Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Justified: City Primeval Episode 1, “City Primeval” (written by Dave Andron & Michael Dinner and directed by Michael Dinner), but not the book by Elmore Leonard.
Editor’s Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The promotional materials for Justified: City Primeval say the show is set 15 years after Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) left Kentucky, and they also say that his daughter Willa (Vivian Olyphant) is 15 years old. So that makes this 15 years after the main events of Justified, but 11 years after the epilogue of the series finale. You’ll recall we saw Raylan and Willa eating ice cream together. He and Winona (Natalie Zea) were no longer a couple, but they were friendly.
That basic setup seems to hold as the new series gets going. Raylan is taking Willa to a camp she doesn’t want to go to because she punched a girl in the face (it was justified) when they get rammed by a couple of guys who try to steal Raylan’s car. He, of course, turns the tables on them rather quickly, though unfortunately it means he and Willa don’t get to the camp on time.
It turns out that one of those men, Tyrone (Jalen Gilbert), is a fugitive, so Raylan does his duty as a marshal and takes him in. As this story moves to a courtroom in Detroit, we learn that he didn’t exactly do this directly, and since he also threatened to put Tyrone in the trunk of his car on an extremely hot Florida day, the charges related to their whole altercation get thrown out.
One can’t help but wonder whether there is also some shady business that leads to this, however, as “City Primeval” pretty strongly indicates that there is. Tyrone’s attorney, Carolyn Wilder (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) visits Sweety (Vondie Curtis-Hall) at his bar, and he gives her some money while referencing the case. And Judge Alvin Guy (Keith David) was under investigation, presumably for corruption.
I say “was” because he’s dead by the end of Episode 1, but not for the reasons the cops think. Earlier in the hour, he escaped unscathed when someone blew up his car, and it’s a funny note about the time we live in that this was because he started it by pushing a button on his phone while he was still at a distance.
Regardless, this constitutes the case of the week, which sees Raylan—along with Maureen (Marin Ireland), Norbert (Norbert Leo Butz), and others in local law enforcement—investigating the threat on the judge’s life. I can’t help but think of a similar storyline in the original series involving Judge Mike Reardon (Stephen Root), but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.
It turns out Judge Guy is being targeted by a guy named Barry Tenderbock (Ian Bratschie) because the judge banged his mom (who loved every minute of it, she’ll have you know). Ms. Tenderbock (Jeanette O’Connor) calls the authorities and they manage to bring Barry in. But not before Norbert kicks a door into his face and knocks him down the stairs, which Raylan views as an unnecessary use of force, because clearly it is.
This is one of two times in the episode when Norbert makes reference to Raylan of “how they do things in Detroit,” and as someone who was born (if not raised) in the area, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that this man who is presumably supposed to be from Detroit says its name like someone who isn’t.
I think there is about a 99% chance this is something we should just ignore and a 1% chance that it’s a small clue worth picking up on. Just to be clear, I’m mentioning it for that 1% chance and not just to gripe about it. Either way, Norbert seems keen to posit the notion that policing Detroit requires a certain viciousness, and that sets up what’s sure to be a running tension between him and Raylan, who we know prefers a softer touch.
The other main storyline in Episode 1 sets the table for the long, hard times to come. Clement (Boyd Holbrook) returns to the city, flippantly steals a car he summarily ditches, and meets up with Sandy (Adelaide Clemens) at the casino where she works. They get it on rather immediately (which was just a little jarring for me as someone who primarily knows Adelaide Clemens from Rectify, but I don’t expect this to be a widespread issue). Clement vents about some guy he was robbing who wanted to use Venmo, and they make plans to rob an Albanian guy because foreigners don’t trust banks. I’m not entirely sure if that line is bigoted or not, but I suppose it’s on the line at least.
They visit Sweety’s bar, so there’s a certain convergence of plotlines, though it’s not entirely clear what the past relationship is between Clement and Sweety. They seem to be there to buy Sandy weed (which Sweety points out is legal at this point), but one suspects that the real reason Clement wanted to go there was to retrieve the gun he’d hidden in the bathroom ceiling some time ago.
Sandy meets up with their mark at the casino, and they leave together in a sports car, with Clement to follow. But Judge Guy’s car gets in between them as they’re leaving the parking garage and holds Clement up. Then the attendant is distracted on the phone and holds him up more, so he busts through the gate, and one gets the sense that from his frustration Clement has just started to go wild.
The car he’s trailing makes a quick turn, but instead of doing his best to relocate it, Clement rams the judge’s car. It’s not a rational decision. He’s apparently acting out of his increasing frustration. That he goes so far as to basically hunt Guy and shoot him a bunch of times is nonetheless surprising. It’s clear that he doesn’t know who this man is, or at least that becomes clear as he talks to Rose (Rae Gray) in the wake of murdering him.
Clement finds a notebook in Guy’s pocket and wants Rose to direct him to the man’s home, but she takes the opportunity at a red light to jump out of the car and run. So he shoots her in the back and then the head without it being made clear exactly what is in that notebook. One imagines it relates to Maureen’s later comment that Rose was a CI—or, rather, what they were hoping to find out by making her a CI.
So, Raylan doesn’t get to leave Detroit after all. He wanted to have a fun little road trip with his daughter (that definitely did not go through Harlan County), but now he’s stuck in Michigan because the man he was supposed to protect, and thought he did protect, has ended up dead.
As “City Primeval” comes to a close, Raylan and the rest of the task force that had been assigned to the judge’s case wonder what they missed. We know, however, that they didn’t miss anything. This was totally unrelated to the events that transpired earlier in the episode, and was done by a man who isn’t even on their radar at this point.
The chaos of that setup makes Episode 1 of Justified: City Primeval feel more like Justified than anything else.
