Underrated Series: Justified

 

 

At the start of 2010 it was starting to look like FX, the network that along with HBO had been the most central to the start of the Golden Age, was about to relinquish its place at the forefront of the revolution.

AMC had just started to lead the charge with the dual critical sensations of Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Showtime had started to catch up with HBO when it came to original programming, both in the world of dramedies such as Weeds and Nurse Jackie and stirring antihero dramas such as Dexter. TNT had become a contender when it came to female led procedurals such as The Closer and Saving Grace as well as subtle works such as Men of A Certain Age.  And network television was still demonstrating it could produce super dramas such as Parenthood and The Good Wife.

By contrast the series that had led FX into the forefront of cable programming in 2002 were either over (The Shield, Nip/Tuck) or almost so (Rescue Me). In the interim it had produced some critical successes (Damages and the underrated drama The Riches) but neither had been hugely successful and many of their series such as Dirt were considered barely worth watching even for camp value. FX’s time in the sun looked over.

Graham Yost would change the game.  He had been a writer and executive producer on some of the most successful HBO Limited series in the past decade, From the Earth to the M0on and Band of Brothers. He made some creatively fascinating network dramas in the past decade, the remarkable Boomtown and the fascinating Jeff Goldblum vehicle Raines neither of which had lasted long. Now he and FX were about to collaborate on what amounted to an adaption from the work of Elmore Leonard. Leonard had proven the source of superb material for movies throughout his career (Get Shorty and Out of Sight are among the most brilliant films of the 1990s) but while some of his series had led to intriguing television adaptions (most recently ABC’s Karen Sisco) there had yet to be a successful series made of his work. Yost would change both that and the trajectory of FX with his adaptation of a short story that involved one of his most famous characters U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens.

The series was called Justified and from the start to finish it was one of the great rides in the history of television, one of the greatest series of the 2010s period. I gave it my Grand Jury Prize for Best Series of the Decade in part because two other FX masterpieces – Fargo and The Americans were already on my top ten for the 2010s and I did not want to frontload the list in favor of a single network. But there have been few series in the era of Peak TV that have ever been quite like it, and few characters as complicated as Raylan Givens.

Now as a new season of it has been announced for this summer, I feel it is worth looking as to what made this show one of the all-time great series in history.  And you obviously have to start with the two leads who were at the center of the action.

Justified starts with Miami Marshall Raylan Givens basically setting up a man to draw on him so he can be, well, justified in shooting him. Raylan has done this a lot and ends up getting called to his home state of Kentucky where  an old friend of his Art (an incredible Nick Searcy) wants to help him deal with a white supremacist criminal who is a problem. Raylan is familiar with Boyd Crowder. “We dug coal together”, he says simply. The first person he visits is Boyd’s old girlfriend Ava. One of the first thing Ava is kiss him deeply.  Much of what happens in Justified is based on the complicated triangle between Raylan, Boyd and Ava.

It is impossible to think of Justified working without Timothy Olyphant as Raylan. Like Peter Krause and Dominic West, two men who have dominated the great dramas of the 21^st century, Olyphant began his career as the lead of one of HBO’s great series: Deadwood. Those of you who have paid close attention to my blog know that I have written quite a bit on Deadwood over the years and I have little doubt many of you have seen the series by this point or at least know what it was about. Olyphant’s Seth Bullock was ostensibly the lead of the series – he was the first character we met and he was the impetus for much of the action – but as great as Olyphant was as Bullock, at least one chronicler of TV told us that you could be forgiven for not noticing him. This has more to do with the incredible characters who surrounded Seth Bullock, most notably Ian McShane’s remarkable Al Swearengen, who more realistically could be considered the protagonist of the series as well as all of the superb actresses who surrounded him, particularly Robin Wiegert and Paula Malcolmson.  It says a lot for just how extraordinary a show Deadwood was that an incredible talent like Olyphant seemed superfluous.

Yet he was a force all the same: one of the images that is always preeminent in my mind is of Bullock striding angrily through the camp, barely letting his need to follow the law overwhelm his uncontrollable rage. This anger may have long term done more harm to the camp than good; it certainly ended up costing him the job of sheriff in the final season. There’s a good argument that Raylan is an evolved version of Bullock, only he uses the law to act out his aggression.

After Deadwood’s shocking cancellation in 2006, Olyphant tried his luck in movies but could not fit easily the roles of romantic lead, hero or villain. In 2009, he landed a regular role on the second season of Justified playing Wes Krulik, a rogue cop who befriends Ellen Parson in a bereavement group with the purpose of getting close to her but who by the end of the season realizes who he is playing for and actually ends up saving both Ellen and Patty Hewes. When the second season wrapped, Olyphant was cast as Raylan.

Just as important to the success of Justified was a decision that Yost made at the end of the Pilot. Boyd Crowder was supposed to be killed at the end of the episode in the same way Boyd had died in the story. However, the man cast to play Boyd was Walton Goggins and after seeing the rushes of the episode, Yost decided it made more sense to keep him around.

Goggins had been working movies and television before he had broken big on The Shield as Shane Vendrell, Vic Mackey’s most trusted lieutenant, initially weary of actions but who is increasingly corrupted to the point he ends up murdering one of his closest friends to protect himself.  I have little doubt Shane’s vulnerability even as he increasingly became evil must have been in the back of Yost’s mind when he first cast him. Goggins was also able to use his natural Southern accent, something that he has continued to do throughout his work on TV ever since.

The major struggle throughout Justified would be the battle between Boyd and Raylan.  This was last the entire series even when the storyline wasn’t always focused on Raylan.  What was fascinating about Boyd was that while he was truly a criminal, he was far more capable of evolution that Raylan was throughout the series. He removed himself from being a white supremacist roots within the first season and spent as much time trying to find legitimacy and to help Harlan County which like so many southern counties was dealing with the opioid crisis. (Justified may very well have been the first series of any type to make Oxycontin sales a regular part of its storyline.)

The decision to follow Boyd as much as it did Raylan actually gave Justified far more creative freedom than it would if it had solely focused on Raylan. That’s not to say that the time we spent in the Marshal’s office wasn’t fascinating because it was.  Throughout much of the series Raylan would be called to follow other fugitives and criminals and many of these procedurals would feature some truly incredible guest performances, several of which would make repeated appearances. Indeed, perhaps the one problem with spending as much time with Boyd as we did Raylan was that quite a few characters in the Marshal’s office never got the time they were due.

One such character was Tim Gutterson, memorably played by Jacob Pitts.  Tim was a veteran of the second Gulf War and an expert sniper.  His main job throughout the series was to backup Raylan and his colleagues and his character was so laconic that he rarely had more than a few lines of dialogue in an episode. (But when he did, it counted.) Perhaps his most memorable arc same in the fourth season when Boyd ended up hiring a hired gun who had served in Afghanistan, played by Ron Eldard. The two men had several encounters over the course of the season, and it was clear even though they were on opposite sides of the law, there was clearly a mutual respect based on their shared military experience. I won’t reveal how the situation between them resolved itself (you really should see the series if you haven’t) except to say that there was something both inevitable and tragic about it when it happened.

The other clear difference was that both the Crowder family and the Givens family had deep criminal ties, and this was particularly true for Raylan’s father, Arlo (Raymond J. Barry’s finest hour). The two men clearly hated each other, and it was obvious that Arlo viewed the fact his son was in law enforcement as just a reason to disown him. In the midst of Season 2 Arlo ended up working with Boyd, and the contempt only festered even more until the final episode of the third season. Wild horses could not get me to tell you what Arlo ended up doing or why he did it; suffice to say it essentially broke Raylan in a way we never thought possible.

And Harlan County had a lot of bad people: some of whom were families that ranged from the brilliant to the incompetent (the Crowes are the most prominent example) to being superbly evil. None were better examples of this then the Bennett family, who entered the show in Season 2. This was the first time I became aware of (as she is known on BoJack Horseman) “Emmy Winning Actress Margo Martindale” but few who saw her turn as Mags Bennett will ever forget her work.  Considering how many great roles she’s had in the last decade alone, it’s  a stretch to call her work as Mags her finest hour but she clearly demonstrated her skills from the moment she poured a glass of ‘Apple Pie’ to an unwitting victim. The Bennett’s and The Crowders struggle took up most of Season 2 and when it ended there was only one Bennett still alive.  But that was Dickie Bennett.

For those of us who remembered Jeremy Davies from his remarkable term as Daniel Faraday on Lost, his work on Justified was a revelation.  As with Martindale, it’s a stretch to call his work here his finest hour but I was always in awe his work as this frail, easily cowed, idiot of a man who somehow kept surviving. It is a travesty that Justified received so little recognition from the Emmys during its run. That Martindale and Davies managed to win for that show is more than, well, justified.

There were so many memorable characters and actors portraying them over the years: Jere Burns, who had spent much of the previous decade playing underwritten comic characters, gave a master class as Wynn Duffy,  the perpetually put-upon ‘middle management’ representative of the Dixie Mafia in Harlan.  Neal McDonough gave an astonishing performance as Ray Quarles, the blue-eyed blonde representative of Detroit with a gun up his sleeve, calling his family with charming messages before and after he killed people. Mykelti Williamson was superb as Limehouse, the man who maintained the barbecue and the drug trade who kept money in the last place you’d think. A very young Kaitlyn Dever appeared in Season 2 as the daughter of a man Mags murdered who she took under her wing – and took over her role in drug trafficking when she passed.  And so many great character actors in recurring arcs from Mike O’Malley to Max Perlich to Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen. You needed a chart to keep track who was working for who but like with Game of Thrones you never objected because it was so much fun. One person who was clearly a fan of the series was Leonard himself: he admired it so much he ended up writing another novel centered on Givens just so the series would have more material to work with.

The final season, as you would expect, came down to a showdown between Raylan and Boyd. While I will not reveal to those of you who have not watched the series exactly how it ended, I think it is worth noting I really thought that the only way it could end was with one of the three major leads – Raylan, Boyd or Ava – dead. That is not how it ended. There was indeed a major shootout in the season finale, but what was perhaps the most significant thing was that the white cowboy hat Raylan had worn throughout the series was destroyed by a bullet – and he put on the black hat of the man he had killed. I am not usually fond of symbolism this direct but in the case of Raylan Givens, it was necessary. For six seasons, he had basically positioned himself to kill criminals under the letter of the law and then saying it was a good shooting. The white hat was significant. By putting on the black hat, he was acknowledging, perhaps subtly, that he was as much a criminal as Boyd was.

When the series ended in 2015, I was disappointed perhaps because it had not ended in a storm of violence. I have subsequently become more impressed and in awe of the subtlety of Yost and the performers. The final scene of the series is actually a conversation that we don’t get in Peak TV without someone dying afterwards. In a sense Raylan is acknowledging his mutual respect to Boyd as he says those same words that he said at the start, and Boyd says them back.

Almost everybody in the cast has continued to do superb work since Justified ending, particularly Goggins.  Interestingly enough, he has spent most of the next decade working in comedy in connection with Danny McBride playing characters not that far removed from Boyd on Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones. (In the latter series, he actually is a preacher.) Many of the other regulars who passed through the show, such as Natalie Zea, have constantly worked through the past decade. Olyphant tried comedy in the flawed but fascinating Santa Clarita Diet and The Grinder and returned to playing another U.S. Marshall on the fourth season of Fargo. (He just can’t get away from those flawed law enforcement types.)

The show itself has had a dip in reputation, particularly in the aftermath of the police protests in 2020, but I don’t think that it has the same difficulty with that as procedurals like the ones Dick Wolf has used.  I always viewed Justified as a modern western, and I think that is the reason Raylan wore a white hat. He believed he was cleaning up the streets with a badge and a gun, which separated him from the likes of Boyd. The fact that at the end of the day they were two sides of the same coin was something the series made very clear from the start, and the fact that there were many occasions when Boyd clearly seemed the better man than Raylan. For one thing, the woman he loved was his partner in crime for most of the series; Raylan drove the wife and the mother of his child off when she got tired of his antics. It’s worth noting by certain points in the series, Art was angrier at Raylan’s antics that he was at Boyd’s.

Not long after Justified ended Goggins was interviewed and said that while he was satisfied he still thought there was more chapter to be told in the story of him and Raylan. There is no sign that Boyd Crowder will be making any appearance in Justified: City Primeval either from the creators or the cast. Yet the writers were always superb at letting storylines develop over the course of the series and surprising by having characters we didn’t suspect be hiding in plain sight the whole time. It will be a thrill to see Raylan Givens again as well as his daughter who was born during the series (and is played by Olyphant’s daughter.) But who know? Perhaps a familiar face from Harlan or the Dixie Mafia will show up. Either way, I’d say that this particular revival is… well worth looking forward to. 😊