Tonight, at roughly 11:05 Eastern standard time, the show Justified will be officially done. Never again will we see U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens outwit or outshoot a bad guy. Never again will Boyd Crowder talk his way out of certain death. Never again will Tim Gutterson drop a deadpan reference to having a ‘stiffy’.
There are some of you reading this right now that have no idea what I’m talking about.
You are the lucky ones.
Lucky because while I only have an hour left until the end, you guys have a whole 78 to discover and to fall in love with.
Justified is, without question, my favorite show currently running. It may not be the most ambitious, or the most profound, but it is by a wide margin the most entertaining.
Inspired by a short story by legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard, Justified is the story of US. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a self-styled cowboy whose rule bending, quick-on-the-trigger antics cause no end of grief to both the criminals he chases and the co-workers that have to deal with him.
His opposite number is Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), a self-proclaimed outlaw with wild ambitions and a ruthless drive. He’s incredibly slippery and smarter than anyone gives him credit for, which is exactly what makes him so dangerous.
For six years now, we’ve been watching these two go round in circles, headed towards an inevitable showdown.
And all this, on paper, sounds kind of routine, I know. It all sounds like something you’ve seen before. And to an extent, you have.
But you’ve never seen it this damn good.
Credit to showrunner Graham Yost, and to Elmore Leonard, a regular contributor up until his death in 2013, for crafting a cops and robbers show that transcends the genre.
I’ve always been a huge Elmore Leonard fan, but his distinctive voice is easy to rip off, yet hard to get right.
Givens and Crowder are singular creations, given depth and weight by a crack team of writers and the staggeringly good performances of Olyphant and Goggins, who have given their archetypal characters charm, abrasiveness, and psychological complexity that puts every other genre show to shame.
But then, that statement could be applied to pretty much every last character on the show. From Raylan’s wry, long suffering boss Art (Nick Searcy) to the endlessly droll cockroach of crime Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns) to Raylan’s monster of a father Arlo (Raymond J. Barry) right on down to Margo Martindale, who won a well-deserved Emmy for her work as family oriented crime boss Mags Bennett, Justified has a near spotless track record for guest stars, so that even the smallest player tends to receive a moment of general bad-assery.
And they live in a fully fleshed out world. Harlan County is a place with its own history and its own rules. Outsiders who come in expecting to run the backwoods yokels inevitably wind up running away with their tails tucked between their legs, if they even survive. Which, usually they don’t. Spoiler.
The specificity is one of the things that makes the show so unique: it couldn’t take place anywhere other than where it does. But the other thing that makes the show work so well is that things almost never play out the way you expect.
This is one of those things where words can’t convey how great the show is, or at least I can’t. Not without giving away some of the surprises that make it such a modern classic. I’d love to tell you guys about the 21-foot rule, or that awesome thing Boyd does with a pack of cigarettes. Or how the line “It’s a piggy bank!” became one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
To a Justified fan, just mentioning ‘Dewey Crowe and his kidneys’ is enough to elicit a knowing chuckle.
But to deprive you of the experience of watching any of those moments for the first time would be just plain wrong.
Tonight is the final episode, and I am in complete suspense. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out for Raylan or for Boyd. They’ve both made enemies out of this season’s big bad Avery Markham (played by a mustache-free and utterly terrifying Sam Elliott) and it’s certain that one or both of them won’t be making it out alive.
But whatever happens, I have faith that it will be the proper ending for the saga that started six years ago, in a classy hotel in Malibu:
