Justified, "Fire in the Hole": Bazooka Boyd

I reviewed "Justified" in today's column, but I'll have a few specific thoughts on the pilot episode coming up just as soon as I put out an APB on Cab Calloway...

"You make me pull, I put you down." -Raylan Givens

Because "Fire in the Hole" was already an Elmore Leonard short story, Graham Yost had a lot of the hard part done for him going into writing the pilot. Much of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book - and you can usually tell when it's not(*) - as is most of the plot. Some tweaks are made for the sake of this being an ongoing series - Givens' dad is now a criminal (in the story he was another coal miner), and Raylan goes against his code by letting Boyd live (which means Walton Goggins can return) - but most of this is pure Leonard, and rightly so.

(*) I like Yost a lot, but he does have a tendency to hit the audience over the head with certain thematic points, whether it was Speirs telling Lipton "Hell, it was you, 1st Sergeant!" at the end of Yost's famous "The Breaking Point" episode of "Band of Brothers," or here Givens' ex-wife Winona telling him "You do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don't see it, but honestly? You are the angriest man I've ever known." That makes a nice promo moment and all, but honestly? When you cast Timothy Olyphant, the anger isn't just implied, it's so overt that no one should ever discuss it like it's some big secret or revelation.

Because Olyphant is who he is and does what he does, and because the part of Givens fits him so well, a lot of the fun of the series comes from seeing how cops and crooks alike with more contemporary attitudes react to this walking, shooting throwback to a very different time. The scene in and then outside Ava's house, where poor Dewey Crowe was completely baffled by Givens (and got a busted nose for underestimating him), was one of the pilot's highlights. (Right after FX first picked up the show, back when it was still called "Lawman," that was the scene they showed the critics to give us a sense of how cool it would be; that was a very good call.)

This isn't quite a one-man show, though, and I liked what little we saw of some of the other regular and recurring players: Nick Searcy as the only kind of boss who could probably tolerate Raylan long-term, Joelle Carter as unapologetically homicidal Ava and Jacob Pitts (also currently playing Hoosier in "The Pacific") and Erica Tazel as the two junior but capable members of the team.

And Walton Goggins just chewed up the meal that was Boyd Crowder, didn't he? Not the subtlest of performances (certainly as compared to some of his late work on "The Shield"), but like the rest of "Justified, a lot of fun.

What did everybody else think?