Reviews

The show started strong, an unconventional police procedural about a small town sheriff solving crime, that turned into a mess in the last two seasons.

All too often we see this happen to good shows in television. They get so mired down in the subplots and personal relationships that they lose track of the show's premise, which is what attracted people to the show to begin with.

In the last few season we saw Walt Longmire turn from an admittedly unconventional but good sheriff, into an overly obsessed lunatic hell bent on blaming everything bad that happens on one man, his nemesis Jacob Nighthorse. Virtually no crimes were solved, as the few that did occur were treated as a subplot, while they concentrated more and more on the characters personal lives and problems.

The final season amounted to nothing more than two or three episodes worth of story stretched out over ten, I found my self fast forwarding through many a scene just to get past the emotional fluff and advance the actual story.

On a side note, the ending has me wanting the show to be picked up again, with different writers of course, as I'd love to see Cady Longmire as the towns new sheriff.

I've always loved a good courtroom drama, and for that reason alone this show had me hooked from the start. However, like so many other shows these days, after a few seasons they drifted away from that, spending countless hours devoted to interpersonal relationships and subplots. By season 5 they were hardly spending any time on actual legal cases.

I understand the need for character development, but it should never come at a cost of the show's main premise. They took an interesting show about the law and spun it off into a never ending soap opera of who's sleeping with who, politics, back-stabbing and melodrama.