Justified: City Primeval (2023) Can't Quite Fit the Old-School Marshal in 21st-Century Detroit

Although Justified: City Primeval received modest critical praise this past summer, audiences have reacted much less favourably. For example, the show currently holds a 91% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the Audience Score is “Rotten” at 45%. Normally, I don’t like to frame my reviews as a reaction to either the Tomatometer or audience reactions online, but in this case, the divide between critics and audiences as well as the complaints from both highlight important aspects of Justified: City Primeval that are worth exploring.

I noticed that many viewers point to a new character that irks them as the reason why the follow-up limited series to the great neo-Western Justified (2010–2015) just doesn’t satisfy. Justified: City Primeval brings the protagonist of the earlier series, US Marshal Raylan Givens (played with smooth swagger once again by Timothy Olyphant), from Harlan County, Kentucky to Detroit. The marshal brings with him, for the first few episodes, his rebellious teenage daughter, Willa (played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter, Vivian Olyphant). In Detroit, Raylan crosses paths with a complicated and compromised defense attorney, Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Lastly, the show introduces a new loose cannon villain, Boyd Holbrook’s Clement Mansell. 

I admit that Willa is annoying. I agree that Raylan and Carolyn’s romance plot is flat and unconvincing. And I also think that Clement Mansell can be incredibly irritating. But none of these characters mars the whole series.

Audiences too often conflate their irritation with a character’s personality with dislike for the character as an artistic construction. Willa is supposed to be annoying, as many teenagers are, especially to their parents. This aspect of Willa’s personality is built into the plots of her episodes. Likewise, Mansell is supposed to be provocative, unhinged, in-your-face, infuriating. Seeing him time and again in the penthouse apartment he has commandeered in a kimono and tighty-whities is supposed to irk us, just as he annoys all the characters around him, including his lawyer, Carolyn, and his girlfriend/accomplice, Sandy (Adelaide Clemens). How Mansell gets under the skin of Raylan in particular is key to their dynamic.

Although I’m lukewarm on Willa and Carolyn, I actually think that Boyd Holbrook’s Clement Mansell is one of the strengths of the series. The original Justified had Walton Goggins’ show-stealing Boyd Crowder, but it also had other solid villains each season. Nevertheless, I would rank Mansell highly in the overall ranking of villains opposite Olyphant’s Raylan Givens. I enjoy the unhinged, chaotic quality of the character, who alternates in a matter of seconds between goofy and deadly. The scenes between Olyphant and Holbrook easily generate the most on-screen chemistry in the series. This last point is significant, because the rest of the show suffers from Raylan’s awkward fit in City Primeval.

While Graham Yost developed Justified, Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, who both worked on the earlier show, helmed City Primeval. While it was conceived as the sequel to Justified, telling us what happens to Raylan after he leaves Harlan County for Florida and how he becomes entangled in Detroit, it’s worth remembering that Elmore Leonard’s 1980 novel, City Primeval, does not feature the US marshal. It does have “Oklahoma Wildman” Clement Mansell, the homicide detective, Raymond Cruz (who, for two episodes of the show, is played by Paul Calderón, reprising his role from the 1998 movie Out of Sight), as well as Mansell’s involvement with Albanian criminals.

The tagline for Leonard’s novel is “High Noon in Detroit.” It would seem that Andron and Dinner thought Olyphant’s Raylan Givens could so easily fit into the novel’s urban-Western premise. Unfortunately, Andron and Dinner also felt the need to shoehorn in too many other interests and tangents, which take us aways from the central dynamic between Mansell and Raylan.

Carolyn, the lawyer, points to this central issue with the show. In Justified, it’s not uncommon for Raylan to become romantically involved with a female character all of a sudden. In this case, there just isn’t much chemistry between the performances, nor much understandable interest between the characters. I guess one could say at least they are of equal age, or that it shows Raylan is, somewhat, growing up. But I for one never believe the level of seriousness the show tries to give their relationship. 

Carolyn is also set up to be the main audience connection point to the complicated nature of Detroit in 2023. She’s a middle-aged black woman deeply involved in Detroit’s African American community, especially by defending clients against what she considers to be a corrupt and overbearing justice system. The series explores her relationship with a shady bar owner, Sweetie (Vondie Curtis-Hall), who is something of a father figure to her, but who also becomes a partner in crime with Mansell. She is troubled by what she sees as the discordance between righting wrongs and following the rules of the system. In particular, she debates how to use the little black book, which is the private shakedown record of a judge (Keith David) who is killed in the first episode. In some ways, Carolyn is placed too centrally in the storyline, for as a partner/love interest for Raylan, the show never convincingly constructs their interactions.

Lack of chemistry could be applied more broadly to the series as a whole. Justified: City Primeval never generates a very interesting reaction between the character we know and love, Raylan, and his new environs, Detroit. The fish-out-of-water approach is only used a little in the first episode, and then basically discarded. Raylan will do what Raylan will do, but it raises the question of why create a show that sets the character in Detroit. What is the combination of modern-day Old West-style lawman and Detroit, a city known for its urban decay, meant to say? A tough cop (Norbert Leo Butz from Bloodline), one of the best new supporting character additions, makes some comments about this being “Detroit,” but other than bringing in the standard cop corruption and American racial dynamics we have seen in countless movies and TV shows, it is not clear what the focus on Detroit is meant to reveal. In the end, I don’t buy the show’s justification for putting Raylan in this setting.

A few political comments that seem awkward in the mouths of the characters speaking them sit oddly alongside the more familiar questions of vengeance, vigilantism, and the law-versus-justice that are central to Justified. It is true that the original show was concerned with the societal ills of Kentucky, but its approach never seemed so awkward and inorganic. Boyd Crowder starting off as a white supremacist in the first episode was of a piece with the world of the show rather than a political statement directed at the audience. It’s a shame, as you could have actually explored the compatibility of Raylan’s brand of justice with current progressive sensibilities and social justice reform. Is a lawman like Raylan acceptable after the summer of George Floyd? The defence attorney, Carolyn, seems to represent this angle at first. I thought the first episode of City Primeval was doing just that when it had Raylan’s harsh treatment of some carjackers held against him in court. But the show never truly explores the dichotomies of competing American value systems.

The show is enjoyable, nevertheless, for seeing Raylan return, and I particularly found Boyd Holbrook a hoot. But when any property is revived, we have to ask if it has a compelling reason, and this one really does not. Back in 2015, Aren acclaimed the “artistic modesty” and “laid back style” of the original show. Perhaps Justified: City Primeval demonstrates that, in 2023, we cannot have a cop show as fast and loose as the original. Even the remarkable last 10 minutes, which tease a possible second season with the return of a familiar face, is not enough to make me want to alter that brilliant ending of Justified. There is nothing here that speaks as clearly or deeply as that line Raylan speaks at the close of that series: “We dug coal together.”

Justified: City Primeval (2023, USA)

Developed by Dave Andron and Michael Dinner; starring Timothy Olyphant, Boyd Holbrook, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Vivian Olyphant, Adelaide Clemens, Norbert Leo Butz, Victor Williams, Marin Ireland, and Keith David.

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