Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kaleena Rivera | TV | September 1, 2023
(spoilers for the finale of Justified: City Primeval)
Being colleagues and working under the same banner tend to lead people to the assumption that Pajiba staff are regularly in lockstep when it comes to opinions. This couldn’t be further from the truth; if anything, the opposite holds true, as we writers frequently find ourselves in disagreement, to the point of splintering into bickering factions at times (of the light-hearted variety … mostly).
The last time I wrote about City Primeval, I made no bones about the fact that the Justified revival had begun on shaky ground, a status that never improved for me despite a couple of eventual bright spots—chief among them being the decision to take advantage of Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Carolyn’s (Aunjanue Ellis) chemistry by having them hook up. In Dustin’s breakdown of the finale, he’s more generous than I could ever be, especially in regards to the menace that Clement Mansell (Boyd Holbrook) brought to the screen. We often joke that Dustin is wrong, but in this instance, I genuinely mean it (with love, of course).
Holbrook works mightily to make use of a bad script that’s desperate to make Clement a cool tough guy by way of notable men in pop culture: the endless Jack White references (the only characteristic that gets more overused are the shots of Holbrook in tighty-whities), the awkward attempt at invoking the Joker; the repeated references to his mother in the vein of Heath Ledger’s now-iconic “wanna know how I got these scars?” has the same edginess of an officemate who still does the Borat “my wife” in 2023. His randomly aimed menace too often skids to simply being annoying—the scene in episode 4 when he harangues a waitress over an over-cooked steak while dropping a reference to the lesser-known The White Stripes’ song “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” is a prime example. If Clement Mansell gave me the choice between inflicting me with either his gun or his mixtape, I’d take the former every time.
I admit that my bias against the revival is influenced by the fact that I made the decision to rewatch the original Justified at the same time. However, if a film or television show is intended to be directly connected to another, e.g. this sequel series, it’s fair game to directly compare one against the other. City Primeval judged on its own merit would already be considered underwhelming, but watching the likes of Character Actress Margo Martindale as the formidable Mags Bennett and Neal McDonough’s Robert Quarles made this latest entry damn near unwatchable in comparison.
But the only thing worse than being a bad show is being a bad show that undercuts itself further by reminding us of one of the best parts of its predecessor: Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins). In an impressive display of ‘keeping things under wraps,’ Goggins makes a triumphant return as the brilliant antihero whose wonderful gift for oration is out mastered only by his knack for crime. The thrill of seeing him again, despite the extremely obvious escape, is both a blessing and a curse, because while it does entice audience members (the ones who stuck around to the end, at least) to root for a second season, it made everything that came before it look that much more middling.
As curious as I would be about one last jaunt with Raylan and Boyd, I’m more than happy to just fire up the original series, though I can easily imagine myself being outnumbered on this particular point. The initial draw of City: Primeval was the chance to not only see Raylan again but to see him in a fish-out-of-water scenario. But when the biggest highlight of a new limited series is reverting back to its original form, never mind the (largely wasted) efforts of the cast and an ill-constructed storyline that had the potential to be so much more, something has gone horribly awry.
Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba. When she isn’t counting on Dustin being a good enough sport to not fire her over her blatant rebellion, she can be found on Bluesky and Twitter.
