Well, hello there Raylan Givens aka Timothy Olyphant. Ha!
Yesterday’s blog topic for the March Madness Challenge over at Alabama Women Bloggers is to Review Something: A book, TV show, movie, music. I have over the last few seasons become addicted to FX’s series Justified.
Justified is based in Harlan, Kentucky where you either work the mines, the whore house, or run the drug deals and the shady bars, maybe all of the above. Well, or you could leave. People don’t amount to much more than criminals around there, of course, except Raylan. Someone has to be the good guy. He leaves his criminal father and Harlan for a job in Lexington as a United States Marshall. Talk about from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Raylan still finds himself in Harlan from time to time for work and having to deal with his own cousins and people he has known all of his life. Sometimes he cuts them a little slack and overlooks the prostitution or the illegal businesses if they help him find whomever the latest fugitive might be. The show has taken on a few different spins within the last few seasons where Raylan, his cousin and Harlan crime boss, Boyd Crowder, and a few others have their own stories that always seem entangled. How can 2-5 different people become connected to the same crime bosses/workers from Canada, Mexico, Tennessee, Florida, and Kentucky? It is ridiculously thrilling and suspenseful.
The above is a picture of cousins Raylan and Boyd.
Now, one cannot be so hard on Boyd. In the last season or two he has taken on a softer side where he wants to do good, but he’s just in a bad position. In a recent episode his fiance is moved to the state prison and his anguish made me truly feel bad for him. Don’t we always like the bad guy and see his good qualities? Ah, let’s cut him some slack. It’s okay if he just shot 3 people, he’s trying to get ahead so he and Ava can leave Harlan. Ha! People and our TV shows.
Not that Raylan is a picture perfect American Hero. He might work for the law and uphold it 99.5% of the time, but he has his bad qualities of walking away from feuding criminals and letting them take care of one another on their own (which gets him a hard right hook from his supervisor in this latest season) to his womanizing ways. While his ex-wife and infant daughter are off in Florida, he is too busy wanting to save the world from Kentucky’s redneck hell-bound “crime bosses.” He even laughs when someone considers Boyd a crime boss.
But, what can I say, something about his American Hero job and tendency to lean on the law when it might help out some poor soul makes him pretty attractive. I mean, then we can throw in his looks (greying hair and all) and it’s all over. Ha!
Really though, the show keeps you waiting for next week’s episode. We had dinner with family last night, causing us to miss this week’s new episode and I am so thankful for DVR. I just want to find out if Ava gets out of prison or what happens since Raylan’s most recent flame he actually seems to like, broke it off at the end of the last episode. What?!
It is a show that Man of the House and I watch together. It has enough action and law breaking and violence to keep him interested, but it’s not gory or enough constant blood shed to cause me to leave the room.
It is not kid-friendly. And for once, Justified is a show that displays that loud and clear at the beginning of the show and end of every commercial break with a huge M for mature logo on the screen. I would definitely recommend you find Season 1 and start this journey through Harlan’s 21st Century crime lords (and ladies) and all of their never ending turmoil and activities.
Southern Mom Life 