Salon.com > Justified

“Justified’s” melancholy finale

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:54:00 +0000

“Justified” ended its fourth season last night, with an action-packed yet melancholy episode, a feeling coda to an at times cheeky season. Last week, in the penultimate episode, the last threads of the season’s major mystery — who is Drew Thompson? — got tied up. Shelby and Ellen May were safely taken into the marshal’s custody leaving the finale to focus on the personal lives of the show’s two main men. Raylan puts together a body count of at least three, but successfully protects Winona and his unborn child from harm, only to end up alone staring at his father’s fresh grave. Boyd, scrambling to get rid of an old corpse so Ava won’t go to jail, fails, and finds himself alone, finally in charge of Kentucky’s heroin trade.

The thing that's so great about “Justified” is how it has rejected some of the pressures to be just like every other "serious" antihero drama on TV. It’s always been a little shaggier, funnier, more procedural. (Its second season, the one with Margo Martindale, was its most acclaimed, but it has never gone back to that well entirely: Each season since has had a long-term story arc, but they’ve been broader and punchier than the Mags story line.) It’s also been willing to inhabit a more total moral ambiguity — not the kind so in vogue where the characters break really, really bad and we, the audience, have to wrestle with our sympathy for them, but where the characters teeter on the edge, bad but with standards. It’s a world where people do terrible things, but they're not quite monsters. Raylan wears a white hat, but he's all gray.

Must do’s: What we like this week

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

BOOKS

Laura Miller bites into "Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live," by evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk, who debunks the myth of the caveman diet:

Why are we so intent on establishing how paleolithic people ate, exercised, coupled up and raised their kids? That’s a question Zuk considers only in passing, but she hits the nail pretty solidly on the head … Even if we wanted to live like cavemen, Zuk points out (noting that the desire to do so somehow never seems to extend to moving into mud huts), we couldn’t. In reality, we don’t have their bodies, and don’t live in their world. Even the animals and plants we eat have changed beyond recognition from their paleolithic ancestors. It turns out we’re stuck being us.

“Justified” is too flip about violence, even for this devoted fan

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000

It’s an intense and feverish time for TV violence. Almost all of the best shows have gruesomeness and brutality in their repertoires, resorting to them often (“Breaking Bad,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Americans”) or just occasionally (Lane Pryce hanging from a door on “Mad Men”). Other, lesser shows attempt to use violence to prove their bona fides and seriousness of purpose (“Boardwalk Empire,” “Magic City,” “The Following”). Most comfort TV procedurals start with a murder or rape to get the plot going. And perhaps the most impressively, aggressively gross show ever put on television — “The Walking Dead” — is a massive hit. As Time critic James Poniewozik put it in a recent essay on this subject, “TV drama [has] become reflexively brutal.”

“Justified’s” Joelle Carter: “If I have to kill to feed my baby, I’m going to do it”

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:20:00 +0000

"Justified's" anti-heroine Ava Crowder, played by Joelle Carter, has been breaking bad since the series' second season. An abused wife who shot her husband in self-defense, she's since fallen in love with her brother-in-law, the charismatic criminal Boyd (Walton Goggins). When Boyd moved into her house, she swore she would kick him out if he broke the law. Now she's helping him run his business. She made him promise not to run whores when they first got together — now she's a madam, who last season punched one particular prostitute, Ellen May, in the face. Last night, Ava decided that Ellen May knew too much and couldn't be trusted to keep her mouth shut. She and Boyd ordered that Ellen May be killed. Ellen May escaped, but Ava took one more step down a dark road. I spoke with Joelle Carter about the character, her motivations, and whether she's still on the side of good.

What do you make of Ava’s arc at this point, and her decision to have Ellen May killed?

“Justified’s” anti-heroine

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:36:00 +0000

When “Justified” began, Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter) was a leggy blonde with a Southern accent and a flirtatious manner who has recently shot and killed her abusive husband over the dinner table. In the three seasons since, Ava, like her lover and brother-in-law Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), has flip-flopped on various ethical issues, sliding deeper and deeper into criminality. I’m really fascinated by Ava’s transformation, not because I’ve never seen it before, but because I’ve rarely seen it in a female character: Ava’s arc is usually reserved for male anti-heroes, and I wish “Justified” would make more of her.

Despite the husband slaying, Ava began the series as generally law-abiding, if quick to pull the trigger on her shotgun. When Boyd first started staying with her, it was under the condition that he obey the law (and consume no alcohol). When Ava and Boyd got together, she accepted him, his criminal tendencies, and the huge swastika tattoo on his bicep, on the condition that he do whatever shadiness he liked, except run whores. Then she shot and killed a pimp terrorizing a space-cadet prostitute named Ella Mae, and decided she would become a madam herself. On last night’s “Justified,” the second episode of the fourth season, Ella Mae tried to quit whoring to spend time with Jesus. Ava wasn’t having it. “I saved your soul, remember? Not God or Jesus Christ, me and my shotgun,” Ava bullied. “You’re a whore, Ella Mae … There ain’t no salvation for people like us. You’ll be back at work tonight … we clear?”

Raylan Givens “Justified” my love

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:00:00 +0000

I am not drawn to men who swagger. In fact, I'm repulsed by them. It's long been my experience that a man who swaggers is, contrary to his walk, insecure and out to prove something by behaving as if he is a king in this world, and the rest of us are just minions. So, how then, do you explain my adoration of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, whose chronicles are told in the FX series "Justified"? It's hard not to argue that Raylan (played by the magnificent Timothy Olyphant — and why has this man not won an Emmy yet?) does, in fact, swagger. Raylan moves through two separate worlds as if he owns them both. But my boyfriend opines, as we keep our Tuesday 10 p.m. appointment with "Justified" each week, that what Raylan wears is not arrogance, but a "righteous swagger. Informed by self-confidence and self-history. More important accessories than any gun, badge and hat."

The gun, badge and hat (and jeans and cowboy boots) announce him. Raylan is rarely seen without his Stetson (except for an early episode in which he lost the hat in a bar fight), and his marshal's badge, which he wears on the right side of his belt, just in front of his gun holster. You might think that those things just about comprise his identity, but there you'd be wrong.

My love is “Justified”

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:42:00 +0000

Let’s talk teeth. The often truly great, almost always truly enjoyable, only occasionally cartoonish FX show “Justified,” which begins its fourth season tonight, chronicles the pursuits of trigger-happy, white-hat-wearing U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), his colleagues, the various perps he tracks down, and, most important, the charismatic gun-toting, lawbreaking residents of Givens’ place of birth, Harlan County, Ky., Appalachia central. All of these characters, not just the federal employees, but the lowlife hillbillies, drug addicts, prostitutes and general impoverished ne’er-do-wells who don’t look like they make it to the shower on a regular basis, let alone the dentist, have perfect, glistening, Hollywood-installed chompers. Boyd Crowther (Walton Goggins), “Justified’s” second lead, and the dreamiest bad guy on television, has a pair of (much-remarked-upon) pearly whites that should preclude him from pulling off heists in the dark, but most certainly do not.

Elmore Leonard rips off “Justified”!

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000

FX’s hit series "Justified," which returns on Tuesday for its fourth season, has been hailed as groundbreaking for its complex, moral storytelling, its modern-Old West setting of Harlan, Ky., and for its lawman hero, Raylan Givens, perpetually wearing a white cowboy hat and played with no small amount of charm by Timothy Olyphant.

But the show has been quietly breaking another kind of ground these past few years. Both the character of Raylan and the world of Harlan come from the pages of master crime-writer Elmore Leonard, who created Givens as a secondary character in two novels about Miami from the mid-'90s, "Pronto" and "Riding the Rap." It wasn’t until 2001 that Leonard wrote the story “Fire in the Hole,” which made Raylan the star and sent him back home to Kentucky. This story became the basis for the pilot episode of "Justified" in 2010.

TV’s greatest westerns

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Funny how the cock of a six-gun can trigger loose talk of the return of the western to TV. But the heyday of the ’50s could never be replicated.

The world of cowboys and cattlemen was so ingrained with early television that there’d literally be dozens of westerns on the schedule at one time, even though there were only three channels. To add to the seeming glut of the genre, the black-and-white theatrical shorts of the singing cowboys fit perfectly with half-hour formats of the new medium. The bang, bang, bang of prairie battle was the go-to image any time anybody else on TV had the set on.

But the fervor for the western seemed to die about the time color TV started to take over. What was once so sweeping in its dusky gradations of monochromatic chiaroscuro turned suddenly to murky dust.

With a handful of big audience exceptions, mostly in the '60s, the lucrative ranch turned into a ghost town.

“Justified”: A poignant end to a bloody season

Thu, 05 May 2011 12:06:00 +0000

"Bloody Harlan," the second season finale of FX's modern western "Justified," was a grim yet poignant capper to a mostly terrific run of episodes. It also pointed the way toward a promising third season in which the show might become even more ambitious.

In its sophomore year, the series mastered the tone of its founding author and executive producer Elmore Leonard, then pushed past it and became its own thing -- a mostly uncategorizable blend of crime thriller, community portrait, psychodrama, sociological case study and "Walking Tall"-style crackersploitation action flick. This is no small achievement. It's hard to nail that Leonard vibe -- relaxed yet precise; cool, but with a buried romantic streak -- without seeming affected. "Justified" did it so well that it earned a spot on the short list of the best Leonard adaptations, alongside Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown" and Steven Soderbergh's "Out of Sight." But these last four or five episodes -- in which the three-way Bennett-Crowder-Givens feud and the tale of the poor, orphaned, now vengeance-obsessed teenager Loretta (Kaitlyn Dever) merged with the larger story of a mining company trying to environmentally rape Harlan County via mountaintop removal -- were leagues beyond anything the show has tried before.

“Justified”: How FX’s struggling TV western redeemed itself

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:13:00 +0000

"Justified" (Wednesdays, 1o pm/9 central) has become such an addictive and original show that its limitations don't bother me anymore. Before season one debuted, FX plastered the nation with images of the series' star, Timothy Olyphant, who's best known for playing hot-tempered lawman Seth Bullock on "Deadwood." The sight of Olyphant in a ten-gallon hat sparked hopes (not just in me) that this show might be a modern-day cousin of that late, lamented series. But from the pilot episode -- which kicked off with Olyphant's character, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, baiting a Miami drug lord into drawing on him in a restaurant, then killing the man and getting transferred to rural Kentucky -- it seemed as though "Justified" wasn't interested in being much more than smart dumb fun: "Walker: Texas Ranger" with the laid-back attitude of "The Rockford Files." The first half of season one was smartly directed and acted, but aside from some eccentric characters and dialogue (in the spirit of Elmore Leonard, who executive produces"Justified" and supplies the producers with early drafts of his short stories about recurring character Raylan Givens, but does not contribute directly), it felt like one of those mid-80s cops shows that critics labeled "smart" because they weren't completely stupid. The beats on "Justified" grew so familiar so quickly (oddball bad guys cause trouble; Raylan investigates and ends up killing them all, pausing along the way to piss off an authority figure or bed a comely witness) that I didn't see much reason to check in every week.

Best new TV: “Justified”

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:16:00 +0000

Great dialogue can make you fall in love with a story and its characters. It's easy to lose sight of that when you're watching TV, because TV dialogue is mostly used to move the action forward. On "24," the dialogue reads like a plot summary. Even on more nuanced shows like "House" or "Grey's Anatomy," characters are assigned opposing stances and mouth out obvious conflicts on-screen, lending the whole charade the conviction of a high school debate team meet where each side has an arbitrary position to defend.

FX's "Justified" (premieres 10 p.m. Tuesday, March 16) translates the intense interactions of author Elmore Leonard's characters into dialogue that's unpredictable, dynamic and positively riveting. In fact, the show's juicy verbal exchanges can make its action scenes feel like a side dish. Take this banter between our hero, U.S. Marshal Raylen Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and his new, somewhat resentful co-worker, fellow Marshal Rachel Dupree (Erica N. Tazel):

Raylen: I'm sorry if I crossed a line with you at the office. If I shouldered my way to the front of the line, it wasn't intentional. I can imagine how hard it's been for you to get where you are in the Marshal service.