Justified: City Primeval Episodes 2-3 Afterthoughts
The Oklahoma Wildman Clement Mansell is wreaking havoc by preying on all sorts of foolish folk, but U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens doesn't suffer fools gladly (or otherwise).
Hey, “wrecking crew” (a reference to a gang we know nothing about yet in this show but have heard plenty of overt rumblings over).
Note: No real spoilers. Just commentary.
Motown, Cars, and Bad Guys
We are now past the Gator lands of bygone Justified years as well as this season’s episode 1 and firmly planted in the Motor City aka Detroit, for episodes 2 and 3 of the critically lauded Justified: City Primeval. It’s fair to say Detroit will be our locale mainstay for the duration of the show and like any show worth its storytelling salt, the backdrop of Detroit almost becomes another character in and of itself, melding itself to the vibe of this season well.
For one, Detroit is a melting pot of cultures, which can also translate to cultural clashes between different factions or in the case of this show, just a surface reason to dislike another person or judge them prematurely. This is a crime drama, after all.
An interesting factoid about Detroit is that in addition to being a destination for immigrants from Germany, Belgium, Poland, and Ireland starting in the 19th Century, it also saw massive migration from the South beginning in WW1 when Henry Ford (Bad guy #2) hired African Americans to help solve his labor shortage challenge.
According to Wikipedia:
At this time, the hardships of life in the Jim Crow South and the promise of manufacturing jobs in the North brought African Americans to Detroit in large numbers in the Great Migration. This massive influx of workers and their families caused Detroit's population to soar from 265,000 to 1.5 million between 1900 and 1930 and pushed the city's boundaries outward. The population boom led to a severe housing shortage and the construction of public housing aimed at middle-class auto workers.
So with this in mind, Justified: City Primeval features a hodgepodge of people from diverse cultural, ethnic, and race backgrounds. Generally where Justified veers is on the side of justice but it always tends to blur the ethical lines with how this justice is achieved and play to the fact that if there’s one thing you can count on in this world, it’s that people are inherently flawed and will act in predictable patterns.
Apart from the aforementioned Clement Mansell, the Oklahoma native, who sounds and acts even more like a mix of Raylan and Negan (The Walking Dead) as the show unfolds, we have “The Albanian” hot dog empire owner Skender Lujguraj, Clement’s and his girlfriend, Sandy’s mark, and Sweety, an African American bar owner and former musician who played with George Clinton, and now owns the bar where all the bad stuff happens. It also must be the only bar in Detroit because all the police, FBI and attorneys frequent the establishment alongside hustler/grifter/gangster/sociopath types like Mansell. Then there’s Carolyn, the unlucky DA who defends all the criminals, seems like a genuinely good person trying to do right, but has a dangerous vulnerability by way of an ex who has left her with a hefty lien on her Grosse Pointe abode, which likely cost her a pretty penny because it’s GP. Pretty sure Carolyn also becomes Raylan’s love interest. Also, pretty sure she’ll be compromised or already is by the fact that she needs an influx of cash stat. That, and in filling out her application to be an assistant judge it specifically mentions in the list of things you shouldn’t have - a lien.
Disclosure: I attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for undergrad, which is < 1 hour from Detroit, but I never visited the city. I also didn’t have a car so that’s my excuse. However, I know my Detroit suburbs well and which ones are posh and which ones less so hence the “pretty pricey” Grosse Pointe reference. For more on GP, see the movie “Grosse Pointe Blank” (1997) with John Cusack and Minnie Driver.
Unlike the original Justified, which made you really care about the police workers, the ones on this show are not that interesting IMO. There’s the one hot head and arguably violent guy from episode 1 who tells Raylan, “This is how we do things in Detroit” after kicking the basement door in a criminal’s face who was giving himself up (apparently I’m still not over this because I brought it up last week too), the Verizon commercial dude who surveils with Raylan and will probably wind up dead because he’s too nice and normal, and the sole female on the force, who is a token tired mom and an ambivalent wife and welcomes Raylan and his daughter, Willa stay to her house when Clement threatens them.
What’s Working So Far
The crime story. We know who did the deed (see our first bad guy). The deed being killing the judge and his girlfriend who was also an undercover informant for the police, but we don’t know the why or we think we may, as it may have to do with a log book the judge was keeping, but that may also be an after-the-crime artifact discovered by Clement. And knowing Clement, it could have easily just have been a carjacking gone wrong. I generally need things spelled out for me to know the answers to these types of questions that may seem more obvious to others, so please chime in in the comments with your theories or if I missed something big here. This FOMO also haunts me. I’m a 4th child.
The acting. I’m relishing all the performances here, save the voice of one particular actor, but I’ll talk to that in the things that aren’t super working section. Justified has a knack for bringing to the forefront lesser known actors who are so good at their craft and perform well together. I still wistfully search for actress Joelle Carter (Ava Crowder) online to see if she’s up to anything. Spoiler: She’s still active.
The pacing. The rhythm of the show is top notch. Everything flows well and the episode ends with a cliffhanger feel that makes you thirsty for the next one. Case in point: The fate of one Albanian.
What’s Not Working
Adapting for a post-MeToo context. Some of the macho bravado and swagger stuff is overdone. Clement and Raylan are like two sides of the same school of acting coin. I get this is our modern day version of a Western but let’s evolve it. Punching Clement to a bloody pulp in front of his daughter and not having this behavior entirely condemned or punishable by law enforcement feels like a miss. A simple slap on the wrist for Raylan and a warning from Carolyn to Clement, “Well what were you thinking threatening a U.S. marshal anyways?” what not what I expected.
Raylan being hot sh*t. The sexy stuff of how hot Raylan is in present day feels forced. Why is every woman in Detroit lusting after him? I mean truthfully if I saw Timothy Olyphant in person, IRL, this could very well be an outcome because seeing actors IRL tends to have this effect where you recognize just how truly un-real they are beauty standard-wise, but on screen it’s not really flying.
The father-daughter storyline. I’m not invested in the fraught and fractious relationship between Raylan and his teenage daughter Willa. She should not be tagging along on his very dangerous marshal job with a known and highly violent psychopath. This isn’t a day at the office with a parent. When Raylan finally does the parent thing of telling Willa she needs to go to her mom’s, the delivery sucked, yes, but the intent was right. And when Willa goes on the plane back to Tampa to her mom, I was doing a happy dance. This show is adults only. Something tells me she’ll be back though.
Willa’s squeaky, whispery breathless voice that sounds like a little girl. Here, you listen. If you start the video at 1:25, and you will get the gist.
And until, next time…
But wait…
Why is Sandy Stanton, Clement’s side piece and the Bonnie to his Clyde, living in Del Weems’ penthouse with Clement? If you recall it’s also Del’s Range Rover that Clement was driving when he offed the judge and the informant. When asked his whereabouts, Sandy tells the Verizon detective and Raylan that Del is out of town. Who is Weems and is Sandy really married to him? Have they offed him too? I’m suspicious as I don’t see Del Weems in the cast on IMDB. Thoughts?
Do you all think Willa will be back in future episodes? My theory is either she will be kidnapped again by Clement, but then again no because anything with a whisper of technology, will be out of the Wildman’s wheelhouse. Again, in this episode, Clement has a clueless moment where he expects there to be gold bars or cash in the Albanian’s safe and gets violent when he sees and hears there’s nothing. “Venmo?” the Albanian responds when Clement asks him where all the cash is. I mean seriously get this guy a cybercrimes book. How can he be an effective money-stealing criminal in 2023 without some clue of how to work online transactions? I can’t wait to find out that Del Weems’ fortune is tied up in bitcoin in the next episode. Oh boy…
I do think the last episode will feature Raylan reunited with Willa and them taking a trip to Harlen. It better give me Boyd and Ava Crowder.
Okay, I've finally watched ep. 3. I don't know what car jacking you refer to; do you mean the car chase, bashing, shooting? I think he had no idea who he was tangling with and got lucky that it was the judge. Which is a pretty big "coincidence." It's stuff like this that would fit in my "not working" category. And I can't speak for other women, but I see nothing unbelievable about Raylan triggering sexual response in the ladies on the show.
Regarding Willa, I think she's not coming back. Or if she does, it'll be a quick thing, like an epilogue where he takes her to Nashville. She was pretty distracting and I'm glad he sent her home. I can turn the subtitles off again. I could barely understand anything she said. I get wanting to work with your daughter, but this was one decision that didn't work at all for me. Cool retro rock t-shirts though.
I am confused by the Del Weems' stuff too. I had forgotten that until you mentioned it. It would be strange if it never amounted to anything, so I think he'll return as a "mention" if he's not going to be an actual character.