Last week saw the mini-series Justified: City Primeval come in for a landing.
So how did this project fare in comparison to the original Justified series?
Well, any day we get to see Timothy Olyphant on our TV screens in anything is a good day.
And any day we get to see Timothy Olyphant on our TV screens as Deputy Marshall Raylon Givens is a better day.
But be that as it may...
For all the joy of having Timothy Olyphant back as Deputy Marshall Raylon Givens, Justified: City Primeval can be a bit of a steep uphill climb.
Look, the the original Justified series came to as near perfect an ending as any TV series can manage. There really was no need to send Givens back to Harlan County, KY and there was nothing to be gained by dusting off Boyd Crowder for another round of mountain mischief.
Any follow up to Justified would have to trod different ground.
But Justified: City Primeval cuts Givens too far adrift from his roots. It almost seems like Givens is a guest star in someone else's crime show.
Creator Elmore Leonard's novel City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit was not a Waylan Givens book but he gets grafted into it and boy do the seams show.
At the center of the taudry shenanigans going down in Detroit is Clement Mansell, a psychotic criminal known as "The Oklahoma Wildman". Mansell is no Boyd Crowder. that's for damn sure but somehow manages to stay alive for most of the series' 8 episodes through some really dumb luck, crooked cops and some really bad decisions by other people to trust Mansell for just one more day.
That trust is repaid with a quick bullet to the head.
And if you don't trust him? Quick bullet to the head.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is working in overdrive when it comes to Mansell. And who can blame him for thinking he's all that when there's an entire apparatus of crooked lawyers and crooked cops working to make him the luckiest son of a bitch alive.
Which is where Raylon Givens comes in. As the guy looking from the outside in at the shithole that is Detroit's system of law enforcement and jurisprudence, what hope is there of making sure Mansell ever faces justice?
Long story made short: Clement Mansell gets what's coming to him.
And Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens is the man who delivers Mansell's retribution.
Then Givens gets the hell out of Detroit and gets back to Miami FL where he announces his retirement from the US Marshall Service to finally be able to spend some quality time with his daughter, Willa.
In the last quarter of the finale, we get our first guest appearance from the Justified series with Natalie Zea as Winona, Raylan's ex-wife and the mother of Willa.
Then we get our 2nd guest appearance from the Justified series with Walter Goggins as Boyd Crowder. Boyd has orchestrated his exit from prison and booking it to Mexico.
Meanwhile back in Miami, the US Marshalls are calling their erstwhile retired deputy, the one man they know can for sure get Crowder back behind bars.
Raylan and Willa are kicking back on a boat off of Miami while his phone just keeps buzzing away.
Is he going to answer that?
And we fade out.
As good as it was to have Timothy Olyphant back as Deputy Marshall Raylon Givens, it's a bit distressing how off Justified: City Primeval feels. Givens is completely cut adrift and we miss such fellow Marshalls from the original series like Art Mullen, Tim Gutterson and Rachel Brooks who knew Raylan, sometime found him irritating and but always had his back. The Detroit Police that Givens is tasked to work with are some whole other thing that he never fully connects with.
It takes us to until the last quarter hour of the final hour to set the stage for the Justified return we really want. That brief scene with Winona reminds us how good she and Raylan could've been together if their damn timing had been better.
And that sequence with Boyd Crowder engineering his escape from prison just remind us why Walton Goggin's antagonist was Givens' best and brightest adversary and what a fucked up pathetic mess Clement Mansell was. Mansell was no Crowder, not by a long shot.
Still, all in all....
We got Timothy Olyphant back as Deputy Marshall Raylon Givens and whatever Justified: City Primeval may have lacked, I will count at least that much as a win.
Next week on the Touchbase, we get a nerd on hard with
- Star Wars: Ahsoka
- My Adventures With Superman
- Star Trek: Lower Decks
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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