Like a lot of folks, being indoors more often due to the coronavirus sometimes leads one to rewatch TV shows to try and fill the hours. Instead of, you know, writing a novel or anything. *sweats nervously* So a couple weeks ago, I decided that I had a hankering for what used to be one of my favorite shows of all time, FX’s Justified (2010), starring the delicious Timothy Olyphant as the unforgettable US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.

Upon revisiting the show, and keep in mind, I hadn’t seen it since its disastrous final season in 2015 (which I in no way acknowledge except to tell you it doesn’t exist in my mind), I realized a whole bunch of very interesting things that I hadn’t noticed when the show was still premiering on TV. One of the biggest things I realized was that Justified is one of the only shows portraying Southern white men in such a way that it’s not buying into the very popular “oh, you poor Southern white man, your life is so hard, no one understands you but I do” that a lot of fiction has fallen prey to before. You would think that a show centered around conservative Southern white men would have lots and lots of problematic material, but in a fascinating twist, Justified doesn’t pander to that mentality. It’s shockingly amazing to be knee-deep in it, but yet it’s very clearly shown that the writers’ room does not sympathize with this demographic and in its own way, that’s pretty damn progressive.

ICYMI, Justified is about US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), who is the literal definition of a cowboy cop, all the way down to the snakeskin boots and an honest to God famous off-white cowboy hat. Raylan’s reckless ways reach a zenith when he confronts a mobster in Miami, whom he gave 24-hours to leave town or he would shoot him on sight. The mobster, Tommy Bucks, scoffs and doesn’t believe him when Raylan sits down at his table at a popular restaurant and tells him to either leave or die in his chair. The mobster pulls a gun on him and Raylan shoots him dead in front of everyone. Naturally, the shooting was justified (“Roll credits!”), but it lands him in so much trouble that his superior reassigns him to Kentucky, which is where Raylan is from. Raylan begrudgingly returns to Lexington, and subsequently, Harlan county, and continues kicking up an unholy amount of dust.

To give you the skinny, Justified only has three kinds of characters: lawmen, criminals, and victims. While this is a bit limiting, the show does an excellent job characterizing all three of these kinds of people over the course of the show. I bring it up because basically, any person who is not either a lawman or a victim in Harlan county is portrayed as a huge, steaming pile of racist crap.

But here’s where things get interesting.

For example, one thing that I never noticed when I used to watch this show is that every criminal we visit has a big fat honkin’ Confederate flag on the wall of his home or place of business. And I do mean every single one of them. There may be some blessed individual on the Internet who counted them up, but I kid you not, you see that wretched flag in every last episode of Justified. Therefore, you’d think that the show would pause to have one of those really frustrating conversations with conservative white Southerners that you see all the time, where the Southerner who owns the Confederate flag proceeds to explain why the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and it’s not racist to own it and it’s just them being proud of their heritage. (My sympathies to those of you, like me, who have sat through this explanation.)

Well, guess what? There is no such conversation throughout the entire six seasons of the show.

Now that gets you curious, doesn’t it? Why would a show that features the Confederate flag in every single episode not have a discourse about it?

Because the show does not mince words about how it feels about these racist pricks.

Justified makes no bones about the fact that these are nasty, uneducated, pea-brained simpletons. What’s more is that it doesn’t just take shots at trailer trash, either. It comes after the Southern elite racists as well. There’s an episode that I still think deserves so much credit for one of the best takedowns of the Neo Nazi movement that I’ve ever seen. Raylan and his boss Art Mullen are working on seizing the assets of a rich criminal who collects Hitler’s paintings, and they run into a man who is interested in buying them, but it turns out that they are fakes. Raylan and Art are immediately disgusted by both of these men, but the buyer insists that after he helps them cooperate in solving the case that Raylan come to see his collection of Hitler paintings. Well, cue the twist. The buyer’s father turned out to be part of the Nazi party, going so far as to doing some of Hitler’s dirty work directly at times. The buyer has spent his entire life accumulating wealth so that he can buy Hitler’s hard-to-find paintings one by one…and burn them. He has jars and jars of ashes in his office of Hitler’s paintings and he intends to find them all wherever they are and burn every single one until they’re all off the face of the Earth.

I mean, wow. That’s fantastic writing, if you ask me.

Now think about this for a second. Who is the key demographic for a show like Justified? Typically, it’s people who like westerns, right? Whether it’s spaghetti westerns or modern westerns, that’s generally who you assume would be watching a show like Justified, and yet this show is very anti-Confederacy and it makes it quite clear it has zero patience for anyone sympathizing with racists. For instance, in that same episode, the wife of the mobster whose assets are being seized is quite pretty and blonde—which is sadly one of Raylan’s weaknesses—and she and Raylan are talking for a while, pleasantly, maybe even flirting a little. Then the wife makes an anti-Semitic comment. Raylan is instantly turned off and abruptly leaves her company, and he makes it so clear to her that she even comments on it, whining that she thought he was “a good ole boy.”

Consider how much that flies in the face of who you’d think would like this show, and the balls it takes to make it so apparent. Most of the famous westerns of the bygone eras do not have very nice things to say about people of color due to the time period when they were made. Often, they portray the South as brave rebels who didn’t like to be told what to do by the North. It would be very easy for the writers of Justified to make Raylan a good ole boy, as the racist wife said, and yet he is shown to be staunchly against even the slightest hint of racist behavior by the criminals he apprehends or anyone in his presence.

In particular, US Deputy Marshal Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel), is a young, gorgeous black woman and easily the most competent member of the marshal service in their office. She’s often at Raylan’s side apprehending criminals in Harlan county, which puts her in the middle of the usual racist bullshit. She even asks Raylan to come along during an assignment to help smooth things over because the moment the residents of Harlan county find out she’s a marshal, she’s a “black bitch.” The show does a good job with showing that Rachel knows how to handle herself—and boy, does she prove it on a few occasions—but that it’s tiresome for her to come up against that kind of a wall doing her job. Raylan agrees to help with no qualms at all because he understands how tedious and painful it is for her to put up with that while she’s working. It’s a great angle of solidarity that Raylan is using his handsome looks and white Southern charm to reduce the amount of harassment aimed in her direction. There’s also a more subtle thing I enjoyed, which is if anyone does say something racist to Rachel, Raylan is entirely intolerant of it and often tries to make sure they get their comeuppance if they’re stupid enough to mess with her. It’s a great understanding of how he chooses to be an ally to her, when he very well could hang her out to dry. They build a significant amount of trust and even a bit of affection for each other over the course of the show. Rachel also isn’t afraid to call him out on his shit and occasionally smacks some sense into him when he’s being ridiculous, which he often is. Rachel does end up being underused overall, but when we do see her, it’s made clear that she is by far the smartest, most likable woman on the show, and I think that is also pretty interesting all things considered.

The other rather excellent commentary on the white supremacists is none other than the infamous Boyd Crowder. Boyd Crowder is the series-long arch nemesis and frenemy of Raylan Givens. The two dug coal together as teenagers and have had a very hateful but friendly relationship with Raylan being on the side of the law, always trying to nail Crowder for his infinite list of crimes, and Crowder doing his absolute best to thwart Raylan’s attempts to land him in jail for good.

To be honest, if anyone made a list of the best written villains in the last 20 years, I’d happily throw Boyd Crowder on it. What’s great about Boyd Crowder as a villain is his progression from a loud, greedy Neo Nazi psycho into an insanely smart crime boss for Harlan county. Boyd starts out as one of those utterly perplexing Neo Nazis who uses Bible verses to insist the Bible wants the Jews dead and that people of color are all animals and the white man is supposed to rule them all. In truth, it’s just a smoke screen. Boyd is aware of the fact that the white supremacists LOVE to use the Bible as an excuse to be horrible pieces of shit, so they happily do his bidding because he parrots the things they want to hear. However, Boyd has a brush with death, finds religion again, but then loses his faith and decides to simply embrace his evil and crawl his way on top of the rogues gallery of Harlan county.

Boyd Crowder is certainly a cool villain, but while the show takes the time to flesh him out as a character, it never glorifies him or his lifestyle. Boyd is the perfect foil for Raylan, as he is a selfish, heartless bastard who will use anyone and anything to get what he wants. The show certainly shows off his skills and Walt Goggins utterly slays the performance itself, but at no point is there a Tyler Durden problem. For those who are unfamiliar, a lot of stupid men walked away from Fight Club completely missing the point, which is that while it’s not great to be controlled by society and suppress your Id, it’s also an incredibly stupid and reckless idea to give into your Id completely and let it control you. If you ever meet a guy who idolizes Tyler Durden, run in the opposite direction until you’re safely elsewhere.

Boyd is a monster. He’s a cool monster, but a monster nonetheless. Justified does not ever try to turn him into a Woobie or insist that you should like him as a person or want to be anything like him over the course of the show. One of my favorite moments is in the first season where Boyd tries to use an ambiguous Bible verse to insist that it’s about the Jews being “mud-people” and Raylan just stares at him like he’s an idiot and calmly tells him he’s just using the Bible to justify doing whatever the hell he wants regardless of what it means, which is a callout of epic proportions. My other favorite moment is that when confronted with someone who insists that times were best when Boyd used to run his Nazi “commandos” out of the church, Boyd confesses that he’s never even met a single Jew and was just regurgitating things his racist father and the people around him had instilled in him in order to get approval and procure the things he wanted. I mean, wow. Seldom do you see someone self-aware enough to admit they’re hating an unseen “enemy” just to fit in and get people to do what he wanted them to do.

In the end, what I’m getting to is the fact that Justified had some of the most unconventional writing in regards to white Southern culture. It actively called these people out on their shit and didn’t attempt to sympathize with them just so it could get better ratings or have appeal to that demographic. Most of the time you will see shows like Atlanta breaking down the fallacy of the Southern Confederate sympathizer, yet here, a show that knew its key demographic would likely be white men, they went for the jugular. I have to say that while Justified had a lot of problems before it ended, this was one of the best aspects of the show that I noted during the rewatch and I think it’s pretty commendable that the writing team decided to go against the urge to pander. To be honest, it’s one of the reasons that I like FX in general. They are very willing to go out on a limb and try something different or risky in the pursuit of a great story.

If you’re ever in the mood for cowboy shenanigans, I can give my highest recommendations for the first three seasons of Justified. Sadly, it begins to steadily decline in seasons four and five, and I personally tell people not to watch the final season unless they want to hate the show and the writers. I wish it ended better, but I believe it deserves credit where credit is due. In this day and age, there are a lot of writers rooms not willing to confront the unhealthy aspects of white Southern culture, and as a black woman who grew up in Georgia, I have to say that Justified’s writing in this regard was a breath of fresh air.