Justified Upholds the Law of Good Television

With the premiere of Graham Yost's Justified tonight on FX, I think it's safe to say the network has found its niche; the legal drama.  I say this fully aware that Damages is the only show on the network that fits the bill, in the traditional sense. 

And it's a "traditional" sort of story telling that I have in mind here.  Not the kind played out in big city court rooms between corporate crooks and ravenous lawyers but the kind that brings to mind the dusty, dry heat of a Western high-noon.  A frontier town sheriff on the hunt for a thieving outlaw.  Or in the case of Timothy Olyphant's Raylen Givens, a U.S. Marshall on the trail of a Neo-Nazi with a rocket launcher.  After all, this isn't Deadwood we're talking about here.

Before I get caught up in Wild West nostalgia - Justified, (nee' Lawman before Steven Segal got into the reality TV business) shares a common theme with several other FX series, namely Sons of Anarchy, The Shield and yes, Damages.  All three deal with the law and their lead characters' relationship to it.  How Vic Mackie, Patty Hewes and the SAMCRO boys manuever, duck and contort themselves around the legal system shapes who they are.  In each series, our protagonists and those who oppose them are painted against the backdrop of the system.  Justified does so as well, and very well at that.

As Raylen Givens, Olyphant is an outlaw among lawmen.  With his ten-gallon hat and quick-draw reflexes, he finds himself and his way of doing the business of keeping the peace out of place in modern day Miami.  A showdown with a slimey drug runner on a restaurant veranda leaves the crook dead and Givens on his way back to his native Kentucky, which his U.S. Marshall supervisor feels is a better fit for his old-time ways.

To be expected, Givens finds his criminal counterpart nestled in the hills of Kentucky - his old cole mining buddy Boyd Crowder (The Shields' Walter Goggins).  While Raylen was off rangling fugitives in Nicaragua, Boyd was busy back home building up a rep as a Neo-Nazi extremist, outdoing himself this last time around by blowing up a black church with a military-issue RPG. 

Tasked with apprehending his old friend, Givens, a man whose manners extend to even white supremicist muderers, makes his typical "get out of Dodge" offer to Boyd, who in turn suggests Givens do the same.

As Givens and Boyd engage in their predatory dance, we learn more about the outcast lawman and the people he left behind. They include a would-be highschool sweetheart and Boyd's sister-in-law Ava Crowder and Givens' remarried ex-wife, Winona (The Shield and Dirty Sexy Money's Natalie Zea).  Along the way, we pick up some of Givens' idiosyncrasies (you don't enter a ladies home unless she invites you in and drinking on the job is acceptable) and learn more about his quickly-resurfacing past, which will no doubt unravel further in forthcoming episodes.

As a character study, Raylen Givens is an enigma.  His John Wayne way doesn't quite match his worldy perspective but that's also what makes him an intriguing character.  I'm willing to walk a few miles in Givens' shoes to see where he goes and more importantly, where he's been.

I haven't read the Elmore Leonard novella Justfied is based on, "Fire in the Hole," but I suspect Graham Yost's interpretation might have taken some sensational liberties (the Nazi and the rocket launcher) with the text but that's just a hunch.  I hear it's a good story.  And if that's the case, then I'd say FX's made-for-cable spin does it justice.

Justifed premieres tonight on FX at 10pm ET.