The first two seasons were entertaining, even if it started to meander by the end. Then Netflix bought it and it turned into absolute trash. I have no problem with the sex and explicit language, as other reviewers do, in fact I was looking forward to them having more freedom. But instead of getting more mature, the writing turned into absolute, unmitigated garbage. Nothing but the laziest, most ignorant caricature of politics and society. I thought that Netflix would want it to replace HoC as their premium political drama, but instead they turned it into an unwatchable ideological circlejerk.
Keeps the style and momentum from previous seasons going. Also returns to season 1's examination of the rise of communism in Britain in an interesting way. The plot for bringing the family back together is a bit contrived, but it's fun to see Adrian Brody doing his godfather thing. And Aiden Gillen as some kind of leprechaun assassin is just great.
This show is the epitome of lazy and offensively stupid writing. Step 1: come up with something shocking to put on the screen: people gouging their own eyes out, dismembered cats, Rob Ford descending from the ceiling of a sorority house to kill a bunch of young women, whatever. Step 2: say "it's a cult." As long as there's a cult involved, people don't need to have personalities or motivations. They just do whatever the writers need them to do that week, brainwashed by the cult's message that... murder is art, or something. I mean, really, who wouldn't want to give up a career in the FBI or local law enforcement to just settle down and gouge out people's eyes because... well, no reason. It's a cult.
This is a mind-numbingly stupid mess. Any literate person should take it as an insult to his or her intelligence. It seems to be aimed at drooling, brain-dead yokels who've never read a single book on poetry or law enforcement or psychology or cults. And judging by its ratings, that's a disconcertingly high proportion of the American public.
Depressing, yes. Slow, yes. Boring? That depends on whether you have the mental acuity of the average television viewer or of an actual human being. If you want a cop drama that ties up neatly each weak with the good guy outwitting the bad guy into confessing his crimes, this is not for you. Beyond that, it's hard to say exactly what it is, as it seems to be charting its own course somewhere between the 'man against the system' theme of The WIre and the 'man against himself' theme of The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. No doubt it could still fizzle, but the acting, the cinematography and the dialogue thus far have been so fantastic that the journey will have been worth it even if the destination disappoints.
"Scar" and "Black Market" are probably the worst episode of the show; entirely pointless and nonsensical. I guess the writers didn't have their episode quota filled, so they decided to take an unused plot from some unrelated project they had worked on and cram it uncomfortably into the series. Aside from that, though, an good season of an excellent show.
This season is a bit of a disappointment coming off of the fantastic opening season. Too much time spent with Dany pouting in the heat or Jon pouting in the cold. And FAR too much time with Robb's completely uninteresting and pathetically conventional love-interest. Aside from Cersei and Arya whose storylines are borrowed from the novels the show writers seem utterly incapable of handling female characters. Even so, the King's Landing sequences are solid, with Peter Dinklage owning every scene like a king.
Without a single, overarching villain to pull this season together, it lacks the cohesion of seasons two or three. Even so, it's just as rife with what makes Justified great: the banter, the action, the modern hillbilly atmosphere, and the cool sexiness that is Timothy Olyphant.
The acting, the direction, the set design, the economical use of music and the plotting are all fantastic. What really makes this the best television series in history, however, is the engaging literary style that Milch and the other writers bring to the dialogue. All I can say about the cancellation is "what conceivable godly use is our suffering? What conceivable godly use was the screaming of all those characters? Did you need to hear their death-agonies to know your omnipotence, HBO?"