An unabashed Appalachian look at "Justified."

Along about two years ago, a co-worker whose pop culture sensibilities I admire, pulled me aside.

"Are you watching ‘Justified?"

I wasn’t. I haven’t had cable for several years now (which I’m appropriately smug and pretentious about), so I’m limited to DVDs and whatever I can stream from Netflix, Hulu or other services of their ilk.

So earlier this year, after going on a two-week “Breaking Bad” bender that took me from the first episode through Gus’ Harvey Dent-esque demise (oops…spoiler alert), I was looking for something to fill the void until BB’s last season is up on Netflix. So I picked up the first season of “Justified” on the cheap.

Since then, I’ve plowed through seasons one, two and three, and bought the first few episodes of season four on iTunes. Needless to say, Seth was right: “Justified” is a great TV show.

(QUICK SIDEBAR: It’s not quite on my personal Mount Rushmore, which is currently occupied with the usual suspects: Walter White, Tony Soprano, Omar Little and, in the Lincoln spot, Bill Haverchuck. So is it my favorite show? Nah. But it’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer, no less interesting to me (but certainly in a different way) than “The Walking Dead.”)

Rather than spend the next few minutes reading about why “Justified” is so good, I’ll fill my role as an Appalachian cultural ambassador and let you know about its flaws—many of which you wouldn’t know if you didn’t grow up in an Appalachian holler.

The mountains

Let’s put it this way: I didn’t have to check out “Justified’s” IMDB page to know it wasn’t filmed anywhere near Appalachia. In the scenes that are supposed to be in Harlan, Kentucky, there are a few dead giveaways. The vegetation is too sparse, the valleys are too wide and the mountains too angular. Someone once described the topography of the Appalachian region as a rumpled blanket. That’s about right. To use the parlance of our region, them ain’t our mountains.

Ava Crowder’s accent

Most of the accents are really, really good. Ava’s isn’t. Oh, it’s southern, all right. But it’s more Tennessee foothills than Kentucky coalfields.

(Another quick sidebar: the dialogue in this show is wonderful, and certainly reflects Elmore Leonard’s involvement. I love the little subtleties that you may not catch at first glance. There’s this scene between Raylan and Winona in which she talks about her unfaithfulness during their marriage. She refers to it as “when I took up with Gary.” I love that level of detail; it’s incredibly accurate, and gives the show an authenticity that would be lost without little nuances like that.)

Snake handling/holiness church

I’ll leave my irritation that season four introduces a snake handling preacher as a character (I mean, really?). Setting that aside, here are a few tips for the writers and producers of the show: snake handling preachers don’t handle during sermons. Yet here they have Billy walking up and down the aisle of his church, clutching a single snake as he preaches. Nope. Snakes are handled primarily during worship, not during the preaching. And it’s not the preacher alone that takes up the serpent—it’s anyone on whom the spirit moves.

Then there’s the baptism of Ellen Mae. There isn’t a church within 100 miles of Kentucky — or West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi or Georgia, for that matter — who’d baptize someone by sprinkling water on their head. Talk about blasphemous. No, we dunk folks clear underwater, preferably in a cold backwater or river. I mean, a fancy baptistry is OK in a pinch. But if you really want an Appalachian baptism, it’s gotta be outdoors. And you gotta go all the way under.

Coal mining

I can’t for the life of me figure out why they are using dynamite to mine coal in season two. Ever heard of methane? Coal dust? Both are highly, highly explosive—and rampant in underground coal mines. Strip operations are mined with big machines called continuous miners, not with explosives.

Now, surface mines? Those are a different story.

Look, it’s hard to know all of these subtle nuances if you’re out in California writing a show about the Kentucky coalfields. That’s why the producers need to hire me as a consultant.