‘Justified’ season 4 premiere review: An unholy war begins

“Justified” is one of the strongest series on TV that awards shows continuously ignore and for the life of us we can’t figure out why. Tuesday night’s season premiere achieved everything that you could hope for in the first episode of a serial: it laid out the groundwork for where the characters now, introduced a few new faces, and also set up some key mysteries that are going to hopefully be tracked over the course of the entire year.

While we expected prior to watching this episode to be largely transfixed on the mysterious parachute and some illegal drugs from thirty years ago (a story that we were told to expect in the opening minutes of the episode), we don’t know if we were quite sold on it until what we saw Arlo do at the very end of the episode. What is it about FX shows liking blood so much? We don’t quite know, but this one moment gave us a sense that secrets are going to be more valuable than anything else moving forward the rest of the year.

Our favorite concept within this episode was the idea of the new church, an organization where drugs are really somehow used as a means to earn salvation. It’s such a simple, messed-up concept: taking advantage of the desperate to suit your own needs. This place is going to make Boyd a rather busy man…

As for Patton Oswalt, can we already write him up as our favorite guest star of 2013 thus far? While we won’t be seeing Constable Bob in every episode, this character has managed to make bumbling cops elsewhere even more ashamed of themselves. The brilliant thing about him, though, is that executive producer Graham Yost (who also wrote this episode) found a way to make him a bit of a dopey guy while at the same time give him an edge and some history that allows there to be so many more layers beyond that.

Overall, did you love this premiere, or find it lacking in any way? We want to hear some of your thoughts below, and you can read some more of the latest “Justified” season 4 scoop by visiting the story over at the link here.

Photo: FX