Justified is a crime drama that ran for six seasons on FX from 2010 through 2015. It is currently streaming on Hulu. It is based on a character, Raylan Givens, developed by author Elmore Leonard. Ryland Givens was first introduced in the novel Pronto [1993] and then was the primary character in its sequel Riding the Rap [1995]. Pronto was made into a movie in 1997. Elmore Leonard started writing Westerns in the 1950’s but became renowned as a crime writer, authoring his last novel, titled Raylan in 2012.
His work is known for the characters he presents. He has a unique ability to develop flawed protagonists and antagonists that the reader likes and tends to root for. Adding to the richness of the characters, is the dialogue. Leonard purposely wrote dialogue just how the characters would talk. It is this incredible ability to portray the vocabulary, slang, and rhythms of speech that really creates the characters for the reader. In fact, Leonard was so adept at writing dialogue that an incredible number of his novels were turned into movies some good, some bad. Here is a complete list of Elmore Leonard novels that were made into movies:
- 3:10 to Yuma [1957 & 2007] 2007 version starred Russell Crowe
- 52 Pickup [1974] starring Ann-Margret and Roy Scheider
- The Big Bounce [1969 & 2004] 2004 version starred Owen Wilson
- Border Shootout [1990] from the novel The Law at Randado [1954]
- Cat Chaser [1989] starred Kelly McGillis [Top Gun] and Peter Weller [Robocop]
- Freaky Deaky [2012] starred Christian Slater and Crispin Glover [Back to the Future]
- Hombre [1967]
- Killshot [2008] starred Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
- Last Stand at Saber River [1997] starred Tom Selleck, Haley Joel Osment, Keith Carradine and David Carradine
- Life of Crime [2013] from the novel The Switch
- Mr. Majestyk [1974] starred Charles Bronson
- The Moonshine War [1970] starred Richard Widmark and Alan Alda
- Out of Sight [1998] starred George Cloooney, Don Cheadle, Steve Zahn, Ving Rhames, Catherine Keener, and Albert Brooks. It also starred Jennifer Lopez, who I usually hate but was very good under the skillful director’s hand of Steven Soderbergh.
- Stick [1985] starred Burt Reynolds, Candice Bergman, Charles Durning and George Segal
- The Tall T [1957]
- Touch [1997] starred Skeet Ulrich, Bridget Fonda, Christopher Walken, Gina Gershon, Tom Arnold, Janeane Garafalo, and LL Cool J.
- Valdez is Coming [1971] starred Burt Lancaster
- That’s seventeen films based on Elmore Leonard novels, without listing the more famous films:
- Jackie Brown [1997] directed by Quentin Tarentino and starred Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, Pam Grier, Bridget Fonda, and Michael Keaton. This is one of my favorite Tarentino films and is horribly underrated because it came out after Pulp Fiction and audiences were expecting and wanted Pulp Fiction II. This film is vastly different from Pulp Fiction. The first hour is devoted character development in some fantastic scenes that tell the audience who they are dealing with. Much more subtle than Pulp Ficiton, but the plot and characters are excellent.
- Get Shorty [1995] directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starred John Travolta, Gene Hackman, James Gandolfini, Dennis Farina, Rene Russo, and Danny DeVito. I love this movie. Just a fun watch.
- And the not as good sequel to Get Shorty, Be Cool [2005] starred John Travolta, Uma Thruman, Cedric the Entertainer, James Woods, Harvy Keitel, Danny De Vito, Vince Vaughn and a before he was famous appearance by The Rock.
Justified is set mostly in Kentucky, primarily the poor, rural coal country of Eastern Kentucky. The main character is Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Oliphant, a US Marshall reassigned to Kentucky from Miami after he shot a mafia hit man, Tommy Bucks, who pulled on Raylan. Raylan had confronted Tommy Bucks a day earlier and told him he had 24 hours to leave town. When his 24 hours was nearly up, Raylan confronted Tommy Bucks at a rooftop restaurant/pool. Raylan believe killing Tommy Bucks was justified because he pulled on him. His supervisor thought this was bullshit because US Marshalls aren’t supposed to antagonize bad guys into pulling weapons in public places, which led to Raylan’s reassignment to Kentucky, where he was born and raised.
Once relocated to his old stomping grounds, his first assignment deals with tracking Boyd Crowder, played by the incredible Walter Goggins. Boyd has formed a group of White Nationalists. But, this is, more or less, a front so that Boyd can sell drugs and blow shit up. Throughout the entire six season series, there is a symbiotic relationship between Boyd and Raylan. They have a shared kinship of having had to depend on each other while digging coal when they were growing up. Boyd served in the Iraq War and put his explosives experience from mining coal and the Iraq War to good use being a criminal. Raylan sees through all of Boyd’s subsequent reinventions of himself, realizing he is just a criminal at heart and will kill anyone to get what he wants. Meanwhile, Boyd believes Raylan is just like him, except Raylan has a badge to justify his killing of men. Raylan is essentially a law man from the Old West living in the wrong time period.
This week’s Power Poll theme is characters from the TV series Justified.
1. Ohio State – Boyd Crowder superbly played by Walter Goggins
Score:142 – First Place Votes:6 – High:1 – Low:2 – Last Week:2
Through the six seasons of Justified, each season has a principal antagonist. However, Boyd is introduced in the first episode and is in the last scene of the last episode. Boyd is a thorn in Raylan’s side [and vice-versa] through all six seasons and is the hero’s principal rival, just like OSU is to Indiana this season. The only question is will it be Boyd [OPSU] or Indiana [Raylan] who comes out on top this year.
The following clips give a nice overview of the very strange symbiotic antagonist-protagonist relationship between Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens:
2. Indiana – Raylan Givens played by Timothy Oliphant
Score:138 – First Place Votes:2 – High:1 – Low:2 – Last Week:1
Raylan has a keen sense of justice who feels confined by the laws and bureaucratic red tape that keep him from doing his job, finding bad guys and seeing justice enacted, even if he often baits these bad guys into acting in a way in which Raylan can exact justice on them. As mentioned Raylan is an Old West gunslinger law man living in the wrong place and wrong time whose most notable trait is being a quick and accurate draw Like Raylan, Curt Cignetti is the hero who vanquishes his enemies.
3. Oregon – Wynn Duffy played by Jere Burns
Score:128 – First Place Votes:0 – High:3 – Low:3 – Last Week:3
Wynn Duffy is introduced in season 1 as a mid-level loan shark and enforcer for the Dixie mafia who lives out of a mobile home. He has a dangerous and unpredictable vibe and has no qualms about killing people. However, by season 3 he has become the reluctant second in command to the truly psychopathic Robert Quarles from the Detroit mafia. He is a recurring character in the first four seasons but became a regular character the last two seasons. Through all six seasons he is shown getting through all kinds of schemes and misadventures through equal parts luck and just being slippery. In the final episode, it is known that he got away and implied that he got away with a big bag of cash and escaped to retire on a tropical island.
Oregon could have stayed in the Pac-12 and been the perennial Pac-12 champs. Instead, like Wynn Duffy, they went for the bag of cash by joining the B1G. They don’t’ need to be the B1G champs. They sit at #9 in the CFP standings and are favored in their remaining three games, solidly in the college football playoff. Like Wynn, they have moved on just fine.
4. USC – Art Mullen played by Nick Searcy
Score:118 – First Place Votes:0 – High:4 – Low:5 – Last Week:4
Art Mullen was Raylan’s boss. He was the Chief Deputy out of the Lexington Office fo the U.S. Marshalls Service. With Raylan running around Kentucky shooting bad guys, it was Art left to clean up the messes. As you have already seen, Raylan is the complete opposite of by-the-book. Through each season, Art has less patience for Raylan’s coloring outside the lines. In season 5, Art was shot by season 5’s principal villain Daryl Crowe Jr. Rachel Brooks assumed command of the Lexington office, and art was on the verge of retirement and Raylan was on the verge of heading to Miami. But, then higher ups decided to go after Boyd Crowder. And they decided to enlist Raylan for this one job before heading back to Miami. When the shit started to hit the fan, and some believed Raylan and Ava had run off with $10 million of stolen money, Art reinserted himself to protect Rachel. After all, they couldn’t derail his career as he was on the verge of retirement, anyway.
Art character arc through the six seasons of Justified feels a lot like Lincoln Riley’s time as HC of USC. Things started off swell finishing with an 11-3 record in 2022. Art was happy to have a smart confident go-getter like Raylan on board. They had taught together at Glynco, the US marshalls training grounds. But things went awry just like Riley’s time at USC. Things turned out well in the end as Raylan got Boyd sent back to prison and Art retired on a high note. Likewise, after a rough couple of years, USC is definitely on the upswing.
5. Iowa – Mags Bennett expertly played Margo Martindale
Score:113 – First Place Votes:0 – High:4 – Low:6 – Last Week:5
Mags Bennett is the matriarch of the Bennett clan. She runs the weed business in and around Harlan County in eastern Kentucky. The Bennett clan has been feuding with Raylan’s family for generations. Mags has control of her little fiefdom and prefers to keep things quiet and not draw too much attention. Kind of like Iowa and Kirk Ferentz. They have their long standing rivalries with Minnesota, Iowa State and Nebraska. And Kirk seems to be in control of his own destiny at Iowa. You’re not gonna see Iowa competing for the B1G championship and competing for a spot in the college football playoffs. But, they get along just fine in their own quiet way.
6. Michigan – Robert Quarles played by Neal McDonough
Score:105 – First Place Votes:0 – High:5 – Low:6 – Last Week:8
The main villain for Season 3 was Robert Quarles, exiled to Kentucky by the head of the Detroit mafia, Theo Tonin for beating up a male prostitute and putting him in a coma. Quarles is an intelligent, well-educated psychopath who went to business school at, you guessed it, the University of Michigan!
7. Illinois – Ellstin Limehouse played by Mykelti Williamson
Score:91 – First Place Votes:0 – High:7 – Low:9 – Last Week:7
Noble’s Holler is a Black section of Harlan County run and protected by Ellstin Limehouse. He is a business associate of Mags Bennett and exchanges favors for information pertaining to various illegal activities of various Harlan County criminals. By trade he is a butcher and owns a diner. But, his real wealth comes from doing favors. He keeps allow profile, minds his own business and get by, like Bielema and his Illini.
These two clips go hand-in-hand:
8. Nebraska – Ava Crowder played by Joelle Carter
Score:88 – First Place Votes:0 – High:7 – Low:9 – Last Week:10
Ava is introduced in the first episode. She has recently killed he abusive no-good husband, Bowman Crowder, with a shot gun. Throughout the series, she has a ton of bad shit happen. She has a brief failed relationship with Raylan. She shoots another man tying to protect another woman. She goes to prison when she is set up trying to dispose the body. In prison, she gets sent to the state pen when some psycho guard fakes his own attack and blames Ava. Ava is released from prison only to become a confidential informant against Boyd Crowder with the threat for getting sent back to prison hanging over her head, knowing she’ll either end up dead in prison or end up dead at the hands of Boyd if she is found out. She shoots Boyd Crowder and takes his stolen money. She is tracked down by the folks who Boyd stole the money from. Boyd is about to kill Ava when Raylan saves her. She manages to escape and gets away, not to thrive, but just to survive, knowing she has live anonymously because she is a wanted escaped felon. She has gone through a shit ton of bad stuff but in the end she manages to survive and get by okay.
Nebraska has gone through a tone of shit thanks to the collective curses of Bo Pelini and Frank Solich. Like Ava a lot of this bad stuff was self-inflicted. Nevertheless, like Ava, Nebraska has survived and is doing okay.
9. Minnesota – Billy St. Cyr played by Joe Mazzello
Score:76 – First Place Votes:0 – High:7 – Low:11 – Last Week:9
In season 4, a snake-charming revival preacher shows up and starts cutting into Boyd’s drug profits by getting the folks in Harlan County hooked on Jesus instead of drugs. Unbeknownst to Preacher Billy, his sister has been milking the venom out of the snakes on the down-low, so when Billy gets bit, he believes it’s God who is saving him. His downfall is when Boyd shows up and dares him to handle snakes in which the venom has not been previously milked. Just like one of our previous mailbag questions asked, Which B1G coach would be most likely to turn to preaching if he wasn’t’ a B1G HC? The Gophers very own Peej!
10. Washington – Kendall Crowe played by Jacob Lofland
Score:71 – First Place Votes:0 – High:7 – Low:15 – Last Week:6
In Season 5, one of Boyd’s dim-witted followers, Dewy Crowe, gets an unwanted visit from his kin from the Everglades. Word got around that Dewey just won $300,000 dollars in a lawsuit against the government for physical and emotional harm caused by his kidnapping FROM jail. Part of the Crowe kin that come up from the Everglades to settle into Harlan County with Dewey is 14-year-old Kendall Crowe. Being a minor, he was dragged into his current circumstances in which he’d rather not be. Getting stuck in a conference in which you have to travel to really far places to play good teams almost every week just to be an average B1G team. Washington is definitely in a place they’d rather not be but for the much better payout offered by the B1G.
11. Northwestern – Loretta McCready played by Kaitlyn Dever
Score:69 (nice) – First Place Votes:0 – High:9 – Low:11 – Last Week:11
Poor Loretta McReady. Her daddy was a small-time weed grower in Harlan County who stole some crop from the Bennett clan, which he paid for with his life, leaving Loretta, whose mother had already passed away, as an orphan at 14 years old. Despite being responsible for the death of her father, Mags Bennett unofficially adopted Loretta. Mags always wanted a girl but gave birth to three boys, two of which are certified idiots destined to spend a life in and out of jail until their respective lives come to an unnaturally early end. The other is kind of an annoying ass kisser. But, [spoiler alert], Mags’ life also comes to an unexpected end with Loretta winding up in child protective services. Even with all the disadvantages thrown her way, Loretta manages to survive and potentially thrive through her wile and guile. She inherited the land from her father and expertly got the locals on her side to sell her land instead of outside interlopers who were trying to illegally seize land for the same purposes, as Kentucky is about to legalize marijuana.
Northwestern’s alumni and fanbase just aren’t as fanatical as their peers. Hence, the playing field is not level for football or basketball. Yet, like Loretta, they punch above their weight class despite the lack of support enjoyed by their peers and find respectable success.
12. UCLA – Johnny Crowder played by David Meunier
Score:57 – First Place Votes:0 – High:10 – Low:13 – Last Week:12
Johnny Crowder is a cousin of Boyd Crowder and a career criminal. In season 1, Boyd, after getting shot by Raylan, found God. As such, he became a crusader against the drug business in Harlan County run by his father. Of course, this gave Boyd the excuse to blow up meth labs. Even when finding Jesus, Boyd always found a reason to blow shit up. Johnny got shot by Boyd father after Johnny tipped off Boyd about an ephedrine shipment. As a result Johnny was mostly confined to a wheelchair for the rest of the series. Through out the series, Johnny’s dislike of and resentment toward Boyd becomes increasingly clear. In season 5, Johnny attempted to double-cross Boyd in a drug deal with a Mexican drug lord. Unfortunately for Johhny, Boyd was one step ahead , which resulted in Johnny getting killed by Boyd. The Boyd-Johnny relationship dynamic feels a lot like the USC-UCLA dynamic since joining the B1G. UCLA has been mostly mediocre like Johnny always getting bested by Boyd.
13. Penn State – Darryl Crowe, Jr. played by Michael Rappaport
Score:49 – First Place Votes:0 – High:12 – Low:13 – Last Week:13
Oh, Penn State. We get your frustration. As the English Beat said, “I’m tired of second best, pet.” We get it. So, close, yet, so far. Once your season’s hopes got shattered by that heartbreaking loss to Oregon, and then the consecutive losses, we saw it coming. After losing to Northwestern, the writing was on the wall. That losing streak is now at six games, the longest in over two decades. Even though we all get your frustration, there is no pity. James Franklin is getting paid $49 million to not coach. No pity for him Penn State was a perennial top-10 team. Yet, that wasn’t good enough. each season, the fans from over 300 teams think your disappointment of not playing for the national championship and “only” being a top-10 team think your fan base is a bunch of entitled whiners. Basically, the football version of Kentucky Wildcat basketball fans. No pity but plenty of jealousy and hope for a decade and a half of mediocrity to readjust fan expectations. Like Nebraska.
Daryl Crowe, Jr. is the main villain in season 5. The way he talks. The way he walks. His arrogance. He is very street smart relative to the company he keeps. But, you can’t stand him and can’t wait to see him get his comeuppance. Just like most Big Ten football fans are get a very large helping of schadenfreude from watching a football giant fall so long and hard.
14. Rutgers – Gary Hawkins played by William Ragsdale
Score:42 – First Place Votes:0 – High:12 – Low:14 – Last Week:15
Raylan Givens was, at one time, married to Winona. Winona is currently known as Winona Hawkins and is married to Gary Hawkins who is into real estate. Gary Hawkins is an insecure man who feels he has to appear to be more than what he is. This leads him to doing some financially unsound real estate deals that have been financed by Dixie mafia money. And now, those Dixie mafia loan sharks have come to collect their debts. That’s Gary in the previous clip showing Raylan confronting Wynn Duffy under the Oregon section.
Gary spends most of the show one step behind, never realizing the trouble he is in, even as that trouble gets deeper. This reminds me of the Rutgers program under Greg Schiano. Schiano, Like Locksley from Maryland, has never had a .500 or winning conference record in the B1G. He has also never won more than seven games in a season since Rutgers has in the B1G. [Locksley, believe it or not, has actually gone 8-5 twice.] In his return to Rutgers after his failed attempt to coach in the NFL just seems to be out of his league. He seems to not have a comprehensive plan on dealing with NIL and the transfer portal. Like Gary Hawkins, he seems to be one step behind in the game he is playing.
15. Wisconsin – Dicky Bennett played by Jeremy Davies
Score:29 – First Place Votes:0 – High:14 – Low:16 – Last Week:18
The Bennetts are a clan out of Harlan County. Mags is the matriarch of the clan but she has raised some no-good idiots. Dicky Bennett is one of them. He walks with a limp due to an injury suffered during a baseball game as a kid by none other than Raylan Givens. He still holds a grudge against Raylan but is no match for Raylan and he knows it. Dicky is a dumb criminal who will either end up in prison or dead all from his own doing.
Just like Wisconsin under Luke Fickell. Nobody expects Luke Fickell to survive Wisconsin. And the remaining time in Wisconsin will be mediocre at best.
16. Maryland – Dewey Crowe played by Damon Herriman
Score:26 – First Place Votes:0 – High:15 – Low:18 – Last Week:14
Dewey is a bumbling stupid moron whose sole purpose in the show was to provide comic relief. Oh, he ends up dead, shot by Boyd just because Boyd couldn’t trust to not do or say something stupid that would incriminate Boyd. Maryland football for the last two years has been bumbling and stupid. And their coach is a dead man walking.
Here is Raylan’s first encounter with Dewey:
During Boyd’s initial incarnation as a religious messenger, after being a leader of a neo-Nazi group, Dewey gets kicked out for…well, you’ll see:
17. Michigan State – Constable Bob played by Patton Oswalt
Score:15 – First Place Votes:0 – High:17 – Low:18 – Last Week:16
Constable Bob is based on a real person who the director and writers met while filming on location. It is an elected position which he won because he ran unopposed. He has to supply his own car, which is an AMC Gremlin from the 1970’s. He is generally incompetent but can be underestimated due to his toughness and strong will.
This description of Constable Bob is an apt description of the current state of the MSU program. Generally, incompetent but, as Rylan said, “underestimate Bob at your own peril.”
18. Purdue – Choo Choo played by Duke Davis Roberts
Score:11 – First Place Votes:0 – High:16 – Low:18 – Last Week:17
I went for the low-hanging fruit with this one because 1) it’s low hanging fruit – Choo-Choo, trains, Purdue, get it? But also because 2) I love this character. The odd mixture of naivete, stupidly, and likeability mixed with the fact that he is a stone-cold killer is a funny juxtaposition:
