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TV Guide [follow link for complete column]
TV GUIDE: Tuesday Playlist: The Return of Justified and Cougar Town, Jimmy Kimmel's Move, More
Jan 8, 2013
by
Matt Roush
A week's worth of notable TV has been crammed into one very busy night. Let's take it from the top.
Which means, for me, the return of FX's most satisfying drama,
Justified (10/9c), for a fourth season of wryly amusing but often shockingly brutal backwoods mayhem. Too cool to trumpet its greatness, this low-key winner, which channels the style and wit of the great
Elmore Leonard, quickly reminds us what a bad idea it is to taunt U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (
Timothy Olyphant) with "
Mine's bigger than yours." (They're talking guns, and Raylan is in no mood to mess around, given that his moonlighting gig to snare a reward from a bounty hunter is strictly forbidden by the home office.)
"
Your days are more interesting than most," Raylan's bartending squeeze tells him toward the end of next week's episode. And so far, that's true enough, as our hero puzzles the significance of a long-buried secret that implicates his jailbird dad Arlo (
Raymond J. Barry), who not so long ago shot a trooper he thought was his own son. (Said secret seems to have something to do with the hapless skydiver who went splat on a suburban street 30 years ago, the season's opening scene.) Meanwhile, a newly arrived snake-handling revival preacher (
Joe Mazzello, once upon a time the kid from
Jurassic Park, who matriculated through HBO's
The Pacific) is rattling Harlan County's criminal underworld, most notably Boyd Crowder (
Walton Goggins), who's none too pleased to be told, "
People gettin' off drugs, gettin' hooked on Jesus." I have faith this intrigue is heading somewhere good...
CLICK HERE TO VIEW A VIDEO PROMO FOR JUSTIFIED'S SEASON FOUR
