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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: March 16, 2010
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Justified, “Fire in the Hole” (Season 1, Episode 1) [Stream on Prime Video]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Here in 2017, FX is on top of the world, killing it in the ratings and with critics, with shows like American Crime Story, Feud, The Americans, and Fargo. This wasn’t always the case, of course. Cable TV dominance was once the province of HBO, with occasionally Showtime and, later, AMC jumping up to steal some kudos and Emmy Awards. During this not-too-long-ago era, a show like Justified had to settle for being one of television’s most underrated shows.
What Justified also had was one of the better drama pilots in recent memory. Based on the Elmore Leonard short story that gives the premiere episode its title, Justified was developed by Graham Yost, whose Hollywood career was a carnival of ups (Speed, Band of Brothers) and downs (Herman’s Head; Mission to Mars). But with Justified, Yost produced something really great. The show starred Timothy Olyphant as U.S. marshall Raylan Givens, whose aggressive and rules-adjacent operational style got him busted down to the back hills of Kentucky, coincidentally enough exactly where he grew up.
With Raylan back in his home town of Harlan, he was confronted with his past on all sorts of fronts: an ex-wife who’d seemingly moved on; a father who was an unrepentant bastard to him; and most importantly of all is an old rival in the person of Boyd Crowder. As played by Walton Goggins, Boyd was a charismatic, threatening presence from minute one, and as much as Raylan is the central presence of “Fire in the Hole” (and Olyphant gives the best performance of his life on this show), the hour belongs to Boyd.
Justified lasted for six seasons, and for at least four of them, it was the best show on FX. It was the TV show that won Margo Martindale her much-deserved Emmy. But for the most part, Justified was one of TV’s more unheralded shows. It’s well worth a revisit.
