Review: The justification for Justified is the greater moral clarity in a rural place

The new FX show Justified plays "fast and loose with some facts" regarding Kentucky geography and Appalachian language and culture (image from show's Web site misplaces Bluegrass horse farms in Harlan County), but "We shouldn’t get too hung up about fictional geographies, and Justified’s rural landscape—however fictional—and brand of moral clarity fills a cultural niche right now," reviewer J.J. Snidow writes for the new Rural Representations and Reviews page of The Rural Blog.

"Ours in an America that has recently loved shows like The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Lost, in which morality (and in one, reality itself) is ambiguous, where villains and heroes alike wear hats not of black and white but of gray," Snidow writes. "And in that kind of America that has no rivals, has no other superpowers against which to fight and in which every semi-urban town looks and feels and acts pretty much like every other semi-urban town, well, perhaps in that kind of America we need a place like Justified’s Harlan County, where urban complexities and ambiguities are stripped away, where the simple morality of the rural landscape rules, and where you know the bad guys by the color of their hats." (Read more)