“We dug coal together.”-Boyd Crowder

(SPOILERS involved)

A classic Elmore Leonard character was a good man with a violent heart. A man on the right side of the law who had the ability to do bad things and feel like his actions were justified in the end. One of the many reasons the FX show Justified, inspired by Leonard’s stories, which wrapped up its series finale on Tuesday, was able to be so good for so long was because it honored Leonard’s original vision for the character of Raylan Givens and never gave into network television norms or turned him into a retread of stereotype.

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