Joyce had it right, he looked like a farmer: that stringy type with hollow cheeks, crow’s-feet, and had the accent to go with it, not Deep South but from somewhere below Ohio. He touched the funneled brim of his Stetson with two fingers and held open his ID case in the other hand, showing his star.
He said, ”Raylan Givens, U.S. Marshals Service.”
8 years ago, the best TV show of the decade finished a six year run that both defined the then-infantile Peak TV trend and set a bar that by my estimation no show on any network has been able to match since. Justified was a smooth, tense, hilarious piece of television that perfectly blended post-LOST arc-based story telling with classic crime fiction case-of-the-week material. It oozed charm and charisma, and despite ostensibly being an action series was more content to let it’s characters sit down and have a nerve-racking conversation with the constant threat of gun play than to make any of it’s stars into superheroes. It’s characters - main cast or guest starring - were grounded, real, and inhabited a world fully developed. To it’s credit, it also knew when to leave.
But let’s take a moment to take a step back. Elmore Leonard was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century. The so-called “Dickens of Detroit” published his first short story in 1951, and his first novel in 1953. He worked in Westerns mostly then, and was successful. Between 1953 and his death in 2013, he averaged nearly a novel a year, not to mention his shorts. Two of his works were adapted into movies in 1957 - The Tall T, and 3:10 to Yuma, the first two of 29 adaptations and counting of his work. In 1969 he changed things up a little. Instead of Westerns, he decided to write some modern crime fiction, but with the same sensibilities and stripped down no-nonsense rules that he used to write anything he did. Doesn’t matter where or when something takes place, people still act like people, and that usually means out of self-interest and stupidly.
He hit his stride and greatest cultural impact in the 90s, when Barry Sonnenfeld, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Soderbergh - three of the biggest names in the nineties post-indie explosion - all adapted to success Leonard novels: Get Shorty, Jackie Brown (adapting Rum Punch), and Out of Sight. This lead to a couple of failed TV series (Maximum Bob and Karan Sisco) but more importantly, made clear that there was a new vernacular in crime fiction, and it was one with Elmore’s rhythms. He was described as “the most cinematic novelist in the English language.” The larger problem being, his was a style that was easy to mess up. And a bad imitation of Elmore was worse than not trying at all.
Which is why, in 2010, when Justified appears on our screens, it was like going home again. Here, arguably for the first time since 1998, was a show that captured every aspect of Elmore’s writing. Elmore himself thought it the best adaptation of his work (the novels Pronto and Riding the Rap, but mostly the short story Fire in the Hole), was inspired to bring Raylan back for what turned out to be his last novel, and worked on the show until the day he died. The world of Harlan, Kentucky that was built for us to live in was detailed and vibrant and consistent (Elmore made use of a shared universe before that was cool, but it also meant that characters flowed and popped up from one novel to another); the characters were nuanced and flawed, but had hopes and aspirations; the acting was the best on television, and so was the writing. The pilot is a movie all on it’s own, and I revisit it often. The opening scene to the pilot is a script and scene I often present to aspiring filmmakers to show how you don’t have to do or say a lot to do or say a lot.
“I want you to understand,” Raylan said. “I don’t pull my sidearm ‘less I’m gonna shoot to kill. That’s it’s purpose, to kill. So it’s how I use it.”
Speaking hard words in a quiet tone of voice.
Which brings us to 2023, and the return of Raylan Givens. Raylan, brought to life by Timothy Olyphant, is a career defining performance, and one that Olyphant rightly recognizes as such. He’s protective of doing not just Elmore but Raylan justice in his portrayal, and was one of the voices that advocated for ending the original run when they did. Raylan is a quiet exterior filled with brimming rage US Marshal, a old west law man trapped in the modern day. He wears a white hat, but operates in a gray zone. As one character says to him, but just as equally about him, “There are things I want to do… and none of them have a damn thing to do with what’s legal but everything with what’s just.” Raylan’s journey has been about his struggle with who he is. In Justified, it was about not wanting to be the same sort of man as his father. Each season, he’d come up against some baddie who was a reflection of Raylan, and in order to take them down, Raylan would have to ask himself, where is the line? And he crossed it, often, and it often caused no end of hurt to those caught up in Raylan’s wake. But he was always justified in his actions.
We pick up with Raylan ten years older than when we left him, but it’s questionable if he’s any the wiser. He’s still struggling with who he is, which now includes being a father. When we first met him heading to Harlan County, he couldn’t keep a romantic relationship from falling apart because he would prioritize catching the baddies over his own self interest, and it’s not long into episode one of Justified: City Primeval when he’s making those choices again, and again, and again, to the continued disappointment of Willa (played by Vivian Olyphant). Except this time he’s rolling into Elmore’s favourite and most frequent setting, Detroit, Michigan (Elmore’s other frequent setting, Miami, is where Raylan is always coming from and always hoping to just get back to).
The novelty here is that Justified: City Primeval is not adapting a Givens novel. It’s adapting City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, one of Elmore’s greatest literary achievements. The writers have taken a story and decided to drop Raylan into the middle of it, and see what happens. It makes perfect sense. So many of Elmore’s characters ride the line between right and wrong, and Elmore never saw fit to glamourize either the crime or the law in his writing. Raylan slots into the world of Detroit, putting on the boots of the literary Raymond Cruz, but you never see the seams of that transposition. It feels natural, and if Raylan is the vessel by which we can continue to explore Elmore’s world, then I vote in favour.
It wouldn’t be Elmore’s world without a criminal adversary. They are consistently depicted as shithead gun-thugs who all think they have a bright idea that will lead to a big score - some thieve, some kidnap, some murder - but all are defined by their short-sightedness and ultimate stupidity. The lawmen in Elmore’s world are not arch detectives; half the time they just have to wait for the criminals to screw up on their own and be waiting for them (this series even takes time to contend with the modern morality of policing, and the racial history of the US Marshal Service). Here we have Boyd Holbrook as Clement Mansell in a chilling performance as one of Elmore’s rare psychopaths. He’s no Joker, he has no grand plans to rule the criminals underworld. He sets his girl Sandy (Adelaide Clemens) to bait a mark, then shakes them down for cash. But Mansell has a short fuse and no patience, and this leads to lots of people getting shot. He’s predicable in in unpredictability, and when a Judge ends up dead, Raylan gets drawn into the case and immediately on Mansell’s trail. Another Hallmark of Leonard is, often the law knows who did what. It’s the catching them that takes work.
If I have to shed a ill word about the original series, it’s that the bar was set so high so early that the baddies of the last two seasons felt less remarkable. Especially the final season’s Boon, who I never thought made the case for earning being the final villain to show down with Raylan. Mansell though is Raylan’s equal, and if this limited series is the last we see of the Marshal then he has gone out facing a true reflection of himself. Mansell has all the same flaws as Raylan, but none of the restraint. Raylan believes himself better than the people he hunts because he has a badge and that makes him righteous, but Raylan still shoots, punches, and threatens just as many people as Mansell. He’s just more charming when he does it. So is he actually a better person?
Rounding out the main cast are Aunjanue Ellis as Carolyn Wilder, Mansell’s defense attorney, who gets caught up as the third point in the triangle between the gunslingers and has her own demons and aspirations; and Vondie Curtis-Hall as Sweety, Mansell’s one time partner who gets pulled back into the shit when Mansell returns to the city. And so the series goes, with each character pulling on strings, trying to make happen what they want, and sometimes those strings pull against one another and sometimes the characters cut their own string to spite another. Because at the end of the day, in Elmore’s world, self-interest and stupidly rule the day.
And I haven’t even mentioned the Albanians.
Justified: City Primeval is a worthy successor to Justified, and if taken as a season seven, would rank among it’s best. As it’s own thing, you don’t need to have seen a single minute of the older show to jump in the back seat with Raylan driving and ride the rap, as they say. The writers racket the tension episode by episode, letting the pressure off here and there, but always building towards high noon, which may not come in the way you think. Arguably, Olyphant is more settled and better suited for Raylan now than he was year ago, and he wears the characters as well as he does that hat and his slim blue jackets. The rest of the new cast, you learn about each any every one of them, and you care about them too. There are no two-dimensional aspects here, everyone has depth, and depth beyond that, and you see it all in time. Even Mansell, the psychopath, who spends an easy third of his screen time in tighty-whities and a kimono, has an appreciation of art that shows he’s human as well as a monster. It’s eight episodes that feels like 50 and one all at once, and a reminder in the over-stuffed field of half forgotten and never seen shows dumped to steaming platforms and paved over by reruns of The Office, that good television still exists.
To paraphrase my very favourite Justified quote, if you are going to be a bear, be a grizzly. But this show my friends is a Kodiak.
Justified: City Primeval is steaming now.
Give This A Watch
Justified
I mean, obviously. Six seasons, 13 episodes a piece. If you haven’t seen it, you have Dewey Crowe waiting for you. You have Wynn Duffy, Robert Quarles, Mags and Dickie Bennett. You have Boyd Crowder, played by Walton Goggins, one of the best character and best performances no time stamp just ever. At the very least, watch the pilot, which stands on it’s own, and I dare you not to go back for more. To quote Chief Deputy Art Mullen, “It’s some bad-ass shit.”
Fire in the Hole
But I’m also going to recommend some reading materials. Pick yourself up a copy of Fire in the Hole, the short story collection that contains the story the pilot of Justified is based on. It also contains When the Women Come Out to Dance, featuring Karen Sisco. Let that move you towards reading Out of Sight, which as good as the movie is, the book is better. Of all the characters I wish Elmore had done more with, it’s Karen.
After that, follow Jack Foley into Road Dogs. If you like Dawn Navarro there, you can back track and pick up with Raylan again in Riding the Rap, the better of the two original Givens novels. If you like westerns, I recommend Elmore’s last in the genre, Cuba Libre, set during the Spanish-American war. And if you want more crime, then there is no more logical thing than picking up City Primeval.
There is no official word on if Justified will be coming back again. Maybe it will, maybe they’ll wait five, ten years again. The question becomes, which of Elmore’s novels might Raylan slip as naturally into as he did Primeval? There are options, but I might put coin on The Hot Kid, with Raylan subbing in for Carl Webster. The Hot Kid and it’s sequel Up in Honey’s Room and the short stories in In Comfort to the Enemy are all Depression-era period pieces, but Webster is also a Marshal, also from Harlan County, and could be a place for the series to go. I mean, I’d also be fine with this creative team just making a Carl Webster show. In either case, give Hot, Honey, and Comfort a read as well.