- Title: Justified: City Primeval – City Primeval
- IMDb: link
Eight years after the series finale of Justified, Timothy Olyphant returns as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens who left Kentucky for the swampy backwaters of Florida raising his daughter Willa (Vivian Olyphant). Set fifteen years after the end of the original series, Givens may have changed locations but his straight-shooting abrasive personality remains intact (something he’s passed on to his daughter). However, events of the series won’t focus either on Florida or Kentucky but instead Detroit where Givens finds himself temporarily reassigned after a series of comic misadventures attempting to deliver his daughter to camp which are brought up in court by defense attorney Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis).
Tasked with working with local law enforcement to help find the person responsible for the death threats against a local judge (Keith David), Givens does his job. However, the judge is killed by the story’s other, unrelated, plotline involving the volatile Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook) planning to rob a mark with the help of his girlfriend (Adelaide Clemens) which is unintentionally thwarted by the judge being in the wrong place at the wrong time earning the ire of the sociopathic Mansell. Events are further complicated by the judge’s dirty past, the death of an informant within his office, and a notebook which falls into Mansell’s possession. It doesn’t look like Givens is headed home anytime soon.
Although the two are never on-screen together in the episode, the first episode of Justified: City Primeval is setting up for the eventual confrontation of Givens and Mansell. Highlights of the first episode include the flashbacks shown during Givens’ testimony in court involving his treatment of the two men who attempted to steal his car, Givens’ interactions with the locals including the judge, the police, and a defense attorney whose role beyond the case which brought them into contact remains still unclear. As for Mansell, he’s certainly crazy and violent enough to be a short-term nemesis for our hero but it’s not yet clear if he has the brains for a lengthier fight.
