We're in a Golden Age of Television and I do my part by watching as much as I can. The central conceit of this series was stolen pretty much wholesale from Andrew Unterberger of Intensities in Ten Suburbs.
In a recent podcast, Bill Simmons said that Timothy Olyphant would be a great male lead in a romantic comedy, except for the fact that it always seems that he is about two wrong words away from killing everyone else in the movie. While I don't know if he'll ever try to lose Kate Hudson in ten days, there's no doubt that Olyphant can carry a TV series, and Justified gains a lot of mileage out of the anger that always seems to bubble under the surface.
Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a United States Marshal who is forced out of a comfortable job in Miami to return to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, after he shoots a drug lord, after giving him 24 hours to leave town. Raylan Givens was born in the wrong century: he would have been much more comfortable in the Old West, where the local sheriffs could take justice into their own hands. Raylan never leaves his house without a six-shooter (or a sawed-off shotgun if the situation calls for it) and his trademark Stetson hat. Instead, hampered by modern regulations, in order to sate his itchy trigger finger, he has to goad his mark into drawing first, thereby making his killings justified (hey, that's the name of the show!). Though he mostly keeps his cool, Raylan's tendency to shoot-first and ask no questions gives the show a natural sense of suspense. In season 1, Raylan encounters deals with a series of interesting fugitives and ghosts of his past, such as his deadbeat father and his ex-wife.
Justified is unquestionably a star vehicle, but it's real success is to build an expansive cast of supporting and recurring characters. Nick Searcy plays Raylan's supervisor, Art, and is very convincing as a down-home, friendly Southern official who still means business. Raymond J Barry plays Raylan's scumbag of a father with an infectious sneer. M.C. Gainey (aka Lost's Tom Friendly) provides a worthy antagonist in druglord Bo Crowder. The show also lines up a worthy array of guest stars. Creator Graham Yost must have made a bet with his writing staff about how many Deadwood alumni he could fit into the season (Johnny Burns (Sean Bridges), Dan Dority(W. Earl Brown), Reverend Smith (Ray McKinnon), not to mention Olyphant). My two favorite guests were Alan Ruck as a dentist who goes all Marathon Man on a guy in a parking lot and Stephen Root, one of the great character actors working today, as The Hammer, a Judge who wears nothing under his robe but a speedo and always gives convicts the maximum sentence.
Season one's biggest weakness is the lack of development of female characters. While Joelle Carter is initially very engaging as firebrand, shotgun-toting Ava Crowder, who starts a relationship with Raylan, as the season goes on, she is outacted by pretty much everyone on the screen. Natalie Zea fares slightly better as Raylan's ex-wife, but as the season goes on, she loses most of her complexity and relevance to the plot.
Though this is all well and good, the crown jewel of this supporting cast is Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder, one of the most interesting and unique characters to show up on TV all decade. Boyd is a violent, charismatic, lunatic who uses his ability to speechify to worm his into the ranks of the local Neo Nazi clan, using the ideology as an excuse his love for blowing stuff up. Goggins is alternately magnetic and repulsive, playing a character who is so full of shit that it's amazing that it's not coming out of his ears. Boyd and Raylan have a past: they "dug coal" together in the mines in their youth (not a gay sex joke). Boyd represents a dark flipside to Raylan's violent self, showing what could happen if Raylan were to follow his father in a life of crime. Boyd uses white supremacy (and eventually his born-again Christianity) to serve his destructive nature much like Raylan hides his anger behind his job with the US Marshal service.
Despite its eclectic and interesting supporting cast Justified ultimately lives and dies with Olyphant, and he does not disappoint. Raylan is a complex character and in the wrong hands he could have been too broad, but Olyphant is a monster, finding the perfect reading for each one of his lines, maintaining a dry sense of humor to go along with his intimidation factor. Creator Graham Yost and Olyphant have created an all-time great character in Raylan Givens, and I'm curious to see what they'll throw at him next year.
Best Episode: "The Hammer," guest starring Stephen Root as a hard-nosed judge who always gives criminals the maximum sentence and sees Raylan as an ally in dispensing a more personal form of justice.
Standout quotes:
Raylan saying grace at Boyd's "Christian" camp: “Dear Lord, before we eat this meal, we ask for forgiveness for our sins, especially Boyd, who blew up a black church with a rocket launcher and afterwards shot his associate Jared Hale in the back of the head on Tates Creek Bridge. Let the image of Jared’s brain matter on that windshield not dampen our appetite but may the knowledge of Boyd’s past sins help guide these men. May this food provide them with all the nourishment they need, but if it does not, may they find comfort in knowing the United States Marshals Service is offering $50,000 to any individual providing information that will put Boyd back in jail.”
Boyd(justifying his white supremacist views): "Just read your bible, as interpreted by experts"
My personal favorite - Raylan to a thug who stole his Stetson: “Mister, that’s a 10-gallon hat on a 20-gallon head.”
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