Three reasons to watch FX's new drama, Justified:

Kentucky:
No, you probably wouldn't want to use any of your valuable PTO days, let alone your hard earned cash, to book travel to Kentucky, U.S.A.- unless you love horse racing and/or have a gambling problem with a Depression-era panache. Kentucky is one of those states people tend to forget when attempting to impress their drinking buddies with talents retained from third grade, namely the ability to name all 50 recognized and enfrachised U.S. Territories. Not as terrifying as Alabama, not as memorably devoid of interest as Wyoming...
An exotic locale for a show, nonetheless, given that some people in Kentucky apparently wear cowboy hats for reasons having nothing to do with misguided attempts to look bad-ass. Although I'm not completely convinced this is possible, but I'm from L.A.
Of course, it's not really shot in Kentucky, but what the hell. Points go to any show not set in a coastal urban center.

Timothy Olyphant:
I won't say this guy was born to play a swaggering lawman with a drawal, but he's good at it, as fans of HBO's cuss-happy Deadwood will attest.
Olyphant is 41, almost 42, which just about blows me away. I've decided my inability to comprehend that fact stems from my first exposure to his talents in "Go," where he pedaled an oily mixture of sexy-creepiness in his depiction of a young, albeit uncannily architypal, drug dealer.
In the pilot last week, when the Chief gives a rundown on the bazooka-toting Aryan antagonist (who just happens to be not only a contemporary of our hero, but also "dug coal" with him in the hazy past), he touches on the villian's involvement in Desert Storm, whereupon my caffiene-free Diet Coke shot up through my soft pallate and out my nose. Very uncomfortable. It nearly ruined the show for me, so thoroughly convinced was I that no one, rapidly receding hairline or not, who claimed the same birth year as a character played by Timothy Olyphant, could have been old enough to go to Desert Storm.
In a rapture of righteous indignation, I booted up and hastily checked IMDB...oh, well. Apparently the best of us are occassionally mistaken. I blame Katie Holmes for tricking me into thinking Olyphant was age appropriate for her back in the day. Slut.

Good use of Flashback:
Rare. Very rare. Especially in T.V. Most don't even attempt it, and for good reason. Flashback sequences are often awkward expositional devices; misty images depicting actors that barely resemble their present day counterparts, attempting to ground a convoluted storyline with emotional resonance. They nearly always bring to mind a certain type of show, like Ghost Whisperer or Sisters. Bleck. Even Dexter had to abandon them.
They are effective in a limited set of circumstances-horror movies about the supernatural sometimes use them effectively. Mostly because they depict events that happened outside of the experience of the main cast.
In Justified, the flashback worked. First off, we weren't force-fed younger versions of our cast thanks to intentionally bad lighting. Secondly, the sequence didn't stand alone, we already knew that our hero and villian shared this partcular history. And third...this is going to sound lame, but I don't care. There is a moment, as the two young men run through the darkened mine shaft in order to escape a cave-in, where one of them grabs the others hand. It's a boyish gesture, elegantly capturing the ineffable and, until that moment of revelation, frankly odd connection between two very different men.
I do wonder, if the actor who reached for his costars hand in that sequence did so on impulse, or if it was specifically written into the script. In any case, it will keep me tuned in next week.