'Justified' Season One Episode One 'Fire in the Hole'

'Justified' Season 1 Episode 1 'Fire in the Hole' is based in a series of stories by Elmore Leonard, creator of such memorable characters as Chili Palmer and Karen Sisco, about a Deputy US Marshal named Raylan Givens.

Spoilers surely follow.

Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant, is a man with a positively 19^th Century demeanor and view on life. He is unfailingly calm and polite but will occasionally bend the letter of the law by maneuvering a felon into drawing his weapon first, thus allowing Raylan to shoot said felon dead in a 'justified' killing.

Raylan does this in Miami to a vicious gun thug who once murdered a man by shoving a stick of dynamite into his mouth and lighting it. The powers that be cannot let this little maneuver go, so they reassign Raylan to his old home back in Kentucky, a place he was at pains to escape from and is not anxious to return to.

Raylan reports to work with an old friend, Chief Deputy Marshal Art Mullen. It seems that another old friend of Raylans, Boyd Crowder , is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. Boyd, played by Wayne Groggins of The Shield, is ostensibly a white racist Nazi leader, but actually combines domestic terrorism with organized crime. He uses a rocket launcher to destroy an African American church. By coincidence one of the dogmas of that church is the use of cannabis as a holy herb, which annoyed one of the local drug gangs which hired Boyd to send a message.

Boyd, by the way, is not above shooting someone in the head whom he thinks is a spy. But, as it turns out, his victim was really just stupid.

There are a couple of women, of course. One is yet another old friend of Raylan's, Winona, who is now a court reporter. But the more interesting lady is Ava, who arranges to divorce her abusive husband through the use of a deer rifle. Her subsequent troubles with the law will be the least of her worries; the prosecutor is willing to have her plead down to a manslaughter charge and there will be no prison.

No, Ava's husband was Boyd's brother. At first it seems that Boyd wants to have Ava killed. But then Boyd seems to think that the Bible dictates that he care for his brother's widow. In the Old Testament this would mean sleeping with her to get a child to carry on his brother's name, something one suspects Ava would not be thrilled about.

Boyd expresses some strange ideas about Jews and the Bible and "mud people." This doesn't fool Raylan one bit. Boyd just likes making money and blowing stuff up. It is also revealed that Raylan has some issues with his father.

The episode ends with Raylan shooting Boyd, but not to death as is his usual practice. Boyd has apparently saved Raylan's life when they were both teenage coal miners. Raylan's 19^th Century code of honor dictates that he should not kill his old friend, no matter how "justified" it might be.

Source: Justified, Fire in the Hole, TV.Com