Five Things You Need To Know About ‘Justified’

Justified, the best neo-western procedural on air right now, returns to Australian TV for its fifth season this Saturday, after premiering yesterday in the States.

Haven’t seen it? Assumed it was just a show for dads to watch, due to the cowboys and crimes of the week? Well, sometimes dads have it pretty well worked out (although none of the fathers on Justified have much good to offer – but more on that later).

At its best, Justified is funny in a Coen Brothers, schmucks-get-their-just-desserts kind of way, and often as tense as any great episode of Breaking Bad. At its worst, it’s still maybe the best crime procedural on television – it’s a study in home, and the heavy load of the past that we’re all forced to lug around. It’s also kick-ass fun.

The show’s hero, Raylan Givens (played by Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant), has all the squinty swagger of early Clint Eastwood, combined with the out-gunned tenacity of early Bruce Willis. After watching this show, you’ll probably have an argument with your partner about whether or not you should be allowed to buy a cowboy hat.

Here are five other things to know about our favourite U.S. Marshall, before you dive into the new season.

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1. Raylan shoots first, and asks questions later.

When Justified began, its title stood in defence of its hero’s actions: Raylan has an itchy trigger finger, but he’ll only use it on those who draw first. It’s an Old West apology for gunfire, but Raylan has the badge to back it up, and the show leans heavy on it to excuse his actions. He’s justified, but he’s not always in the right.

Raylan’s quick draw on a Miami mobster in the first episode got him sent to his old stomping grounds, the back-country Kentucky counties that have (in the world of Justified) replaced communities built on coal mining with criminal enclaves and meth cooks.

Each week, some lunk-brained no-gooder crosses paths with Raylan, and allows him to dwell on the question of whether he really wants to shoot another person. Seeing Raylan take down idiots almost never grows old. Seeing the toll all these idiots take on Raylan is an ever-developing story.

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2. Raylan does not care about your honourable criminal code.

That crime continues to exist in Harlan County is due in no part to Raylan’s ineffectiveness in stomping out dirtbags; twisted familial allegiances and dirty pay-offs run up and down the ladders of Kentucky society. Everyone’s got a sticky paw in the hush money, from cops and politicians to lawyers and “business” men. With the show based on the pulp crime novels of the late Elmore Leonard, it’s no surprise to find everyone a little on the take.

Raylan’s long-time adversary is also his former comrade in coal digging, Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins): an ex-con, ex-white supremacist, ex-preacher; a man gone straight and gone crooked again too many times to count. Boyd’s now the drug runner for the Detroit mafia, a last-ditch effort to save up some cash and get his wife out of prison. Another show would run Boyd’s story of redemption as noble, a man pushed to his limits to break free of his past – but this one lets you decide just how comfortable you are with everyone’s actions. Raylan certainly has no such sympathies for Boyd’s current plight.

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3. Raylan does not care about family…

For the show’s first few seasons, Raylan’s ever-present and always distant father stood by as an indicator of what happens when you go sour, run to seed, and stop caring about anyone but number one. An angry son-of-a-bitch, it’s pretty easy to see Raylan running in that direction, episode by episode, even as he swears off his family’s corrupt legacy.

Raylan’s got a baby this season, but his two-time ex is raising her out of town — mainly because people who hang around Raylan end up as hostages or in holes. I can’t see how fatherhood’s gonna change our damaged do-gooder, but it’ll be interesting to see if it does.

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4. … But Raylan is in the minority on that one.

Everywhere the marshal turns, he seems to get right up in the grills of another ornery clan, hell-bent on revenging their pappy or some second cousin that Raylan sent to jail. Generations run deep like coal seams in Harlan county — the Crowders, the Crowes, the Bennets, the mountain folk and swamp dwellers, the African-Americans of Noble Holler and the Dixie Mafia over from Detroit. It’s all a family affair.

What do you inherent alongside a surname? What’s your responsibility to those who came before? What is legacy? And what can you shake off and start afresh from? Raylan’s surrounded by others dealing with family, even as he’s tried to write off his own from the start. With a new generation of Givens on the horizon, what kind of reputation is Raylan gonna hang his hat on?

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5. No one on the show is impressed with the shit that Raylan pulls.

At the beginning of the fourth season Raylan trots out the old adage, “If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” Guess who Raylan meets most everyday.

Raylan’s renegade actions make for great television and, in the logic of the show, he saves a life here and there that he might not have if he stuck to the letter of the law. But back in the marshal’s office he’s spurned as a god damned nuisance who’s probably going to get himself, and others, killed. Raylan’s boss doesn’t get mad, he just gets disappointed — and though the show’s maintained a status quo in the office (no topsy turvy promotions or the like), the frustration they all feel about our hero keeps building.

Justified dances along on the wit of its cast and the twists in its cases, but it also hangs together thanks to its central character. Season five feels like a new beginning for Raylan — he’s gone a little dark, but he’s got new reasons to come back to the light. Let’s hope our laconic hero finds some more satisfaction in fighting the good fight.

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Justified season five, episode one — ‘A Muder Of Crowes’ — airs January 11 at 7:30pm, on FXTV

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Matt Roden helps kids tell stories by day at the Sydney Story Factory, and by night helps adults admit to stupidity by co-running Confession Booth and TOD Talks. He is 2SER’s resident TV critic — each Tuesday morning at 8.20am — and his illustration and design work can be seen here.