When it comes to hall of fame TV Westerns, Justified is right up there alongside Deadwood, a post-Civil War piece of historical fiction — yet Justified is set in present-day Kentucky. Timothy Olyphant’s Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens has a cell phone, a state car, and spends much of the show living in a motel. His ex-wife had remarried a suit-wearing, suburb-living realtor.

And rather than robbing trains on horseback, Raylan’s foes are selling OxyContin and marijuana and brewing moonshine. There are no cowpokes, but the words “hillbillies” and “rednecks” are thrown around. Yet Justified has a distinctly Western sensibility. Through a carefully curated tone — that runs deeper than Raylan’s trademark cowboy hat — Justified earns its place within the Western genre.

Justified Is Essentially A Southern Police Procedural

Perhaps most accurately described as Ozark meets The Wire, Justified ​​​​​​blends case-of-the-week and season-long stories as it follows both sides of the law in the exploration of organized crime in the South. Raylan puts pressure on criminal ecosystems that reach a boiling point over the course of a season. Along the way, hiccups and detours provide smaller plots that are resolved within an episode.

A lot of time is spent in the modern-looking Marshal’s office, in court, or in Raylan’s car and oddly seedy motel room. In the field, we’re often visiting rundown houses in rural Kentucky “hollers,” with antagonists temporarily mollified by promises of barbecue or fried chicken. And, like many crime dramas, episodes often end in crime scenes or arrests.

Justified is Southern to its core, but Raylan’s identity as a Harlan County native, whose father he is often putting in cuffs, gives the show a level of thoughtful intimacy that begins to establish Kentucky as its own type of Wild West.

Justified Shares A Lot Of Spiritual DNA With The Western Genre

For all its modern technology and law enforcement protocol, Justified certainly has a renegade cowboy air to it. Among colleagues and criminals alike, Raylan is known for practically goading his targets into duels. He’s established himself as the “quickest draw” in town, and he believes he’s “justified” in shooting someone when they draw on him first. It’s a mindset more befitting a cowboy than a cop.

With his personal ties to the criminal activity in Harlan County, Raylan has the emotionally burdened, lone wolf energy of many Western protagonists. He dodges his fellow Marshals almost as much as the criminals they pursue as he acts on personal grudges or follows leads to places only he can access with his family ties.

And Raylan is far from the only gunslinger in town. Gunfights in the street are common, as is opening the front door with a shotgun in hand. When they’re not fighting, Raylan and his equally well-developed criminal counterparts do their fair share of brooding and drinking glasses of whiskey in bars that bear a striking resemblance to saloons.

Considering its modern, police-focused setting, Justified has a distinct amount of Western imagery, action, and tone. In fact, Raylan isn’t even the Justified character most evocative of the Western genre.

Raylan Wears The Hat, But Boyd Crowder Is Justified’s Cowboy

Justified does more than look and feel like a Western. It takes the ideals of the genre to heart, and this is seen most clearly through the show’s deepest, most unique character, Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder. After getting shot in the chest by Raylan, white supremacist Boyd becomes a born-again Christian. When his faith is tested beyond repair, Boyd rejoins the world of the lawless with a palpable heartache.

Boyd, who once worked in the coal mines alongside Raylan, is a true good-bad guy. He’s smart, unwaveringly sincere, and true to his roots. Boyd deftly involves himself in a deal with a commercial mining company attempting to buy up Harlan County’s land and an election in which the sitting sheriff is in the pocket of a white-collar criminal from out of town.

He uses backdoor methods to do it, and his efforts ultimately serve his own interests, but this is in part because he genuinely values the history and independence of Harlan County. He’s not opposed to crime, but he believes it should be at the hands of Kentucky’s own homegrown criminals.

Every step of the way, Boyd is a key player in resisting the commercialization and urbanization of rural Kentucky. And to Raylan’s frustration, Boyd’s criminal objectives are often in sync with the goals of law enforcement, making Boyd something of a rogue ally. For his part, Boyd considers Raylan his “only friend.“

Boyd’s hometown loyalty, distaste for industrial development and control from outsiders, rich personal journey, and undeniable outlaw likability are what truly solidify Justified as a Western. These are the exact ideals that characterize the genre most often associated with period pieces in wide-open spaces being encroached upon by rapidly developing technology and fast-approaching societal structure.

Thanks to Boyd’s earnest heaviness, and the show’s general preference for cowboy rules over the book of the law when it comes to gunfights, Justified‘s Harlan County sits among the most engaging iterations of the Wild West.

Release Date

2010 – 2015

Directors

Adam Arkin, Jon Avnet, Peter Werner, Bill Johnson, John Dahl, Michael W. Watkins, Dean Parisot, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Tony Goldwyn, Don Kurt, Michael Katleman, Billy Gierhart, Frederick King Keller, John David Coles, Lesli Linka Glatter

Writers

Fred Golan, Taylor Elmore, Ingrid Escajeda, VJ Boyd