Take a quick look around Harlan County, and you might have a harder time telling the lawmen apart from the lawbreakers than you think.
The town's top cop, Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens, is a bit of a loner and a drinker who carries around some heavy family baggage and a body count that would make most of the local crime lords blush. One of those crime lords, Walton Goggins' Boyd Crowder, has evolved from the one-note hate-monger we met back in the pilot to a laconic Midwestern gunslinger whose equal parts romantic, backwoods Robin Hood and gangster.
Looks, as they say, can be deceiving.
Through four seasons, "Justified" has thrived on thrills, tension and the consistently slick and stunted dialogue you would come to expect from a series based on the writings of the late Elmore Leonard. But the real strength of the show is the dynamic between Raylan and Boyd, two men who live on the edges of the grey area most cop shows seem to live in this day.
There's no question as to which one has more respect for law and which one takes a measure of pleasure in breaking it, but as the years have gone on, their once irrefutable roles as cop and robber have blurred. It's ground that's tread often on network TV these days, but with characters as rich and inviting as Raylan and Boyd, it makes for a hell of a better ride than most other series.
The fifth season of Justified opens up with me questioning those roles again, as Raylan and Boyd both take a trip outside Kentucky to handle their respective business as U.S. Marshal or U.S. drug trafficker in the premiere episode, "A Murder of Crowes." While Boyd's ridiculous trip to Detroit entertained me a bit more than Raylan's first run-in with debuting Season 5 bad guy Dale Crowe Jr. (Michael Rapaport), the real hook for this premiere wasn't what our main men were doing up north and down south, but what they were trying to get home too.
While Raylan's hunting a drug enforcer and cop killer through the Florida marshes, he's also doing anything he can to avoid seeing Winona and his newborn daughter. Meanwhile, as Boyd's shooting his way through Harlan and Detroit (and maybe Canada) in search of his missing drug shipment, the former head of the Crowder Commandos really just wants to get back to the love of his life.
"Justified" has always had the ability to make me question Raylan's actions, without ever outright judging him. This show isn't about questioning whether Raylan is the hero or villain of his own story. More often than not, his actions are justified. (I promise, I'm only going to make that pun once, I just haven't written about this show since Season 2). But with Raylan only a few months removed from playing a hand in a gangland execution in the Season 4 finale, the question of just how many steps Raylan's removed from his criminal counterparts, and just how stable he really is right now, is certainly an interesting one.
It's the subtleties that Olyphant brings to Raylan that make our friendly marshal one of the ones I most enjoy seeing wander across my TV screen this week. Whether it's the tinge of regret in his voice when Raylan lies to Winona about visiting sometime soon, or the speed at which he cuts down Dale's sentimental fib about the way the eldest Crowe didn't exactly die on a deathbed, Raylan makes clear that the words family and pain will always be connected in his mind.
Arlo failed him, and he's failed Winona, though not to the same extent. Most of his relationships end in him having to shoot or maul someone (Winona, Ava, drifter Barbie from last year, etc.) This is a guy whose accepted his fate as Harlan County's guard dog, but it's a lonely posting.
Those character moments are only heightened when you play them against Boyd's arc in the premiere. Boyd's manic trip to Detroit is full of the usual gritty lunacy that's become Justfied's hallmark, between the ever-entertaining Wynn Duffy, the excrement hitting the fan with Sammy Tonin and Boyd's doughnut shop negotiation with Will Sasso as a Canadian dope pusher.
But it's his dogged and desperate push to free Ava from the trumped-up charges she's facing, and his final confrontation with Lee Paxton, that provide the most powerful moments of this premiere. Boyd's dropping bodies and causing mayhem in two different states in the hopes of holding Ava's hand again, while all Raylan has to do to see Winona is hop in a car, and he instead passes on an opportunity Boyd would literally kill for.
The only drawback of the premiere, at least to me, was the limited glimpse we got into Rapaport as Crowe Jr. With the exception of last year, Justified has made a habit of opening its seasons by giving us a lasting image of that year's antagonist, whether it was Boyd blowing up a church, Margo poisoning Loretta's dad or Quarles debuting his slide gun to dispatch a Dixie mob underling. Rapaport didn't have all that much to do this episode, but at least Dewey's fear of his elder cousin and Dylan's brutal dispatching of his brother give us something to build on.
I can write about "Justified" until I pass out, but truth told, this is one of the most consistently solid shows I've watched in the past five years. Everything looks like it's humming along as usual in the premiere, so I'm just going to shut up and get out of the way now.
Raylan and Boyd seem well on their way to getting themselves in trouble, especially with Nicky Augustin's execution looming large over the Marshal, and that sounds like good news for those of us who like to sit back and watch those troubles unfold.
RANDOM MUSINGS:
• "I think he bumped his head" - Boyd. I'm never really sure whether I should be terrified or enamored with Mr. Crowder, or what that says about me.
• Jere Burns is a series regular! Jere Burns is a series regular! Justified doesn't need much help being a great show, but more Wynn Duffy certainly can't hurt.
• The opening courtroom scene with Dewey Crowe and the return of Stephen Root as Judge Hammer was a welcome comedic diversion after the fairly dark ending to Season 4. Damon Herriman is always great as the bumbling Dewey. Also, as a Boardwalk Empire fan, some part of me wants to see a confrontation between Gaston Means (the real-life swindler Root plays on that show) and Raylan.
• Was it just me, or did Raylan look bored or resigned when he shot Machado? I could be over thinking things, but Mr. Givens just seems kind of going through the motions right now, sighing through all the blood and nonsense that comes with his days. I think we could be in for some self-destructive behavior this season.
Thoughts. Questions. Haiku? Leave 'em below.
RELATED COVERAGE:
• Justified 'The Gunfighter' Review: Raylan vs. Quinn
• 'Justified' recap: 'The Moonshine War'
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