t mean they are used to lighten the mood on JUSITIFIED. As done with Patton Oswalt (who will be returning) last season, the series coaxes dramatic performances out of its funny people, showing range and skill viewers may be pleasantly surprised to find.

My only complaint about all of these new faces, other than that not everyone will get the opportunity to repeat their performance, is that it leaves little room for the main cast. Boyd, Wynn, and Raylan have screen time, of course, and Art (Nick Searcy) will continue to be important every now and then, but Rachel (Erica Tazel) and Tim (Jacob Pitts) are already seen so little that this can only be bad news for them. They deserve to be a bigger part of the show, too.

JUSTIFIED remains a great series, well worth watching, and “A Murder of Crowes” is a strong start to the fifth season. JUSTIFIED premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.

Monk takes a bow

***THIS REVIEW DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS.  IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE FINALE EPISODE YET AND PLAN TO, PLEASE BOOKMARK IT AND COME BACK AFTER YOU HAVE.***

     USA's longest running drama, Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub (Wings) as former detective Adrian Monk, ended its eight season run last night, and not without a few tears.  As someone who only occasionally watched the show (until this final season), I still enjoyed it, and I was able to follow along with relative ease and appreciate it on many levels.  To make it easier for viewers, USA ran marathons this week or relevant past episodes, to catch you up on the plot that should be remembered.

     Twelve years ago, several years before the series began, Adrian Monk's wife, Trudy (The Office's Melora Hardin) was killed, and it is the one mystery he was never able to solve.  As the series came to a close, in the final two hours Monk inevitably found the final clues he needed to put things together.  That the show would end this way was pretty much a given long ago, but its execution was wonderful.  From a poison, to a long ago murder, new intrigue, and a video tape that Monk should have opened a dozen Christmases ago, it did not stretch believability much, as I expected to happen.  There was a reason for the new crack in the case, and it wasn't just coincidence that it all tied up now.

     Welcome was the fact that almost every main character got a satisfying ending, not just the title character.  Randy (Jason Gray-Stanford) moved to New Jersey and became a police captain.  Though I can't imagine how a viewer would find him actually capable of such a position, as Randy's cluelessness was the butt of many a joke, it was nice to see him end up with Monk's former assistant and longtime crush, Sharona (Bitty Schram).  While Sharona herself wasn't in the finale, she got to return and have her ending a few episodes early.  Likewise, Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) was married to his recent girlfriend T.K. (Virginia Madsen).  While T.K. was only a guest star in a couple of last season episodes, the Captain was remarried to a woman that appreciates him, and that was what was special about that.  Natalie (Traylor Howard, Two Guys, A Girl, & A Pizza Place) alone had nothing special in the finale, but she still played her ever helpful assistant role.  None of the major recurring characters had serious endings in the finale or the episodes leading up to it, but those people were less important to this series than many other television shows.  Monk only ever centered on four people at a time.

     Monk, himself, had a surprisingly emotional ending.  After realizing an episode early that he didn't really want to be an official detective again, the surprise twist of him finding out his late wife had a daughter, and his connection with her, gave his character growth and a bright future as the ending credits rolled.  While I find it hard to swallow that a strange would take so quickly to the neurotically screwed up character of Adrian Monk, the story wasn't about her anyway.

     While not without its faults, longtime viewers should find themselves choked up and moved by the finale, which provides a nice cap, goes somewhere, but doesn't ruin the show that came before it.  USA will have a hard time filling the hole left behind.

M-M-M-Monk's Sharona

    If you tuned into USA’s Monk this weekend, you saw a familiar face. Bitty Schram, who played Sharona Fleming, Monk’s assistant for the first two and a half seasons of the show, returned. It was her first appearance since her abrupt departure five years ago, when she remarried her ex-husband and moved to New Jersey, and will likely be her last appearance on the show, which is scheduled to conclude its eight season run on December 4th.

      This episode was predictably fun, but as Monk often does, it stayed too true to the formula instead of allowing itself to roam free. Though there was no official police investigation, leading to little screen time for Randy and Stottlemeyer, the show stayed on the murder plot too much, allowing only a bit of clashing between Sharona and her replacement, Natalie. Near the end of the episode, their bickering did cause Monk to have a little bit of a breakdown and run off, but there was prime opportunity here to deal with a Monk who was hurt very deeply by his assistant leaving, and this was overlooked completely. Instead, their first meeting dealt only with Monk trying to find out what happened to a shirt that she took to a dry cleaner’s shortly before she left, one that he never did find.

      There was a bright spot, however, in that the episode did, albeit very briefly, delve into Randy’s crush on Sharona. It was an ongoing plot never resolved in the early seasons of Monk, and as Sharona left, the audience did get to see her give him a little kiss. Unfortunately, it is left up to your imagination whether anything more will happen with them. With only a few weeks left, and Sharona not announced as returning again, it is unlikely that they will end up together, though one can hope that that may be a surprise tucked into the series finale.

      Check back in this column after Monk comes to end for a review of the series finale, and make sure you watch on Friday nights, as Monk will reportedly finally solve his one still-open case, the murder of his wife, Trudy.