A realistic Appalachian TV portrayal

Normally I don't use my column to endorse a movie or television program. I don't consider myself a great critic of someone else's work. But on a rare occasion something comes along that I simply cannot resist.

Tonight is the start of the winter television season, or at least some of it. Tonight, the third season of the series "Justified" starts. That's the good news. The bad news is this column won't appear before Saturday. But, there is more good news. The program appears on the cable channel FX and cable channels, unlike regular big-time networks, will often show their programs two or three times a week, so you may still catch it.

The show is set in eastern Kentucky coal country. This area has long been known for coal mining (a rough way to make a living), moonshinin’ (an even rougher way) and the rough-and-tumble folks who settled and still live there. I think the aspect I like absolutely the best is that they talk like the rest of us here in the southern Appalachians. They dress like us, look like us and act like us. As my friends Jimmy Frye, Sandy Snodgrass and I all agree, they talk like us. You could walk right into the middle of one of their scenes and feel pretty much at home.

A few years back, during the time I worked for People Inc., we operated a number of programs over in Buchanan and Dickinson counties, which border on that region. After only a week or two of watching the show’s first season, I told Terry and my family and friends how realistic much of it was. A lot of the script is set in poverty-stricken areas there. The good thing is though that they do not ridicule these people. They just show them as the hard-working poor folks they are. They don't necessarily make them look stupid, they just make them out to be the rough-and-tumble bunch that many of them (and the good folks in our area as well) are in reality. The type people who if they like you, you won't find a better more loyal friend. And if they don't like you, they would just as soon kick your butt as look at you.

Another great thing is they don't portray them all to be like Jethro in the Beverly Hillbillies. No, not everyone there has a degree in business and works for a Fortune 500 company, but they are not ignorant and some of them actually know how to use a computer. Most of them live in what would be an average home in this area too. Sure there are a few living in rough shacks with dirt floors but not all that many. No more than seen occasionally here in southwestern Virginia.

They do have their problems. For example, while moonshine is still a big business, so is the cultivation of marijuana. There are even a few rougher elements involved in making meth and other bad stuff. But there are a lot of good, honest hardworking people who work a mining or factory job all day, then come home and do a day's work on the family farm. Yes, some of them even help their kids do their homework, hoping the kids will make a better life for themselves than mom and dad accomplished.

The two primary characters, Raylan Givens, a native son, and Deputy U.S. Marshall (portrayed by Timothy Olyphant) and Boyd Crowder (portrayed by Walt Goggins), a main figure in the local crime-based family business, were high-school buddies, played football together and served in the military together. One of my favorite scenes was when Boyd got up in a small church and sang and preached. He would have fit right in at many a small local church right here in southwestern Virginia.

Olyphant was born in Hawaii and raised in California but is of Scottish descent and, after all, it was the Scots-Irish who settled the southern Appalachians. And Goggins is a product of Birmingham, Ala., so he fits right into the character of coming from a working-class Southern family.

As I have said, I like the program for its realism. People are as they truly are. There are good and bad. There are educated and illiterate. There are hard workers and there are low-lifes and criminals. Look around folks, it is as life in the rougher sections of the southern Appalachians is. Read your newspapers. There are stories of heroes and folks with great achievements. There are stories of meth-labs, child abusers and wife beaters. But most of us are average folks and the people who developed “Justified” actually tried to portray the whole gamut of life as it is here. Of course, they concentrate on the criminal enterprise to make it exciting and interesting. But they also, far more than any other TV program I have ever seen, portray us as we are, including the good, the bad and the downright ugly. 

So there you have it folks. If you like a good, rough and tumble, shoot'em up, with good-guys and bad-guys and it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between the ranks, this show may be for you. If you like a show where they sound, act and look like you and your friends, where there are lots of good folks and a few of the rowdier, rougher, less shall we say honest crowd mixed in with the rest, then Justified is your show. To me it shows our southern Appalachians realistically, both good and bad. Sure they take a bit of license, maybe a little rougher than reality, but not really by much.

Besides, as J.W. (Jim Frye), Sid (Sandy Snodgrass) and I agree, we like these people. They talk like us. We don't need a dictionary or an interpreter to understand them. In a way, they are us and we are them. Catch it some night. I think you will be glad you did.

A freelance journalist, Robert “Rocky” Cahill writes regularly for the News & Messenger. His Possum Philosophy column appears in each Saturday edition.