I had never watched an FX network show before now, not that I saw anything wrong with their shows or their quality, they just weren’t my taste. Then I started seeing ads for “Justified” starring Timothy Olyphant as Marshall Raylan Givens, an actor I recognized from movies such as Live Free or Die Hard and Hitman, whose performances were good enough that his name stuck in my mind long after. So I gave it a chance, and I’m glad I did! Justified is a show featuring similar concepts from other shows but with a surprisingly original feel. Marshall Raylan Givens has made a name for himself after a rather public shooting of a criminal who was given fair warning; Raylan insists the shooting was justified, thus explaining the name of the show. Raylan is an intriguing character right down to his unique style, ever present and frequently discussed cowboy hat included. None the less he has been unhappily transferred from Florida to his home state of Kentucky.
This week’s episode “Long in the Tooth” starts out with Alan Ruck (who portrayed Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, among his many other roles) playing a rather unassuming dentist in L.A. helping out the unfortunate and being paid in primarily in tamales and hot sauce. After a pretentious wealthy patient gives Ruck’s character, Roland Pike (under the assumed name of Dr. Peter Oldham), and his receptionist a verbal beat down over insurance issues, Pike appears a pushover. However when he seeks payback against the patient we are soon shown there is much more going on with this dentist.
As the story progresses we learn more about Pike’s secret past and his previous interaction with our main character Raylan. Turns out that they met 5 years prior, when Raylan thought he could trust Pike to turn himself in to witness protection, only to be burned by him soon after.
So Raylan has been given the assignment to track Pike down after Pike’s run in with the wealthy patient lands him on the national news. Making things more complicated is that it’s not just the Marshalls and the FBI after Pike, the mob he stole money from and previously promised to testify against are also out for revenge.
We soon find out that the receptionist, Mindy Springer, unaware of Pike’s past, has a relationship with him, although you could pretty much see that coming.
I thought the reveal of Pike’s past to Mindy was done pretty well, as a lover of action movies, you know they’re are usually two ways that kind of reveal could go, the one who has been lied to either freaks out, tries to turn the lying individual in and typically is killed to be kept quiet, or are unrealistically “okay” with the deceit. They obviously kept this in mind while writing the scene because it is very well balanced. The more you learn about Pike you realize he is not an intentionally violent man. Rather someone who has been beaten down one too many times and is trying to get away and start over.
Complicating matters further is the mob hit men attempting to follow Raylan to Pike who have been given the green light to take out Raylan as well. What I love about Raylan is his style, if he sees someone tailing him he doesn’t play a game of cat and mouse, he jumps in their back seat and offers a guarantee of what will happen if they choose not to listen to him, as he does with the hit men in this episode. Very direct, charming, and dare I say, Malcolm Reynolds like. (Yes, I am a proud Browncoat!)
At many points where the story could have turned clichéd the writers managed to put a nice twist on it to keep it fresh and enjoyable. Even down to the small characters like Mr. Jones who assists Pike in obtaining a getaway vehicle. I also appreciated the integration of real life problems into the story, such problems as one might encounter from eating bad food at a road side vendor, then resuming their attempts to elude capture.
One complaint is that the mob hit men come off as more bumbling buffoons than imposing cold blooded killers, but there is enough going on in the episode that it doesn’t break the story. Raylan’s promise of “You take one more set I’ll shoot you. That’s all I’m gonna say.” pretty much sums up the interactions between Raylan and the mobsters pursuing them.
Problems get worse for Pike and Mindy as they continue their attempts to cross the Mexican border, pushing Pike to do something drastic he didn’t intend to do. The reveal that the mobsters have connections in Mexico adds to the culmination of the final scenes. The exchange between Raylan and Pike, while pinned down by a Mexican sniper, actually leads you to hope for a clichéd happy ending as improbable as it is. Thanks in part to Ruck’s performance as someone who simply got messed up in the wrong business and has been running from it ever since. However with Justified you don’t get the happy ending but rather a realistic and believable one, which adds to the credibility of a quality show. I will sum by saying this was a great episode from a show that only 4 episodes in has shown promise to be one of the great ones. Next week they delve into the relationship between Raylan and his estranged father with “The Lord of War and Thunder”, promising more character history and development.
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