"Raylan County, KY."

People act like the latest season of Justified was the vindicating flaming sword of justice in the hands of the returning Christ-Child mounted on an elephant, come for your sinful enemies, but it wasn't.

I kept watching it to see if anything would turn up, as usually it does, but this time it really didn't.

Of course New York magazine elected to declare it this week's "heir to the Sopranos" at this point. What'd the Sopranos ever get us anyway? Boardwalk Empire. Or, as it's known, The Implausible in Pursuit of the Unintelligible. Who among you buys Steve Buscemi as a mob boss?

Last season of Justified was a Dick Tracy arc of excesses and grotesques. It was Justified over-heating, over-reaching itself and turning into a cartoon, but it was a total swell to behold. Even when they stole the shock of the arm-chopping motif from Big Love it was fine. The season before that, the old Harlan County, Which Side Are You On? bit, I thought at first was hard-going down a terminal mine-shaft but when I watched it again on DVD it was full of subtle delights. Principally, the Bennetts.

The first season of Justified, as I believe I noted elsewhere, is a protracted version of a Road Runner cartoon, or Sylvester & Tweetie Pie, or Tom & Jerry. Punisher versus Wolverine. You get the idea. They managed to sustain that somehow but I think the ghost got coughed up this season. What's left to say between Raylan and Boyd? They need to shit or get off the pot. "Get a room."

This season blew partially from bad "American Southron Gothic" mis-writing and terminally purple over-writing. They cranked up the good-old-boy trash-talking into turbo overdrive but that didn't work, it just choked the viewer with exhaust fumes.

Raylan Givens was so full of liquid smarm and drawling olde county saws that he was rendered nonsensical and vapid. It was like he stepped out of a Foxfire book and was going to show us how to whittle a banjo from a gourd but that was about all he'd contribute. He'd smirk and squint for money. Conversely, Boyd Crowder worked like a dray horse. That boy was all over the shop, both figuratively and literally. That poor old boy don't know if he's coming or going, whether he's a prophet or a small-time oxycontin dealer. I missed the days when he was the snake-handling born-again blood-drinking Great Awakening come-outer. "Thems was good times, sho." Now it's all just ambling around the bar and the trailer park looking for his script and his teeth-whitener.

After the grotesques of last season the "bad guy" this season was a nebulous identikit bald guy. A poor man's Vic Mackey. That pepped-up screen hood Wynn Duffy was better than this. I was actually relieved when Wynn Duffy sauntered into a scene this season. Raylan dispatched this same nameless, nebulous "bad guy" as an afterthought. Why he did it with a phone call. He really did phone it in. You got the sense that his nonchalance was mirrored by the geek assholes at the writers' long table too. Phoned-in. They're just so happy they're in Hollywood in the sunshine and they're getting laid and they can live out their Turtle-from-Entourage fantasies.

Good luck to 'em. I like Hollywood. I especially like walking in the hills and going to the Laurel Canyon store to buy a packet of the red Monster Munch for a dollar, which is actually cheaper than they cost at Heathrow Airport or even (depending on the exchange rate) in a Waitrose.

It's cheaper to buy the six pack than a single packet.

At Heathrow, they were selling three packets of crisps for £3, and they called that a "sale."

"Miller Gaffney Ain't Well." Or, "She Moves Through the Fair (In An Invalid Car)."

"Let's do it to it." KEVIN BRUNEAU.

On the recent show in Liberty, North Carolina, Miller Gaffney was at her most un-Millerish. In fact she said outright, "I'm going to throw up." She drifted away, dazed, hand poised daintily over her mouth. Five minutes later she came positively bouncing back on to the show, jaunty as you like. Soon enough she was saying to somebody at a stall, "Is that a funnel cake? Yum." I turned to my wife and said, "That must have been a really good puke."

Despite her seeming recovery, Miller blundered around for the rest of the show on John Bruno's scooter. On another episode, this same scooter that I have mentioned in a separate "post" came a cropper in the mud & this debacle made John late to get to the table.

Contestants have a set time to scout about the fairs and markets looking for superior items per the week's instructions. They are timed each week by an antique clock and if they turn up back at the long table outside the time limit they are fined $50 by each successful contestant.

The other contestants are never more bloodthirsty than when they come scrounging meanly for their meagre $50 bonus from a latecomer. John Bruno was late because his scooter was bogged in the mud, which is to say on account of his personal infirmity, but the others still leapt on him for $50 each. It was like a scene from a Jack London novel for sheer natural barbarism.

The wolves leaping on the ancient native in the snow.

The cannibalism of the Donner Party.

The leader in such bloodthirstiness is Bene.

She smiles an awful lot but she is a skinflint and a cut-throat and she has blood on her hands.

I nearly accused her of actual murder but I stopped myself short.

Word is out that the show is to be cancelled. Let me here register my hearty, lousy regret. Predictably, now come the carrion crows. There is lots of bitching online about this show where formerly there was no word about it at all. The level of this skirmishing isn't high. But when was the repartee online ever thrusting, indeed? People online are cruel and vindictive and routinely impotent and inert and dishonest and they have poor hygiene and bad acne also.

One sour character yowls in outrage several times that Miller isn't a natural blonde. Another kvetches that they never make any money at auction. Disregarding the fact that Kevin does handsomely most weeks, and Bruno patently don't give a drat about the materialist side of things,  I don't think that's really their fault. The hare-lipped hill folk that show up to these auctions are unwilling to go above $40 for anything. Their attitude is buy low, sell high and burn down Washington DC.  In these hard last times they control the market it seems. If you had the actual Sistine Chapel ceiling up for auction in Old Viriginny, they'd bid maybe $20 if they felt flush.

There was the same sort of toxic fantard rumbling about Storage Wars, which I have to concede I eventually came to feel was a fix. Mostly Barry's "finds." I liked Barry but he was a committed piss-taker and a joker and a charlatan and a disgrace to the profession. (What profession exactly, I do not know.) That was really a gang of crooks, wasn't it? I know I have nearly accused Bene of actual murder, but I think that the crowd on Storage Wars really have killed people before. It's just a sort of suspicion I have. I can't prove it of course.

Anyway, what the hell, all things must pass & ubi sunt. Cheers to the passing spring. I hope Miller and John and Kevin get some other show because I like them. You know what I think about Bene.

It's a regrettable disgusting shame but on the other hand I watch too much TV as it is.