Bookshelf Battle

My parents loved Westerns.  I don’t blame them.

I’m not sure of the actual numbers, but I’m willing to bet if someone did a statistical analysis of the subject matter of all films produced between 1950-1980, “Western” would dominate its way straight to the top.

Gene Autry, Chuck Connors, James Arness, John Wayne – the baby boomers loved their cowboys.

Justified – Flashbacks – The Beginning – FX

When my parents grew up, became adults, and had me, they often had reruns of shows like Gunsmoke and The Rifleman on.  Or they’d watch one of their favorite cowboy movies over and over.

In recent years, the Bravo Western channel made it possible for them to watch all of these movies and shows on a permanent loop.  I’d visit and there’d they be – glued to the same Western movie they’d seen a hundred times before.

And literally, even if it was a different movie, the plot of most Westerns were the same.  Bad guys did bad things.  The townsfolk were too oppressed and downtrodden to care.  They just took it and accepted it as a part of life.  A righteous lawman blows into town and gives the bad guys a run for their money.  The bad guys get angry and fight back.  They get violent and make life even worse for the townsfolk. The people turn their wrath toward the lawman, blaming him for stirring up trouble.  Can’t he just leave well enough alone and let the bad guys have their way?  In the end, it all culminates in a final showdown where the lawman and a bad guy draw, and the lawman is inevitably faster with the iron.

I can’t count the number of times I made fun of my parents over this.  “Do you guys realize you’re watching the same plot over and over again?”

They didn’t care.  And today as an adult, I get it.  The American West was literally society’s last chance for adventure, at least in this part of the world.  “Go West, Young man” they’d say.

People would head out West to prospect for gold, claim land and farm or become ranchers.  Some would start businesses.  Of course, there was a hearty supply of ne’er-do-wells who took advantage of the lack of an established criminal justice system to cheat, steal, and rob everyone blind, thus providing the fodder for the cornucopia of cowboy flicks that my baby boomer parents held near and dear to their hearts.

All that Western stuff?  It was still going on as of the early 1900’s.  People from the 1950s, like my parents, probably knew an old timer or two who could recount stories they’d heard or read about.  By the middle of the last century, the West was won, but the stories?  They were finally being told thanks to the invention of movies and television and the kids of yesteryear couldn’t get enough.  The West was a limitless supply of adventure.

Somewhere around 1980, that all became lame.  Once in awhile, they still make the occasional good cowboy movie.  Young Guns with Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen (before he went bonkers) was a favorite of mine.

Today, making a Western is practically a kiss of death at the box office.  We’re far removed that period of our country’s history that anything to do with the West seems more like a boring history lesson than an actual adventure.

Personally, I try to keep an open mind.   2011’s Cowboys and Aliens was a fabulous attempt to blend the Western and Sci-Fi genres.  I loved it.  Others weren’t willing to give it a chance.  “Oh my God.  A movie that takes place in the past.  I might learn something.  No, no, I don’t care if it has aliens and is a total fantasy.  It takes place and historical times and I might learn something.  I can’t have that.”

Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West suffered the same fate.  It was hysterically funny with a laugh a minute but…it takes place a long time ago and so, viewers were like “Oh my God!  History!  Pass!”

The folks behind Justified did something completely different with the Western genre.  They updated it.  They made it modern.  They took all of our favorite cowboy movie tropes and set them into today’s world.

The show stars Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens.  He was born in bred in impoverished Harlan County, Kentucky where folks are broke, depressed, and the only job around requires you to haul your backside into a deep, dark mine and dig coal.

Raylan escaped all that to join the Marshall service.  The first episode finds him in Florida, where, like the U.S. Marshalls of old, he’s giving a baddie a deadline to get out of town.

The bad guy refuses, he pulls a piece, Raylan pulls his faster and blam.  The “black hat” has three bullet holes in him while Raylan is no worse for wear.

In the olden days, that was just one cowpoke being faster than the other with a shooting iron.  Today, in common parlance, we call it “justifiable homicide.”

Thus begins the running theme of the show – Raylan is fast on the draw, quick on the trigger, and ultimately a better shot than the slew of evildoers who want him dead.

The swaggering modern cowboy hat wearing lawman leaves an onslaught of “justified” shootings in his wake, so many in fact that his superiors begin to wonder whether or not he’s some kind of uncontrollable rogue.

The truth that the viewers see?  Raylan is just that much better than his adversaries.  While most officers would have been shot and died at the hands of any one of the show’s criminals, Raylan just keeps defending himself and living to tell the tale.

The Florida shooting results in Raylan being sent home to Kentucky, where he has to chase down an assortment of criminals, most of whom he knew growing up, some of whom he’s even related to, his father Arlo being chief among them.

Raylan hates returning to the depressed hillbilly podunk life he’d escaped and his old family and friends view him as some kind of snob who thinks he’s too good for them.

Life in Harlan is hard.  People are poor and depressed.  People like Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder turn to a life of crime, arguing that’s the only way anyone from such a godforsaken place can ever get ahead.

And thus becomes the crux of the series.  Raylan and Boyd were childhood friends who “dug coal together” growing up.  Both escaped their poor upbringings.  Raylan did so in accordance with the law.  Boyd did it by stealing everything not nailed down.  Oh, and Boyd’s experience as a mine blaster provides an untold amount of explosions throughout the series.

If the psychopathic Shane on The Shield isn’t the character that Walton Goggins will be remembered for, then certainly Boyd Crowder will be.  In this role, he’s the underdog degenerate that you love to hate, the silver-tongued “black hat” who always uses ten words when three would do.

There’s something about Southern hospitality.  Raylan and Boyd spend half their time exchanging pleasantries and the other half trying to kill each other.

It’s tough to be Raylan.  But it’s also cool to be Raylan.  The townsfolk don’t want to be bothered with him and have no interest in helping him apprehend Boyd and other assorted felons (including Arco and even his old high school girlfriend Ava).

Against all odds, Raylan manages to save the day again and again, always drawing faster than the bad guys.

Arguably, Raylan might even have it tougher than John Wayne.  John Wayne blasted a few black hats then took a nap.  Raylan shoots a bad guy and has to fill out stacks of paper work and incur the wrath of the incomparable Nick Searcy, who plays Raylan’s boss Art Mullin.

That’s not to say the modern world doesn’t have its advantages.  Raylan juggles more ladies than John Wayne ever did.

Rounding out the cast are Erica Tazel’s Rachel Brooks and Jacob Pitts’ Tim Gutterson, fellow U.S. Marshalls who often find themselves coming to Raylan’s aid, yet like the townsfolk of old, often wonder why Raylan is hell bent on stirring up one hornet’s nest after another.

The show is based on legendary author Elmore Leonard’s Fire in the Hole, so we have him to thank for breathing modern life into the cowboy flicks of old.

The series ended last week, but you can still catch it in a variety of streaming ways.

Ever since Dexter became a lumberjack, I cringe whenever my favorite shows call it quits, wondering if there will be an ending that leaves me wishing I’d never invested any time in it in the first place.

The ending of Justified delivered and then some, wrapping up all of the shows ongoing plot lines, giving us a final draw and well, hell, I hate to say it, but it even brought a tear to this old blogger’s eye.

Watch it.  You won’t be sorry.