Tag: Boyd Crowder

Sometimes I watch a TV show and think…this is too good for Television. This is one of those shows. Great acting, writing, and production…the entire package. 

I watched this show a few years ago and now I’m watching it all over again. For me, it’s a Western set in modern times. Raylon Givens is a modern-day Matt Dillion. A US Marshall that gets his man or woman. Above all they got it from great source material and the writing for the show is excellent. People sometimes think living in the South that you would run into these bad guy characters every day. You don’t but yes I’ve known some of the bad guys on this show…or rather characters just like them as no matter where you live…you probably have also. It’s easy to relate to. 

This was a TV series (2010-2015) based on Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole.” It follows Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a modern-day lawman with an Old West-style approach to the law. It’s almost like a modern Matt Dillion. He is played by Timothy Olyphant, Raylan is reassigned to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, after a controversial shooting incident in Miami. He is a great Marshall but not always following the book by any means. He tries to do the right thing. He is what I would call a man’s man. Men like him because he doesn’t mince his words and women like him because he looks like Timothy Olyphant. His character is stern at times and he means what he says…although all in all he is fair…just don’t push the man. 

His target is Boyd Crowder who is a perfect villain. They knew each other while teenagers digging coal together. It’s almost a Batman-Joker relationship. It’s like they need each other. They could have killed the other many times but chose not to. Walter Goggins played Boyd and he was as close to perfect as you could get as a bad guy. He is not a slow-talking dumb Southerner…he is highly intelligent and manipulative and Raylan Givens matches him. It’s like a high-stress chess game with each other.

The character actors on this show are great as well. Joelle Carter as Ava Crowder, Natalie Zea as Raylan’s ex-wife Winona Hawkins, Erica Tazel as US Deputy Marshal Rachel Brooks, Sam Elliot as Avery Marham, Mykelti Williamson as Ellstin Limehouse, and…I could go on and on. The show has the Dixie Mafia and revolves around Harlan Counties love of “hillbilly heroin” which would be Oxycontin. Other cities come into play like Miami, Detroit, and other locations where drugs are either sold or smuggled from at the time.

The one thing that the show has is a GREAT sense of humor. It’s not remembered as much for that but it does have some funny and dark one-liners. The humor is one thing that keeps me coming back. 

Watch this show…there were only 78 episodes and last year…8 years after it ended…they have brought back Raylan Givens for Justified: City Primeval.

Some quotes

• Raylan Givens: I shot people I like more for less.

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• Raylan Givens: The answer is: me and dead owls don’t give a hoot.

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• Raylan Givens: I need to convince her to get out of Kentucky.
• Winona Hawkins: And you think dumping her, handcuffed, at your ex-wife’s house is going to do the trick?

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• Raylan Givens: Sometimes, we have to make deals with lowlifes because we have our sights set on life forms even somehow lower on the ladder of lowlife than they.

One of the first scenes with an idiot…

The dark side of Raylan but who could blame him?

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