Pilot Watch: FX’s ‘Justified’

Posted by Ashley on March 19, 2010 · 2 Comments 

So everybody’s been talking about this new show called Justified that premiered on FX last Tuesday. It stars Timothy Olyphant as the bad ass angry motherfucker U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. When I first heard about this show, I didn’t give it much thought but then everyone was talking about how awesome it was so I decided to give it a shot. Honestly, I had two really dumb thoughts that kind of hampered me for a while. First, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that this show’s main character needed to be named Justin. Obviously. And until the actual word “justified” was used in the pilot, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, mostly because I think it’s hilarious (it’s probably not). The second thing was that even with that ugly ass cowboy hat, Raylan Givens is sexy. (Which actually brought me back to the whole Justin/Justified thing, but whatever.)

After about five minutes, though, the immediate bad-assery of Raylan Givens totally overshadowed my very strange and incoherent thoughts. “Fire in the Hole” was well-written, compelling, and entertaining as hell. And trust me on this, I don’t usually like this kind of shit. So. To give you a frame of reference, I took up that new show Parenthood a couple weeks ago — bringing my total of TV shows up to twenty-five — and even though I liked it, I’m pretty sure I’m going to drop it in favor of Justified. Parenthood is good, but it’s not exactly original; Justified is showing me something I’ve never seen before, and that’s always worth a little bit of your time. With that in mind, if you’re still unsure about giving this show a try,

Here is a list of people who might like this show, which I have compiled for your convenience:

● Assholes
● Bad asses
● Smart asses
● Smart people
● Dumb people who like it when things get blown up or when people get shot
● People who wear cowboy hats
● People who like Elmore Leonard
● People who actually know who Elmore Leonard is
● People who liked Deadwood
● People who actually know what Deadwood is
● If the following image is at all appealing to you in any way:

Or, you know, you could just trust me and give it a shot anyway. And if you don’t like it, well . . . you can always go get drunk, but don’t go handling no guns or getting no funny ideas afterwords. Abigail: you probably shouldn’t watch this. Just skip straight to the getting drunk part.

Filed under Ashley, TV · Tagged with deadwood, elmore leonard, fx, justified, pilot watch, timothy olyphant