Americans have come to expect crap on television. Sadly, we are astonished when anything remotely acceptable to a person who is anything other than a brain-dead vegetable-like resident of a mental home is discovered on network t.v. Imagine my shock, delight, and surprise when I came across the first season of a show on FX ("FX" sounds like a weapons system!) called -- "Justified."
This program -- now entering its second season -- is really an old fashioned western soap opera elevated by highly intelligent writing and exquisite acting to the level of a British costume drama on Masterpiece Theater. We tend to forget that Americans can kick ass in t.v. drama when we want to and get paid for it. It seems like "getting paid for it" makes people "want" to do good work. Is that Republican talk? No, just common sense. "Same thing," our Republican friends say.
The people creating this show -- somebody named "Wendy Calhoun" is the "story editor" (What's that?) and Tony Goldwyn of hallowed Hollywood nobility is a producer (What does a producer do?) who may be the same person as "Graham Yost" -- really want to kick ass and they do. "Stephen Heim" or "Heth" is listed as an "executive producer." I knew an "executive producer" once! I think Mr. Heim also makes ketchup. No, that's "Heinz." Also, this same person named "Graham Yost" is listed as the "developer" of the program.
My theory is that these people are really one little guy in a corner office. I suspect that none of these people attended Yale Univesity. Furthermore, I am positive that none of the characters in the program owns a summer home in Long Island.
"Emmy" nominations are due to several cast members if there is any justice in life and t.v. -- which there may not be. Is it "Emmy" or "Emmie"? Who cares? I don't. "Boyd" (Walton Goggins) as a preacher is not to be missed. The actor creating this wonderful character is "masticating" the scenery and loving it. This man is a new Jack Nicholson and deserves a big time movie career. "Rayland" played by Timothy Olyphant (I think that's how he spells his name) is Harrison Ford, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Denzel Washington and Clint Eastwood all in one.
I hope Rayland gets to say "yep" at least once. I am told by people who should know that "Raylan" and "Rayland" are equally acceptable. Tim, you gotta see "High Noon." Ed Harris is a director and writer to study with great care. I wonder if Mr. Harris has something to with "Justified"?
Natalie Zea as Wynona ("Wynona, like the actress") is cool, polished, professional and pragmatic. I will check on cast names, relax. Ms. Zea has made Wynona a model of American womanhood, loving -- in my opinion -- one difficult ex-husband and caring for a second, coping with life, strong and gentle, sensual and mature, complex, educated, and sympathetic. Wynona knows how to get her groove on. I found your hairpin, Wynona.
Erika Tazer is Rayland's partner, the "Dana Scully" in the series -- who happens to be a beautiful African-American woman as demonstrated in her red carpet appearances and also someone who will kick your ass.
Finally, "Eva" or "Ava" (also like the actress) is a discovery that shocks viewers. Joelle Carter evokes the same feelings of awe that I experienced when I saw great actresses (or actors) who have earned Oscars since -- like Kate Winslet and Melanie Griffith -- in their first cinematic performances.
Eva is a paradox. Clearly, she is brilliant, sad and pained, talented and burdened with the after-effects of trauma. Overwhelming melancholy floods "Eva's" eyes, instantly, revealing an understanding of tragedy and loss by this character and the artist creating her that is nothing less than heart-breaking in one so young.
Where does this wisdom and compassion come from? A hard life at twenty-one? I am always dazzled by actors who can modulate the colors and nuances in their voices. Yes, "voices" is a plural word for any actor. Is Ms. Carter a singer? Music must be a big part of Ms. Carter's life.
I cannot imagine where this sadness comes from in a beautiful young woman's life. This capacity to empathize with suffering is shared with Ms. Carter's distinguished thespian predecessors that I mentioned and may reflect the actor's Southern heritage. America's once "Confederate" nation -- as Mr. Faulkner explained to an interviewer -- understands pain and tragedy whereas the rest of America often does not.
Ms. Carter is destined to play Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" and Shakespeare's "Ophelia." Volumes of rich Southern poetry float into one's mind as "Eva" steps on screen:
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me --
Yes! -- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
Thank you, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. The ability that I find most rare in any actor is the gift of conveying multiple emotions with a single glance at the camera while compelling the audience's identification with a character's pain. Although it is too soon to tell, I suspect that Ms. Carter is blessed with this talent at the level of genius. Please do some theater work in the classics, Ms. Carter. You will be a better actor/actress because of such experiences. The rest is luck and opportunities. "Oh, for a muse of fire! ..." Or Joanne Woodward (a Southern Gal!) in Paris Blues, wearing a little black dress to torture the men in the audience -- and Paul Newman.
I cannot help conjuring a Hamlet featuring this cast in "Elsinore, New Mexico." Rayland is "Hamlet Jones," U.S. Marshal. His dad in the series is "Polonious"; his step-mom is "Gertrude"; his boss is Fortinbras; Boyd is Laertes. To go kinky with it, Rayland's contemporary, Wynona, would be Gertrude. Sparks would fly. Shakespeare's long shadow appears in the finale to the first season as "fathers and sons" contest the "crown" of Harlan County, Kentucky. This show makes you want to see Kentucky.
I suspect that Wendy Calhoun is both women in this series, a younger and wilder versus an older and (somewhat) wiser version of herself are set against each other. Any scene involving those two women, Wynona and Eva, is not to be missed. I recommend Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear it Away (New York: Signet, 1960). These characters may have emerged from the ghost of Ms. O'Connor's pen and the old Catholic aristocracy in the South. Pass me a mimosa.
This drama is derived from an Elmore Leonard story, establishing excellence at the outset, and it is beautifully crafted by persons who know and understand these rural and difficult lives unfolding in the green hills of Kentucky. ("Gore country.")
There is no insulting disdain or condescension conveyed to these people, whose nobility and articulateness, moral struggles and deep humanity are made evident in every script. The show returns to the airwaves in February, 2011. Boyd is reading William Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, a novel drawn from the fourth book of Spinoza's "Ethics" that dramatizes the argument of that great philosophical work concerning the need to balance emotion with reason in moral life. Good luck, Boyd.
People from these beautiful hills -- a landscape clearly internalized by the characters -- are not depicted as stupid, racists, rednecks, or cartoons. They are as complex, good or evil, mysterious and unpredictable as anyone you know.
I cannot avoid fantasizing about any number of alternative productions with these characters whose chemistry is dazzling. This show is way better written and acted than "Grey's Anatomy" or almost everything else that I have seen on television with the possible exception of the best USA programs, like "Burn Notice" or "White Collar." Once more, Mr. Poe, please:
Beloved! amid the earnest woes
That crowd around my earthly path --
(Drear path, alas! where grows
Not even one lonely rose) --
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee, and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.
And thus my memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea --
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms -- but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.
Rayland's boss at the U.S. Marshal's Office is a typical harried federal official, resembling Bill Richardson, former Governor of New Mexico, and official under President Clinton -- I believe he was "National Security Advisor." He copes with the challenges, including supervising Rayland, and does a good job in a quietly efficient way. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
The Miami Cubanoid mafiosos are as loathsome as the local variety of gangsters and are depicted quite accurately, as I can attest. There is a Cuban-American Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mr. Vasquez, who is pretty good and decent, like Rayland's boss. Accents identify the actors as does the Miami setting. Boringly, Vasquez reminds me of me -- except I am nicer than he is and better looking, if somewhat older, sporting distinguished gray in my neatly shorn locks of hair. No one is a stereotype. African-Americans make cameo appearances and more, also being shown as human beings displaying all of the ills that flesh is heir to. I reach, again, for my "Collected Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" and "Plays of Tennessee Williams" after every show.
Aside from the ongoing drama of good guys versus bad guys -- with occasional red neck bullies in bars and insane judges thrown in for those who crave them in tribute to John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces -- there is the subtle and sensitive tension between the feelings of the protagonists caught in a kind of love triangle against what they perceive as their duties. The best review of Mr. Toole's Rabelesian work is provided by Anthony Burgess. Contrast "Faith in a Bottle" (reviewing Rabelais, by M.A. Screech) with "Life After Murder" (reviewing A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole) in Anthony Burgess, But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), p. 255, then p. 409.
Eva will break the heart of every man she meets EVERYWHERE on this planet. Not every woman in America can say that she has shot one man dead; stolen the heart of a U.S. marshal; engaged in a solo war against the Dixie Mafia (and is even winning on points in my score card!), while getting herself an Emmy nomination to boot. "Where do you go from here, girl?" Oscars? Nobel Prize?
Ms. Carter, you are a miracle. I suspect, however, that neither you -- nor Wynona or Rayland -- have any clue about what is going on inside that devious and surprising mind of yours, Eva. How does a nice girl from Kentucky associate with the trashy circle of persons you have come to know? Is it all that smoking? Did you not behave well in high school? I can only hope that you go to church on Sundays. No one can ask for a "sawed-off shotgun" in such a lovely pianissimo soprano voice. "Thank you, mam."
Perhaps the deepest clue and most revealing insight into this baffling, seductive, almost tragic character, "Eva," is her confession that she will not be made to leave her community by anyone, including "Bo." Bo is the local boss, played brilliantly by an actor whose name I will memorize (is he "Luther Perry"?), in tribute to the film "To Kill a Mockingbird" based on Harper Lee's novel, which is one of my daughter's favorite books and one of her father's favorite films. This fine actor playing "Bo" was born to play "Big Daddy" in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Eva will not abandon those hills that almost steal the spotlight from Ms. Carter -- I said "almost" -- because they are within her soul and psyche. This is what unites all of these lives played out on both sides of the law: a deep love for the land and freedom associated with this earth, with their ancestors who lie resting in that earth, and the flag still flying proudly over this drama of heroic and unbreakable pioneers.
These are the people who made America and, like it or not, achieved great things in the twentieth century. Never count them out. We are always better in the later rounds. I know a woman very much like "Eva." Come to think of it, I also know a woman like "Wynona." I sympathize with Rayland's dilemma. ("Serendipity, III.")
I am aware of the difference between John Marshall's name and the word "marshal." I prefer that my corrections of inserted "errors" only be made once. At least be creative when inserting "errors" or plagiarizing my writings, mafia members. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "More Censorship and Cybercrime.")
Wednesdays, 10:00 P.M. on FX. Be there! I plan to purchase the first season on DVD. I like the theme music, too. A new female villain is too good to be believed. The women in this mythical Harlan County are fascinating and steal almost every scene. Rayland Gibbons, you are in trouble. I want to buy me a hat, like Rayland's hat, and some boots.
