Have you caught the first episodes of Justified Tuesdays on FX? I'm pleased so far with the tone and it's showing potential to be a solid series. The question is, where does it go when it reaches the end of the source material?
It's based on the short story Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard, which is in the collection When the Women Come Out to Dance , (which also includes the story Karen Makes Out - the basis for the short lived show Karen Sisco) and features his character Raylan Givens who has appeared in the novels Pronto and Riding the Rap as well. I'm pretty sure Justified won't be headed into the plots of those novels, and I'd hope that it's going to be heavy on the serialization instead of mostly episodic formatting, but I think about what creator Graham Yost pitched to the execs as to where the show would head after the Fire.
Spenser For Hire of course made the late Robert B. Parker's iconic Boston PI the basis for three seasons worth of episodic capers. On the other hand Dexter based on Jeff Lindsay's novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter left the books behind after pretty faithfully adapting the first over the course of a season. Now we have two Dexter series, one in print and one on television. Kinda like, (but not quite as separate as) the Jason Bourne of Robert Ludlum's trilogy and that of the post cold war films. I enjoy both incarnations, but c'mon they ain't near the same beast. I suppose you could make the case there are three different incarnations if you include Eric Van Lustbader's series.
So, yeah, back to Justified... Where they going? I'd hate to see Givens grow stale or un-Leonard-esque by straying too far from the source, but I'd also love to see him take on new dimensions. I'm curious, what do you Elmore Leonard fans think? How much reign you wanna give Yost and compay? Are you a fan of Justified so far?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
