Justified rewatch: 1x01 Fire in the Hole

[gwyn]

Okay, let's kick this off! Justified rewatch starting with that amazing pilot episode. I'll have a master post up with links as soon as we get more than one episode down, but in the meantime you can find out how to see the series if you want to join in by clicking the justified my love tag.

1.1 Fire in the Hole
Original air date: March 16, 2010
Written by Graham Yost
Directed by Michael Dinner



After the "justified" shooting of a Miami gangster, Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens is reassigned to his home state of Kentucky, where he takes on a case involving an old acquaintance he once mined coal with, who has become a white supremacist and blown up an African American church.

Please share your thoughts and reactions in comments.

Comments

[hafital]

So much fun to come back to this show! What a treat to watch Timothy Olyphant's very distinctive walk haha <3

The first ten minutes have to be one of my favorites for an opening on any tv show i've ever watched. What a power move. You pretty much know everything you need to know about Raylan -- he will kill you. Right off the bat you know what kind of man he is and what kind of show you're getting yourself into. I love that.

Raylan's introduction is juxtaposed against Boyd Crowder's intro, which effectively does the same thing. In less than a minute Boyd is out of that jeep, hoisting a bazooka onto his shoulder and taking out a church. I know they didn't intend for Boyd Crowder to survive the episode so kudos to the writers and creatives who caught on what a powerhouse they had in both the actor and the character. I'm going to enjoy the crazy-ass journey Boyd takes on this show.

Whether they intended it to or not this first episode sets up the seasons long ying yang rivalry between Raylan and Boyd. Boyd is a good foil for Raylan.

In general, giving us a sense of who these characters are within one minute of their screen time is something this episode does very well, not only with Raylon and Boyd, but with the whole with the entire cast of the characters. Tim Gutterson might be the hardest to know -- though we get a good sense of who he is when he asks Art if he wants him to wing the bad guy or kill him.

Raylan saying "It was justified," which I think he said at least a couple times in the episode, also gives us the theme of this show pretty succinctly.

I love Raylan, but I have pretty big heart eyes for Art, Rachel and Tim (especially Tim, okay! I love him) and I pretty much rotate between them all with how much I love them lol.

[gwyn]

That first scene is just so incredibly evocative--they really did such a fantastic job of bringing Leonard's settings to life. And it does do such an excellent job of telilng us who Raylan is--and that you absolutely do not fuck with him. It makes the failure he describes at the end about what Bucks did to him in Nicaragua all the more poignant.

I am SO glad that someone had the sense to realize what they had with Boyd Crowder and Walton Goggins. The show would not have been the same without that yin & yang, you're right.