Roush Review: A ‘Justified’ Comeback in ‘City Primeval’ for TV’s Coolest Lawman
Review
Justified: City Primeval
And just like that, Raylan Givens is back.
Which is cause for celebration, unlike the current sad spectacle of Max’s tone-deaf And Just Like That besmirching the saucy legacy of Sex and the City. FX’s terrifically entertaining Justified: City Primeval pulls off the literary trick of reviving the beloved U.S. marshal from the Emmy-winning series (2010-2015) by inserting him into an adaptation of a Raylan-free Elmore Leonard thriller, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. The exhilarating result honors both Leonard’s vividly wry tone of unpredictable mayhem and Raylan’s slow-burning lawman legacy. No small feat.
It helps that Timothy Olyphant is now very much in gray fox mode, bringing spice with Raylan’s signature droll humor to our long-anticipated reunion. We first meet him in Florida’s steamy Everglades, driving his rebelliously delinquent daughter Willa (Olyphant’s own daughter, Vivian) to a summer camp for penance, neither all that thrilled to be in each other’s company. “You sound like every fugitive I ever transported,” drawls the disgruntled daddy.
A random encounter—Leonard’s twisty plots often hinge on such moments—with ill-advised carjackers diverts Raylan, propelling him and Willa to the urban jungle of Detroit, where his ever-present Stetson makes him an object of “cowboy marshal” derision. (The minute you hear a cop tell him, “I’ll show you how we get s**t done in Detroit,” you know it won’t be long until the Kentucky-bred lawman turns that prediction on its head.)
Brought to the big city to testify, Raylan immediately tangles with cunning Carolyn Wilder (the formidable Aunjanue Ellis), an ambitious defense lawyer with many shady clients, and a corrupt judge (scenery-chewing Keith David) whose black book of secrets becomes a pivotal plot point. One of Carolyn’s least popular miscreants is the psychopathic “Oklahoma Wildman” Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook, having a ball), a stone-cold supervillain whose playfully lethal reign of terror draws Raylan into a web of slaughter and extortion that eventually involves the local Albanian mob.
“Everybody doesn’t get to be angry the way you do,” Carolyn warns Raylan as a mutual attraction grows between legal adversaries. She could be right, but his hair-trigger temper is more justified than usual when Mansell gets too close to his otherwise-neglected daughter. (Olyphant the younger is quite effective in conveying adolescent peevishness with an undercurrent of forlorn longing.)
Raylan may be failing at fatherhood, but as City Primeval moves toward its inevitable showdown over eight tightly plotted episodes, he reminds us why we’d follow him anywhere. And he’s in good company, maneuvering amidst a rogue’s gallery that includes a poignant Vondie Curtis-Hall as Sweetie, a former jazz great now running a dive bar, and Rectify’s Adelaide Clemens as Sandy, Mansell’s seductive but insecure moll.
Whether on the traditional linear channel or on its streaming platform Hulu, where many of the network’s newer high-profile projects exclusively premiere, FX is on a roll this summer: Hulu’s The Bear, FX’s What We Do in the Shadows, with the final season of Reservation Dogs coming to Hulu in August. My sorrow that Dogs is coming to an end after just three seasons is mitigated by my delight that City Primeval teases us with the possibility of another chapter in the Justified franchise.
Say this about most FX shows: They leave you wanting more.
Justified: City Primeval, Limited Series Premiere (two episodes), Tuesday, July 18, 10/9c, FX (Next day, Streaming, Hulu)
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