Justified
In its first season, in 2010, Justified had the goods: its roots in Elmore Leonard's whip-crack crime writing, a mesmerizing lawman lead in Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens and the new-old-Appalachia setting of Harlan County, Kentucky. In its second season it explored something else: history. There was the history of its setting, where — in the running story of the season — the plots of a local pot-growing clan entwined with the business plans of a mining company. And there was the history of bad blood between said Bennett family and the Givens brood, all the childhood and generational resentments spilling out as Raylan lit on the trail of crafty gang mama Mags (Margo Martindale). Mags could be cold and ruthless but also compelling, as she laid out the story of Harlan's people, used for decades by miners and left with "the spoil," the sadly poetic name for the leavings of strip mining. Martindale's stunning perfomance was like Mags' trademark, poisoned "apple pie" moonshine: bracing, fiery, sweet and deadly. (FX)