Justified: City Primeval Episode 1 Review

Elmore Leonard's saga of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens' exploits picks up in the Midwest, where the author is laid to rest, and perhaps Givens' tale as well.

Source: Comicbook.com / Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is back, 8 years later and a little grayer, ready to catch another bad guy, this time in Detroit.

From 2010 to 2015, I was an avid fan of the crime drama Justified on FX and in particular, Timothy Olyphant’s portrayal of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who projected a Wild West bravado in his signature Stetson hat while always maintaining an even-keeled, boundaries-heavy right-side-of-justice vibe. The premise of this show being that after many years away, Givens is reassigned to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky where his first priority is to catch baddie crime bosses. There, he comes up against his arch-nemesis, villain and sometimes frenemy, Boyd Crowder, played magnificently by Walton Goggins (Vice Principals, The Shield) as well as many other crime bosses, including Mags Bennett, portrayed by the inimitable Margo Martindale (The Americans, BoJack Horseman) who won a much-deserved Emmy for the role.

So good was this show that I mourned it for months when it finally left the boob tube. Turns out I wasn’t the only one as Olyphant returned to play a Marshal in season 4 of Fargo, which came out in 2020, and side tangent, was a seriously underrated season that didn’t get its proper due. Chris Rock is superb in it, as well.

Flash forward eight years and Raylan Givens is back in this next installment of author Elmore Leonard’s (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) tales, from his book titled City Primeval.

Note: No major plot reveals for episode 1 spilled here. 

Justified: City Primeval is available on Hulu and FX (on cable network). It boasts 91% Rotten Tomatoes score and an 8.3/10 on IMDB.

Sometimes it takes an angry white guy to catch an angry white guy

The start of episode 1 almost feels like no time has passed. It helps that the show’s lead, Olyphant is a silver fox, the only noticeable aging seen via scant forehead lines and gray hair which somehow only serve to make him look wiser and not like a past-his-prime lawman. In fact, in one of the show’s many humorous lines, a colleague of the defense attorney that Olyphant’s been eyeing from across the bar compares Olyphant to Kevin Costner in Yellowstone. Yup, we see it.

That said, Olyphant has lived a life since he left Harlan, Kentucky. He had a baby and that baby grew up to be a teenager named Willa, played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter, Grace. Inferred here is that Raylan is now either separated or divorced from his daughter’s mother (Winona) and is responsible for getting Willa to camp, while also juggling a thwarted carjacking that takes him and his daughter all the way up from Florida to Detroit, Michigan where the convicted criminal is wanted for other crimes.

Source: Country Living/ Willa (Grace Olyphant) and her dad Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) bide their time in the Everglades before the hijinks unfold.

Once in Detroit, the black judge in the case that Raylan testifies in against said convicted criminal, wants Raylan to find out who bombed his car or as it’s stated, “Sometimes it takes an angry white guy to catch an angry white guy.” The show doesn’t shy away from race relations nor does the language of Leonard lend itself to niceties. In Leonard’s world, people can do very bad things and be very cruel to one another. There’s generally a long game being played, but plenty of mistakes made, especially by the bad guys. That said, there’s still plenty of comical quips, charged jabs and love to go around.

The “Oklahoma Wildman” is a big baddie

This season has perhaps the biggest socio/psycho-path villain ever in the history of Justified. So bad, it’s almost comical. And he does some very messed up stuff in the first episode to help set the stage for the rest of the season. Boyd Holbrook (The Premise, Narcos, Vengeance) as Clement Mansell is definitely in the mold The Walking Dead’s Negan but without any of the funny. He also has a very forced, somewhat distracting accent that felt like it has roots in Appalachia, and made me think he was trying too hard to sound like Raylan Givens, especially with the swagger in his walk. The backstory though is that Mansell is from Oklahoma and not Detroit so at least this kind of makes more sense.

The most laughable line of the premiere goes to Mansell who apparently lives in a cement box, and not a swanky souped up technologically sound high rise, complaining to his girlfriend:

I tried to hold up a guy in Whitefish a few weeks back. Put the gun to his head, and he asks me if he can Venmo me. I mean, I got so damned depressed, I went straight to the nearest bar and just drank myself stupid.

Does he really think this is 2010?

The Skinny

Episode 1 creates enough of a splash to legitimately serve as a proper continuation for the Justified franchise. It stays true to Raylan’s character and introduces us to some new people, including Holbrook’s Mansell. The pace seemed unsteady at times and I found myself easily stopping and starting the show. These may be kinks that are worked out as the show progresses. The heartfelt magic in the Boyd vs Raylan cat and mouse from the original series I don’t see with Mansell. Mansell isn’t Kasparov either which leads me to think he’s just a violent, albeit potentially charismatic thug.

• Where is Willa going to hang out while Raylan is hunting down Mansell for all his crimes? Is he going to get a nanny or send her to the Junior Marshals?

• The “this is how we do things in Detroit” excuse logic said by the police upon kicking in the basement door on a criminal that was already giving himself up making him fall down the stairs - meh. Felt lazy.

• Will we see Boyd Crowder in this series? I am hoping for a Crowder reunion now that Willa has expressed to her daddy her desire to finally see his hometown cause apparently she’s never been.

• Top performer was Aunjanue Ellis as Carolyn Wilder, defense attorney for the bad guys, who adeptly got her client off of all his criminal charges that happened in Florida because Raylan took a lot of liberties with his time in returning him to the court.