My Outlaw Ways Are Behind Me

I'm not sure what, if anything, this blog will become, but one thing I can say is that I believe you can tell a lot about people by the stories they tell. Micro, what we say to make mom believe we didn't steal the cookie or how we won't speed on the interstate if we can have the car on Friday night, to macro, the myths and legends writ large in books and film and television and politics.  The stories that find a foothold tell us quite a bit about ourselves.

I am a Southern man. I had to leave the South to appreciate it, but being away gave me both a love for the things that work and a bitter enmity to the things that don't throughout the region.  Growing up in eastern Tennessee gave me an appreciation for the sheer character of the South's inhabitants that I only understood after existing on the West Coast for a few months.  So, while I love a good story and don't care if it's about Norwegian fishermen or Japanese au pairs or New York nebbishes, a good story evoking the South will tend to land in my wheelhouse.  If it involves some guns and a mystery to unravel, so much the better.

So it's absolutely no surprise I am rather obsessed with Justified, a show on the FX cable network.

Justified centers around Raylan Givens, a character originating in the fiction of Elmore Leonard. Raylan, played by Timothy Olyphant, is a competent lawman in the U.S. Marshal's service who can use a gun very well and probably enjoys doing so a little too much.  After killing a man in Miami he had warned to get out of town, he is reassigned to a field office near his childhood home in Kentucky.  Long-form stories stretching the length of the show mix with interesting "case of the week" set-ups which allow Raylan and his fellow Marshals to do their thing.  In many ways, it's a cop show, but to describe it as such and sneak away does the whole enterprise a disservice.

You see, Justified was an entertaining and enjoyable show through its first few episodes, the kind of thing I would watch happily just to see Olyphant echoing Deadwood's sheriff Seth Bullock while traipsing through Kentucky's local color, full of intriguing and honest and funny characters.  But somebody decided to let the first episode's bad guy, Walton Goggins' Boyd Crowder, not die from a Givens-administered bullet as had originally been intended.  Once Boyd gets out of the hospital and starts gathering followers to either bring to Jesus, or take over the local drug trade, or both, the show was able to counterpoint a good man with a darker nature with a not-so-good man struggling with his own decency and intelligence.  It's bold, Old Testament and Shakespearean stuff, and it's on TV every week.

I love the character of Raylan Givens, as compelling a protagonist as you could hope to see on a television show.  But Boyd Crowder is a revelation.  I followed Walt Goggins through seven seasons of The Shield, and his work in the final season of that show was devastating and award-worthy.  I've actually met Walt, and he's an affable guy with a serious intelligence, but seeing him portray two very different characters and build them with great complexity makes me appreciate his work all the more (As an aside, he has a supporting role in the exceptional That Evening Sun, which was filmed in and around my Tennessee hometown).

The title of this blog comes from a bit of dialogue Boyd frequently utters when discussing his weighty past, "My outlaw ways are behind me."  I am far from an outlaw, and if I have any outlaw ways they are more likely in my future than my past.  I simply believe that there is no greater drama than someone struggling with their own essential nature and wondering each day if they're going to be good or bad.  I do it, all the time, and while I don't expect every posting here to be about a controversial or philosophical topic, it might happen.

Most of it will probably be silly.  But fuck it, it's my blog, and I'll do what I damn well please with it.

I'm going to end by quoting probably my favorite dialogue from anything I saw or read last year. Raylan has located Boyd's camp in the woods where he has gathered his followers and goes to harass Boyd. He ends up giving the blessing for the meal the group is about to eat. I hit the rewind button on the Tivo a few times on this one:

"Dear Lord, before we eat this meal we ask forgiveness for our sins, especially Boyd, who blew up a black church with a rocket launcher, and afterwards he shot his associate Jared Hale in the back of the head out on Tate's Creek bridge. Let the image of Jared's brain matter on that windshield not dampen our appetites, but may the knowledge of Boyd's past sins help guide these men. May this food provide them with all the nourishment they need. But, if it does not, may they find comfort in knowing that the United States Marshal Service is offering fifty-thousand dollars to any individual providing information that will put Boyd back in prison. Cash or check, we can make it out to them. Or to Jesus. Whoever they want. In your name, we pray. Amen."