Fire in the Hole!

I never thought of that as a phrase I'd find popping into my mind repeatedly, like some commercial ditty you get stuck in your head & can't get rid of. But that was before Jann got me hooked on the FX series "Justified", which - much to my dismay - ended its first season tonight.

I'm pretty sure I've never been captivated so quickly by a t.v. show before, and I can't really tell you why it grabbed me so fast.  It's actually based on a short story by Elmore Leonard called, appropriately enough, "Fire in the Hole."  The show's pretty dark in many respects, but it's also funny, fast-paced, and extremely well-acted . . . and I am in LOVE with it!  Kind of like I'm in love with U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and even begrudgingly with white-supremacist-turned-man-of-the-cloth Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).  They are arch enemies and about as different as can be, yet they have an awful lot in common (most notably their ass-hole fathers), and IMHO the scenes they do together are mesmerizing.

There are plenty of other colorful characters populating the rural Kentucky landscape in this series, but the out-and-out stars of the show are Olyphant & Goggins.  No surprise on the Marshall (although he just keeps getting hotter & hotter each week).  But I doubt anyone suspected early on how compelling a character Boyd would become (for anyone who hasn't seen the show, he just happens to have hollered "Fire In The Hole!" more than once this season and got it stuck firmly in my head.)  I'm certainly no expert on acting, but I absolutely believe that Goggins should win an Emmy for this series.  Actually, there's a whole host of writers and actors who deserve awards for the show, but if Goggins doesn't get one, I think maybe Boyd Crowder should pay a little visit to Hollywood & take his rocket launcher with him!