Justified: Kentucky’s Game of Thrones

We’re still a few months from Game of Thrones’ return, but the spring TV season brings a new set of shows to use to pass the time. FX’s Justified, which enters its sixth and final season tonight, has been one of my favorite shows across its run, in large part because of a few specific similarities to Game of Thrones. Both shows know how to build and release tension through taut dialogue and the constant threat of violence, and both use magnificent actors and dialogue to convey powerful themes through well-structured storytelling.

Check out how after the jump….

Justified is a modern Western based on the works of Elmore Leonard, taking place primarily in the fictional Appalachian Kentucky county of Harlan. It’s focused on two characters who grew up there: the semi-rogue U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), and his childhood friend, the semi-ethical criminal Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).

The best way to recommend Justified is that it’s a show that’s in love with words. The writers and the actors are across-the-board strong, to the point that just like Game of Thrones, it could drop pretty much any two actors in the same room and have a fantastic scene. The very best are the two leads:

Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder speaks like a pathological liar of a preacher, spinning worlds and sentences out in playful circular fashion, avoiding making points in order to build a mood, and either slithering away in a web of obfuscation or slamming his point home with passionate clarity. In this scene from perhaps my favorite episode, Season 4’s “Outlaw”, Boyd, like a consistently underestimated Tyrion Lannister, reveals just thoroughly he’s out-thought the men who believed themselves his better.

(These videos may be region-locked, my apologies if so: FX is pretty tight about the Justified clips they let on YouTube.)

Meanwhile, Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens is less overtly clever—or perhaps less long-winded. Instead, Olyphant’s a master of restraint with his words, letting his body language build the complexity while his verbal language remains direct. Sometimes the simplicity is enough, as in this little scene where he confronts a few jerks in a bar. But when the stakes get raised, Olyphant lets Raylan’s restraint drop, and the fireworks commence.

But put them together, and Justified turns fantastic. Like Varys and Littlefinger, or Arya and The Hound, or Jaime and Brienne, the combination of the two just talking is almost always a joy. It’s not just them, though. With uniformly great actors in their major roles, like Margo Martindale’s Emmy-winning turn as Mags Bennett, Justified becomes a show that’s enjoyable just to soak in and listen to the banter, conniving, and plotting, much like any scene involving the Lannisters on Game of Thrones.

There is a story underneath that love of language, however, and it’s one based on the ever-present threat of violent death. Like Thrones, almost every character on Justified is a killer. It may be in battle, out of loyalty, friendship, self-defense, justice, or ambition, but every aspect of the series considers that someone can draw a gun and end a life at almost any time, just as any scene (or wedding) can immediately turn sour on Game of Thrones.

Rather than the threat of violence making everything grim on either show, it’s used to build all kinds of tension. A scene with Tyrion and Cersei Lannister isn’t usually just a dramatic war of words, it’s one that consistently able to defuse the tension by being funny. These actors play intelligent and ambitious people whose plans or lives could end with a single misstep, and seeing them dance around every conversation and confrontation—and sometimes fail—is some of the best stuff on television. Both of these series deploy that form of scene—and the rare but shocking moments of violence—consistently and wisely. Check out the very first scene of the premiere of Justified:

The one exception to this rule is, unfortunately, Season 5 of Justified. It committed two massive errors: it kept Raylan and Boyd apart for almost the entirety of the season, and it ramped up the violence to a ridiculous degree, destroying the tension of potential violence in favor of cartoonish death counts. I was worried about Season 6—I didn’t want a show I loved ending on a sour note—but having seen screeners of the first three episodes, I’m delighted to see that Justified is back. Its violence is a threat again—and shocking when carried out. The Raylan-Boyd relationship is the heart of the story again. And it’s got some fantastic guest stars to bring it home: Sam Elliott, Garret Dillahunt, and Mary Steenburgen.

The latter is especially noteworthy, as if there’s one area that Justified has struggled where Thrones has succeeded, it’s in its presentation of women. For a few seasons now, the only dynamic woman on the show was Ava Crowder (Joelle Carter), Boyd’s sister-in-law turned fiancee (the other woman in the credits, Erica Tazel, plays Raylan’s co-worker Rachel Brooks, but she’s rarely been given much to do beyond witticisms. Meanwhile, Natalie Zea may have felt slightly disrespected in her role.) Carter’s very good in the role and Ava’s a strong character, but Steenburgen gives Justified the depth of having an older woman present for the first time since the show’s magnificent second season.

I regularly recommend Justified’s second season as the height of “Big Bad”-style storytelling. (This is the common Buffy/Sopranos model of a mix of standalone and serialized episodes over the course of a season, culminating in a season finale that ends with the defeat of the Big Bad.) First, it’s a masterwork of structure, where every episode after the fifth (of 13) feels like the climax of its own story, instead of, as so many shows do, spinning its wheels until the last couple episodes. Second, through its woman characters, it does incredible thematic work.

Justified, like Game of Thrones, has an incredible sense of history through family. On Thrones, the events of the War of the Five Kings feel inevitable because of the constant inability of characters to escape the past: the Lannisters and the Starks have to be at odds, Tyrion has to serve his father, and so on. In Justified’s second season, the old rivalry between the Givens family and the Bennett family, so violent historically, is held together by two older women, Mags Bennett and Helen Givens.

As soon as that peace is shattered, by the uncontrollable and vicious Ramsay-style villain Dickie Bennett, tragedy becomes inevitable. And the tragedy takes place across those generations, with both men and women trying to create safety and wealth for their families and realizing that it simply can’t be done without violence. At the end of the season, after trying to escape it all, Boyd Crowder comes to Cersei’s realization. Harlan County may be a a speck compared to Westeros, but there’s still a throne, and he’s playing to win.

From its second through its fourth season, Justified is as good as any show of its kind gets. (The first season is also good, though inconsistent.) The first quarter of Season 6 has the plot, character, and thematic foundation to be a fitting finish to one of the best television dramas of our time. It airs Tuesday nights on FX—and should, fittingly, end on the same week that Game of Thrones returns. You can also catch up on past seasons on Amazon Prime.

• Published on 01/20/2015 at 8:30 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:07 PM CDT