I am watching Justified.

Feb 27

Season 2, Episode 4: “For Blood or Money” The people of Harlan County have long memories for filial feuding. Sons will neither forget nor forgive the sins of their fathers, and the families who have histories between them will neither forget nor forgive those, either. So it is something to meet Clinton, a man in a halfway house who holds his son so dear that he will go to great, terrible lengths to join him on his twelfth birthday. Only Clinton has been in jail for manslaughter, for killing his son’s mother in a car accident. He was trying to get her to the hospital because she had overdosed; she had overdosed because they had a relationship built on addiction. She died being saved. Clinton is a character sketched quickly but clearly. We watch as he makes his bed, as he puts on a tie, as he proudly puts a Furby knockoff in a gift bag. It’s a gift for a six-year-old, not a twelve-year-old, but Clinton could be forgiven. He has been in stasis these past years, jailed and halfway, he has died being saved. Watching Clinton go to those great and terrible lengths is painful. There is a certain inevitability to them, a hopelessness, and yet. What is the nature of that inevitability? Ask Boyd, perhaps. Ask him as he is approached once again by the men from the mine who want him to join them in a bit of criminal activity. Ask Ava as she watches their approach. She’s a woman who doesn’t believe in the inevitability of evil, but she is aware, certainly, of the slip that becomes a slide. She’s invited Boyd into her house. She’s encouraged him to join her on her porch. If Boyd were to take these men up on their offer—after saying to Ava he won’t, after telling himself the same thing—it will be painful, no matter the nature of the heist. No matter if it’s victimless, or successful. As the halfway house manager reminds Clinton, recovery is work. Daily work, constant work, mindful work. Once a man stops doing that work, it is very hard to begin again. You find first that you have beaten that halfway house manager, you find second that you have shot your friend through the hand, you find third that you are in a standoff in a second-rate pizza restaurant. You find that you have slid, that you can’t remember why you stopped work in the first place. But I’ll tell you, it was for your son. It was for what your son represents, for your family, for your freedom, for the life you had before. They say that a man with nothing to lose is a dangerous man except what about a man with just one thing left? He’s no great fun, either. What does Boyd have, except a copy of Of Human Bondage and Ava standing by with a shotgun, and will that be enough. And what about Rachel. We learned so much about Rachel, and we learned it brutally. Last week Ava told Raylan that she had took in Boyd because Boyd was about her only kin; by the same token, Clinton is nearly the end of Rachel’s. Her mother is still around, but determined defend her wayward son-in-law. Her sister is dead of a car accident, as mentioned. She has her nephew, at least, a kid with a sense of humor and the good sense to accept his father’s inadequate gift. But can the child be enough? Everyone is convinced that Rachel wants to shoot Clinton, but she’s convinced she doesn’t. As it is she does shoot a man, but it isn’t Clinton, and it isn’t fatal. It is her first. Drinking whiskey, later, Raylan and Tim are in a dark humor. Raylan declares that shooting Arlo wasn’t as fun as he thought it might be, Tim notes that his father has the good sense to die before Tim had the opportunity to do him any harm. Rachel says only that she thought her family was the Cosbys, until she grew up and realized that they were not. Later on Raylan offers a word of support, thinking her stoic midnight oil-burning has to do with the shooting, but I imagine it’s not. I imagine it has more to do with her ongoing work, her life’s act of recovery. To recommit to something other than revenge and resentment, to take pride in her work and value her remaining family. To not find herself with nothing, or one thing, left to lose. Of course not every Harlan family is a broken one. The Bennetts are united, mostly. They may keep secrets from one another, but even the secret-keeping is protective, I will save my brother from my mother’s wrath. Still the Oxy bus casts a long shadow, and so Raylan indulges in a hopeful ounce of prevention. He visits the hornet’s nest to inform its residents that the bus was Dixie Mafia-owned, and he’s only saying so because he hopes there won’t be an all-out war, because he hopes there isn’t some greater plan to make trouble with the Dixies. And there isn’t, not by Mags’ reaction. She has a plan but it’s something else, and it is large, and she’s upset to have a marshal anywhere near it. The Bennett boys take this as a mandate to kill Raylan, a heartwarming bond of brotherhood if I ever. Though we do not know what the long game is, we know those Bennett boys would do anything to please their mother. She is powerful and capricious, better off dead but unthinkable to kill. The Bennett boys are in trouble because the Bennett boys have never fallen, not really. They’ve been slapped and hobbled but always brought home to apple pie. In Harlan, it seems, the villains are village-raised and the heroes raised themselves. (picture via)

Season 2, Episode 4: “For Blood or Money”

The people of Harlan County have long memories for filial feuding. Sons will neither forget nor forgive the sins of their fathers, and the families who have histories between them will neither forget nor forgive those, either. So it is something to meet Clinton, a man in a halfway house who holds his son so dear that he will go to great, terrible lengths to join him on his twelfth birthday. Only Clinton has been in jail for manslaughter, for killing his son’s mother in a car accident. He was trying to get her to the hospital because she had overdosed; she had overdosed because they had a relationship built on addiction. She died being saved. Clinton is a character sketched quickly but clearly. We watch as he makes his bed, as he puts on a tie, as he proudly puts a Furby knockoff in a gift bag. It’s a gift for a six-year-old, not a twelve-year-old, but Clinton could be forgiven. He has been in stasis these past years, jailed and halfway, he has died being saved.

Watching Clinton go to those great and terrible lengths is painful. There is a certain inevitability to them, a hopelessness, and yet. What is the nature of that inevitability? Ask Boyd, perhaps. Ask him as he is approached once again by the men from the mine who want him to join them in a bit of criminal activity. Ask Ava as she watches their approach. She’s a woman who doesn’t believe in the inevitability of evil, but she is aware, certainly, of the slip that becomes a slide. She’s invited Boyd into her house. She’s encouraged him to join her on her porch. If Boyd were to take these men up on their offer—after saying to Ava he won’t, after telling himself the same thing—it will be painful, no matter the nature of the heist. No matter if it’s victimless, or successful. As the halfway house manager reminds Clinton, recovery is work. Daily work, constant work, mindful work. Once a man stops doing that work, it is very hard to begin again. You find first that you have beaten that halfway house manager, you find second that you have shot your friend through the hand, you find third that you are in a standoff in a second-rate pizza restaurant. You find that you have slid, that you can’t remember why you stopped work in the first place.

But I’ll tell you, it was for your son. It was for what your son represents, for your family, for your freedom, for the life you had before. They say that a man with nothing to lose is a dangerous man except what about a man with just one thing left? He’s no great fun, either. What does Boyd have, except a copy of Of Human Bondage and Ava standing by with a shotgun, and will that be enough. And what about Rachel. We learned so much about Rachel, and we learned it brutally. Last week Ava told Raylan that she had took in Boyd because Boyd was about her only kin; by the same token, Clinton is nearly the end of Rachel’s. Her mother is still around, but determined defend her wayward son-in-law. Her sister is dead of a car accident, as mentioned. She has her nephew, at least, a kid with a sense of humor and the good sense to accept his father’s inadequate gift. But can the child be enough?

Everyone is convinced that Rachel wants to shoot Clinton, but she’s convinced she doesn’t. As it is she does shoot a man, but it isn’t Clinton, and it isn’t fatal. It is her first. Drinking whiskey, later, Raylan and Tim are in a dark humor. Raylan declares that shooting Arlo wasn’t as fun as he thought it might be, Tim notes that his father has the good sense to die before Tim had the opportunity to do him any harm. Rachel says only that she thought her family was the Cosbys, until she grew up and realized that they were not. Later on Raylan offers a word of support, thinking her stoic midnight oil-burning has to do with the shooting, but I imagine it’s not. I imagine it has more to do with her ongoing work, her life’s act of recovery. To recommit to something other than revenge and resentment, to take pride in her work and value her remaining family. To not find herself with nothing, or one thing, left to lose.

Of course not every Harlan family is a broken one. The Bennetts are united, mostly. They may keep secrets from one another, but even the secret-keeping is protective, I will save my brother from my mother’s wrath. Still the Oxy bus casts a long shadow, and so Raylan indulges in a hopeful ounce of prevention. He visits the hornet’s nest to inform its residents that the bus was Dixie Mafia-owned, and he’s only saying so because he hopes there won’t be an all-out war, because he hopes there isn’t some greater plan to make trouble with the Dixies. And there isn’t, not by Mags’ reaction. She has a plan but it’s something else, and it is large, and she’s upset to have a marshal anywhere near it. The Bennett boys take this as a mandate to kill Raylan, a heartwarming bond of brotherhood if I ever. Though we do not know what the long game is, we know those Bennett boys would do anything to please their mother. She is powerful and capricious, better off dead but unthinkable to kill. The Bennett boys are in trouble because the Bennett boys have never fallen, not really. They’ve been slapped and hobbled but always brought home to apple pie. In Harlan, it seems, the villains are village-raised and the heroes raised themselves.

(picture via)

Feb 25

Season 2, Episode 3: “The I of the Storm” Folks have a tendency to reveal themselves when they think that you are not looking at them directly. Tim, at the bar, with a hard-set jaw and far-away stare. Winona, on a middle-of-nowhere date, flustered by a straightforward question of geography. Dewey Crowe, play-acting at Raylan Givens with wild gunfire and a wilder tongue. And the Bennett boys, each of them, but Doyle first. Play-acting at local law with just the faintest amount of sense, hinting to Raylan that if it turned out they were both dirty, then maybe they could play dirty together. Raylan keeps his on the case at hand but he doesn’t entirely miss what Doyle’s getting at. Two criminals lying stupid dead at Doyle’s feet won’t help him either, and when he storms over to Dickie and Coover and yells at them for their sloppy criminality, he does so without any self-awareness. Without any sense that anyone might be watching him. But it is hard to watch yourself, or know yourself, or hear yourself. Raylan can’t seem to ever hear himself, with Ava. Ava probably hears herself just fine, with Raylan, but I don’t imagine she likes it. Here’s a woman who has a confidence that rival’s Raylan’s and so there’s a heat even in the two of them keeping distance on the porch. Leaning back from another. You might never see these two in love but you won’t need to. They are opposing sides of the same temper. They are not fighting, anymore, not really. Not enemies, not particularly. But each scored deep, proud in his or her own way, desperately important to the other in a manner to be determined. Ava says she and Boyd have an arrangement, a flimsy-sounding thing that can’t be more flimsy than the arrangement Boyd currently has with himself. Raylan says he might buy the fact that Boyd wants to reform, but Raylan seems to have doubts as to whether or not a man such as Boyd can reform himself. Raylan then is taking the position of the jaded lawman, the one who believes that no matter what etc. a man of Boyd’s grade etc. with his history etc. cannot be changed not even etc. And maybe he can’t, I don’t know. You don’t know. But I think we all know a thing or two about wounds, physical and emotional both. What Boyd has now is a life made of cuts and bruises, gashes covered with the faintest layer of new skin. A job, a home, a routine, only. New skin is easily pierced. And of course when Raylan visits with Boyd and asks if he had a hand in knocking over an Oxy bus, Raylan likely does not mean to be doing what he does. But he does it, he exposes Boyd in the manner that only oldest friends can. Of course that new tear might have healed over if it hadn’t been for this bright-eyed young man from the mine, the one telling Boyd he knows about his past and worse, respects it. Wants it for himself. That life of dead men as collateral and better-life schemes that bring you lower. When Boyd does snap, when he does drag the bright-eyed man alongside his truck, hollering and preaching like a natural, it’s a terrible relief. When he releases the man, sends him rolling to the side of the road, it’s a shame. But when he stops his truck, leans out to make sure the man stands again, it’s new. It’s proof against Raylan’s instinct. There could be something new in Boyd, if only he could just get a quiet place to drink.

Season 2, Episode 3: “The I of the Storm”

Folks have a tendency to reveal themselves when they think that you are not looking at them directly. Tim, at the bar, with a hard-set jaw and far-away stare. Winona, on a middle-of-nowhere date, flustered by a straightforward question of geography. Dewey Crowe, play-acting at Raylan Givens with wild gunfire and a wilder tongue. And the Bennett boys, each of them, but Doyle first. Play-acting at local law with just the faintest amount of sense, hinting to Raylan that if it turned out they were both dirty, then maybe they could play dirty together. Raylan keeps his on the case at hand but he doesn’t entirely miss what Doyle’s getting at. Two criminals lying stupid dead at Doyle’s feet won’t help him either, and when he storms over to Dickie and Coover and yells at them for their sloppy criminality, he does so without any self-awareness. Without any sense that anyone might be watching him.

But it is hard to watch yourself, or know yourself, or hear yourself. Raylan can’t seem to ever hear himself, with Ava. Ava probably hears herself just fine, with Raylan, but I don’t imagine she likes it. Here’s a woman who has a confidence that rival’s Raylan’s and so there’s a heat even in the two of them keeping distance on the porch. Leaning back from another. You might never see these two in love but you won’t need to. They are opposing sides of the same temper. They are not fighting, anymore, not really. Not enemies, not particularly. But each scored deep, proud in his or her own way, desperately important to the other in a manner to be determined.

Ava says she and Boyd have an arrangement, a flimsy-sounding thing that can’t be more flimsy than the arrangement Boyd currently has with himself. Raylan says he might buy the fact that Boyd wants to reform, but Raylan seems to have doubts as to whether or not a man such as Boyd can reform himself. Raylan then is taking the position of the jaded lawman, the one who believes that no matter what etc. a man of Boyd’s grade etc. with his history etc. cannot be changed not even etc.

And maybe he can’t, I don’t know. You don’t know. But I think we all know a thing or two about wounds, physical and emotional both. What Boyd has now is a life made of cuts and bruises, gashes covered with the faintest layer of new skin. A job, a home, a routine, only. New skin is easily pierced. And of course when Raylan visits with Boyd and asks if he had a hand in knocking over an Oxy bus, Raylan likely does not mean to be doing what he does. But he does it, he exposes Boyd in the manner that only oldest friends can.

Of course that new tear might have healed over if it hadn’t been for this bright-eyed young man from the mine, the one telling Boyd he knows about his past and worse, respects it. Wants it for himself. That life of dead men as collateral and better-life schemes that bring you lower. When Boyd does snap, when he does drag the bright-eyed man alongside his truck, hollering and preaching like a natural, it’s a terrible relief. When he releases the man, sends him rolling to the side of the road, it’s a shame. But when he stops his truck, leans out to make sure the man stands again, it’s new. It’s proof against Raylan’s instinct. There could be something new in Boyd, if only he could just get a quiet place to drink.

Dec 24

Season 2, Episode 2: “The Life Inside” A pregnant woman in the first act is as bad as a loaded gun, and so too is Justified’s parent structure, that of a serial-procedural. You may have forgotten but the fact is that every so often, Raylan will have to deal in a case that has nothing overtly to do with the season’s story, whatever that may be, I have not forgotten that it is only episode two of season two and so what do I know about the big bad, yet. But I trust the show and so the life inside this episode is what it might mean once the episode is over, once the inmate has her baby and the prison guard is arrested. What we might learn from their mistakes. And so. Let’s start with children, with motherhood, with parenting. Let’s start with Mags and Loretta, who as far as I’m concerned could have their own spin-off and I would watch it gladly, no Raylan necessary (though if every so often he were to drive by wearing a beat-up henley I would not complain). Mags greets Loretta with a jar of soft cider and spins her up a story about how her father has been sent on a job for the Bennetts, and how it had to be done under cover of night and so Loretta will stay with Mags, now. I was surprised at this, I thought for sure Mags would tell the truth but the move she makes is the right move, because Loretta takes all this without a question. Without a fight. And the way Mags gazes at her you know what she’s about to say before she says it. She’s never had a girl. Now she’s got one. Have you ever seen what happens when you give to someone something that she wants, something that she’s wanted for a very long time. Have you ever seen what that does to the strength with which she’ll fight. Maybe you have, because you’ve watched the rest of the episode and met Jamie, the pregnant prisoner. Jamie’s child was fathered by a prison guard, and that prison guard is a stand-up sort who has paid to have Jamie broken out of a Raylan/Tim marshal transport and brought to a home where first an erstwhile EMT will perform a c-section and second a man named Jess will sell the child on the black market. Delightful! Jess also plans to kill Jamie, and while Jamie doesn’t know that she has enough hormones and clean air and instinct in her to attempt an escape. From a situation that she herself agreed to! But that was before. Before she started thinking about California, and what it really means to not have her child ride her rap. And maybe her escape is unsuccessful, and maybe she comes perilously close to losing it all, but it’s the need to do it that’s important, here. That, and the way her tormenter is disposed of: a bullet to the head, courtesy of sniper Tim, in an appearance that re-establishes him as a character I’d actually like to spend some more time with. Between Tim’s killshot here and Rachel’s wary eyes in the last episode, who knows. We might have a team of marshals after all. Back to children. Or parents. Or Arlo, whichever he is. Raylan gets a call about Arlo breaking his house arrest, turns out it’s because Aunt Helen has kicked him out of the house proper and he’s living ten feet from the front porch, in a trailer. Ten feet is enough feet. Raylan, still thinking he can convince Arlo to give up the missing money the marshals gave him at the end of season one, drops in to yell and get yelled at. Helen and Arlo are at each other’s throats, Arlo wishing cancer on Helen and Helen biting back that she’s already had it and Arlo returning that maybe she should get it again. Raylan backs away slowly, but not before Arlo and Helen take a moment to warn him off messing with Mags Bennett, which probably Raylan didn’t even realize was something he was doing, yet, but his parents, such as they are, are uncomfortable with the idea of the past getting stirred up. Fights within family is one thing, they’re telling him. Fights between families can go bad fast. And what of Boyd, the lost son. The wandering brother. Raylan picks him up at the mine and buys him a drink one county over, gets all Raylan at him, like Boyd don’t you go messing with the Miami cartel no matter what they’ve done to your father. All the talk does is make Boyd drink, and faster, and by the end of the episode he’s turned up at Ava’s house—an event that by her manner does not seem unprecedented—bruised and bloodied. The lost son and wandering brother gets tended to by his dead brother’s widow, his dead brother’s killer. God, did Boyd even ever have a mother? Ava hands him gaze and bandages and says we’ll forget this ever happened and it’s almost like he has, for a moment, a place to land. He hasn’t got Raylan, Raylan won’t believe him. He hasn’t got his own family, his own family’s dead or bad. But there’s Ava, with her gauze and her bandages, and she’s let him inside. Finally we come round to Raylan and Winona, playing out a comedy of remarriage. Winona picks a fight while standing in his shirt, Raylan apologizes without knowing why. Gary’s back, too, you all remember Gary, he didn’t have much of a backbone until Raylan scared one into him, and now he’s decided to use it on a vow to get Winona back. I’ve always liked the idea of Raylan and Winona but I’ve never loved it as much as I did in the last scene, with Raylan coming home and the two of them gently bantering before he sits next to her and presses his hand down on her abdomen. In his hand you can see the same prayer that Mags had in her eyes. I’ve never had a girl. I’ve never had a family. Winona presses him to talk about his day, and when he gives up the gory details, she keeps steady. “I can handle that, Raylan,” she says. “I can’t handle silence.” Except the silence is over so much more than his day. The silence is big and deep and wraps around them, is in his hands and in her body. There is still so much for them to learn to say.

Season 2, Episode 2: “The Life Inside”

A pregnant woman in the first act is as bad as a loaded gun, and so too is Justified’s parent structure, that of a serial-procedural. You may have forgotten but the fact is that every so often, Raylan will have to deal in a case that has nothing overtly to do with the season’s story, whatever that may be, I have not forgotten that it is only episode two of season two and so what do I know about the big bad, yet. But I trust the show and so the life inside this episode is what it might mean once the episode is over, once the inmate has her baby and the prison guard is arrested. What we might learn from their mistakes. And so.

Let’s start with children, with motherhood, with parenting. Let’s start with Mags and Loretta, who as far as I’m concerned could have their own spin-off and I would watch it gladly, no Raylan necessary (though if every so often he were to drive by wearing a beat-up henley I would not complain). Mags greets Loretta with a jar of soft cider and spins her up a story about how her father has been sent on a job for the Bennetts, and how it had to be done under cover of night and so Loretta will stay with Mags, now. I was surprised at this, I thought for sure Mags would tell the truth but the move she makes is the right move, because Loretta takes all this without a question. Without a fight. And the way Mags gazes at her you know what she’s about to say before she says it. She’s never had a girl. Now she’s got one. Have you ever seen what happens when you give to someone something that she wants, something that she’s wanted for a very long time. Have you ever seen what that does to the strength with which she’ll fight.

Maybe you have, because you’ve watched the rest of the episode and met Jamie, the pregnant prisoner. Jamie’s child was fathered by a prison guard, and that prison guard is a stand-up sort who has paid to have Jamie broken out of a Raylan/Tim marshal transport and brought to a home where first an erstwhile EMT will perform a c-section and second a man named Jess will sell the child on the black market. Delightful! Jess also plans to kill Jamie, and while Jamie doesn’t know that she has enough hormones and clean air and instinct in her to attempt an escape. From a situation that she herself agreed to! But that was before. Before she started thinking about California, and what it really means to not have her child ride her rap. And maybe her escape is unsuccessful, and maybe she comes perilously close to losing it all, but it’s the need to do it that’s important, here. That, and the way her tormenter is disposed of: a bullet to the head, courtesy of sniper Tim, in an appearance that re-establishes him as a character I’d actually like to spend some more time with. Between Tim’s killshot here and Rachel’s wary eyes in the last episode, who knows. We might have a team of marshals after all.

Back to children. Or parents. Or Arlo, whichever he is. Raylan gets a call about Arlo breaking his house arrest, turns out it’s because Aunt Helen has kicked him out of the house proper and he’s living ten feet from the front porch, in a trailer. Ten feet is enough feet. Raylan, still thinking he can convince Arlo to give up the missing money the marshals gave him at the end of season one, drops in to yell and get yelled at. Helen and Arlo are at each other’s throats, Arlo wishing cancer on Helen and Helen biting back that she’s already had it and Arlo returning that maybe she should get it again. Raylan backs away slowly, but not before Arlo and Helen take a moment to warn him off messing with Mags Bennett, which probably Raylan didn’t even realize was something he was doing, yet, but his parents, such as they are, are uncomfortable with the idea of the past getting stirred up. Fights within family is one thing, they’re telling him. Fights between families can go bad fast.

And what of Boyd, the lost son. The wandering brother. Raylan picks him up at the mine and buys him a drink one county over, gets all Raylan at him, like Boyd don’t you go messing with the Miami cartel no matter what they’ve done to your father. All the talk does is make Boyd drink, and faster, and by the end of the episode he’s turned up at Ava’s house—an event that by her manner does not seem unprecedented—bruised and bloodied. The lost son and wandering brother gets tended to by his dead brother’s widow, his dead brother’s killer. God, did Boyd even ever have a mother? Ava hands him gaze and bandages and says we’ll forget this ever happened and it’s almost like he has, for a moment, a place to land. He hasn’t got Raylan, Raylan won’t believe him. He hasn’t got his own family, his own family’s dead or bad. But there’s Ava, with her gauze and her bandages, and she’s let him inside.

Finally we come round to Raylan and Winona, playing out a comedy of remarriage. Winona picks a fight while standing in his shirt, Raylan apologizes without knowing why. Gary’s back, too, you all remember Gary, he didn’t have much of a backbone until Raylan scared one into him, and now he’s decided to use it on a vow to get Winona back. I’ve always liked the idea of Raylan and Winona but I’ve never loved it as much as I did in the last scene, with Raylan coming home and the two of them gently bantering before he sits next to her and presses his hand down on her abdomen. In his hand you can see the same prayer that Mags had in her eyes. I’ve never had a girl. I’ve never had a family. Winona presses him to talk about his day, and when he gives up the gory details, she keeps steady. “I can handle that, Raylan,” she says. “I can’t handle silence.” Except the silence is over so much more than his day. The silence is big and deep and wraps around them, is in his hands and in her body. There is still so much for them to learn to say.

Dec 23

Season 2, Episode 1: “The Moonshine War” Last season we learned about fathers and sons, and here’s what you have to like about fathers and sons. Fathers and sons are learnt of each other, bred of each other, engaged in each other on a level so gut you would be forgiven, for instance, for not understanding, at first, Raylan’s mistrust of his father. For condemning it, perhaps. But as the season progressed and we learned a shard of what Raylan had in his bones, we knew enough to stand back in that motel room, to let the bullet be what it would be. “What did uh…Arlo say?” asks Raylan to the suits. “Your father said you shot him by accident when the bad guys started shootin’.” Smirks Raylan, “He should know.” And so with that, and with a trip to Miami, and with Boyd off somewhere and Raylan submitting to a full investigation, we bury the first season. He turns in his gun because it’s a season one gun, and now it’s time for season two and a season two gun. Only what could be as interesting as the relationship between a father and a son, what could be so complex as that. Maybe Raylan’s people could be. And I don’t mean his family this time, neither does Rachel, when she asks Raylan to accompany her up to Harlan as she pursues a fugitive. Rachel doesn’t feel comfortable in Harlan, a good angle to lead with on her thus-far ridiculously-underutilized character. She is a woman, but as we’ll soon see that’s not a problem; she is black, which apparently is. So Rachel becomes our eyes, the outsider in the hollers of Kentucky, as Raylan strides forward with all the confidence and swagger a prodigal can have. What’s up in the holler this time is a sex offender who’s been pursuing a wise-beyond-her teenager named Loretta. Loretta’s mother is dead and her father is depressed and if having a sex offender following you around weren’t enough problems for one family, they’ve also caught the attention of the Bennetts, the local farm-to-table syndicate. Loretta and her father have been growing pot in Bennett territory, and here’s how we meet the gang. Two Bennetts visit Loretta’s father to warn him off growing further. One’s got a limp and the other is the law (adorable!), but they’re both mean as hell. The one with the limp is named Dickie, and first he shoots Loretta’s father in the leg and then he forces Loretta’s father to trap his own leg in a bear trap. It’s awful, and we’ve barely got started. We haven’t even yet met Mags. Mags runs a store. That’s all she does, you can check. She knows Raylan, is even glad to see him when he and Rachel Ma’am drive up to ask after this sex offender who they have heard is in her family’s employ. Mags tells Loretta here’s Raylan Givens, he was a baseball player, now he’s a fed’ral. Offers everyone a round of apple pie. Apple pie is not a baked good. It is a moonshine. Mags reminisces fondly of her days selling moonshine with Raylan’s grandfather, and wouldn’t you love to know more about that generation but no, no. We’re here in the store, with Rachel as us looking on, trying to keep up with the bred-in familiarity between Mags and Raylan. The way he treats her, distantly respectful and smiling the whole time, tells you plenty about the depth of Mags’ reach. Raylan knows better than to push hard, better than to insult her. Were Rachel driving, what would she be doing, what would you? Seeing an older woman, who clearly knows more than, who openly bemoans the declining life of a grower and turns hard at any hint she might have the law down on her. But where does that leave all of us who aren’t Raylan, all of us who weren’t baseball players back then? How’s anyone supposed to get a thing done in a town operating on gut level itself.  Anyway it turns out that once they learn he is a sex offender, the Bennetts want nothing to do with the fugitive. “She likes me,” says Loretta to her father, and she’s right. Mags likes the girl and fears for her character. Character is big among Harlan folks; while warning Boyd off one of their cartel opponents, Raylan took time to note that while he didn’t want Boyd to do the killing, he had no “moral objections” to her being killed. “You understand, Miss, the life you’ve led?” Must be something gets in you from the hills, and so the fugitive is turned out. He makes a run for it, throwing Loretta in the trunk as he goes. Raylan and Rachel track him to a gas station and Raylan, loathe to return to the “paperwork and self-recrimination” that gunplay would create, drenches the fugitive in gasoline until the man surrenders. It’s a tidy ending but for the coda, which returns us to Loretta’s father’s house. Loretta’s father sits with Mags, and with Dickie, and with the apple pie, that as I said is not a baked good. The three drink, but one glass is poisoned. As Loretta’s father dies, Mags says calming things to him. Soon he’ll be free. Soon he’ll know the secret. Soon he’ll see his dead wife again. And best of all, she’ll raise the girl. And that will be better for the girl. Won’t it? It’s like one of Boyd’s sermons, refracted through the lens of motherhood and power. Boyd had righteousness but never true power. Mags has it less God plus cold cruelty. After a season of dangerous men, she pulls hard at a string you thought had been overlooked. To be a woman in Harlan is no problem at all, so long as you know everyone, and rule them, too. Oh but the second coda. Can there be? I don’t know. I didn’t forget, anyway, about Raylan being so goddamn tired he can’t help but sleep with his ex-wife, again. “Sonofabitch,” he says, the sweetest pillowtalker you could ever want, and if that weren’t enough, it’s just then that he receives word of his other long-lost love. Boyd having surfaced, in a manner of speaking, in a mine. Fire in the hole, wearing wonderful glasses, seeking, I can only imagine, redemption at the hand of legal explosives. “Are you stealing gas?” asked the fugitive of Raylan. “Yeah,” he lied. “Shit. You caught me. I’m stealing gas. I don’t know why I do it! It’s not like I can’t afford it.” Well, we’ll see.

Season 2, Episode 1: “The Moonshine War”

Last season we learned about fathers and sons, and here’s what you have to like about fathers and sons. Fathers and sons are learnt of each other, bred of each other, engaged in each other on a level so gut you would be forgiven, for instance, for not understanding, at first, Raylan’s mistrust of his father. For condemning it, perhaps. But as the season progressed and we learned a shard of what Raylan had in his bones, we knew enough to stand back in that motel room, to let the bullet be what it would be. “What did uh…Arlo say?” asks Raylan to the suits. “Your father said you shot him by accident when the bad guys started shootin’.” Smirks Raylan, “He should know.”

And so with that, and with a trip to Miami, and with Boyd off somewhere and Raylan submitting to a full investigation, we bury the first season. He turns in his gun because it’s a season one gun, and now it’s time for season two and a season two gun. Only what could be as interesting as the relationship between a father and a son, what could be so complex as that. Maybe Raylan’s people could be. And I don’t mean his family this time, neither does Rachel, when she asks Raylan to accompany her up to Harlan as she pursues a fugitive. Rachel doesn’t feel comfortable in Harlan, a good angle to lead with on her thus-far ridiculously-underutilized character. She is a woman, but as we’ll soon see that’s not a problem; she is black, which apparently is. So Rachel becomes our eyes, the outsider in the hollers of Kentucky, as Raylan strides forward with all the confidence and swagger a prodigal can have.

What’s up in the holler this time is a sex offender who’s been pursuing a wise-beyond-her teenager named Loretta. Loretta’s mother is dead and her father is depressed and if having a sex offender following you around weren’t enough problems for one family, they’ve also caught the attention of the Bennetts, the local farm-to-table syndicate. Loretta and her father have been growing pot in Bennett territory, and here’s how we meet the gang. Two Bennetts visit Loretta’s father to warn him off growing further. One’s got a limp and the other is the law (adorable!), but they’re both mean as hell. The one with the limp is named Dickie, and first he shoots Loretta’s father in the leg and then he forces Loretta’s father to trap his own leg in a bear trap. It’s awful, and we’ve barely got started. We haven’t even yet met Mags.

Mags runs a store. That’s all she does, you can check. She knows Raylan, is even glad to see him when he and Rachel Ma’am drive up to ask after this sex offender who they have heard is in her family’s employ. Mags tells Loretta here’s Raylan Givens, he was a baseball player, now he’s a fed’ral. Offers everyone a round of apple pie. Apple pie is not a baked good. It is a moonshine. Mags reminisces fondly of her days selling moonshine with Raylan’s grandfather, and wouldn’t you love to know more about that generation but no, no. We’re here in the store, with Rachel as us looking on, trying to keep up with the bred-in familiarity between Mags and Raylan. The way he treats her, distantly respectful and smiling the whole time, tells you plenty about the depth of Mags’ reach. Raylan knows better than to push hard, better than to insult her. Were Rachel driving, what would she be doing, what would you? Seeing an older woman, who clearly knows more than, who openly bemoans the declining life of a grower and turns hard at any hint she might have the law down on her. But where does that leave all of us who aren’t Raylan, all of us who weren’t baseball players back then? How’s anyone supposed to get a thing done in a town operating on gut level itself. 

Anyway it turns out that once they learn he is a sex offender, the Bennetts want nothing to do with the fugitive. “She likes me,” says Loretta to her father, and she’s right. Mags likes the girl and fears for her character. Character is big among Harlan folks; while warning Boyd off one of their cartel opponents, Raylan took time to note that while he didn’t want Boyd to do the killing, he had no “moral objections” to her being killed. “You understand, Miss, the life you’ve led?” Must be something gets in you from the hills, and so the fugitive is turned out. He makes a run for it, throwing Loretta in the trunk as he goes. Raylan and Rachel track him to a gas station and Raylan, loathe to return to the “paperwork and self-recrimination” that gunplay would create, drenches the fugitive in gasoline until the man surrenders. It’s a tidy ending but for the coda, which returns us to Loretta’s father’s house. Loretta’s father sits with Mags, and with Dickie, and with the apple pie, that as I said is not a baked good. The three drink, but one glass is poisoned. As Loretta’s father dies, Mags says calming things to him. Soon he’ll be free. Soon he’ll know the secret. Soon he’ll see his dead wife again. And best of all, she’ll raise the girl. And that will be better for the girl. Won’t it? It’s like one of Boyd’s sermons, refracted through the lens of motherhood and power. Boyd had righteousness but never true power. Mags has it less God plus cold cruelty. After a season of dangerous men, she pulls hard at a string you thought had been overlooked. To be a woman in Harlan is no problem at all, so long as you know everyone, and rule them, too.

Oh but the second coda. Can there be? I don’t know. I didn’t forget, anyway, about Raylan being so goddamn tired he can’t help but sleep with his ex-wife, again. “Sonofabitch,” he says, the sweetest pillowtalker you could ever want, and if that weren’t enough, it’s just then that he receives word of his other long-lost love. Boyd having surfaced, in a manner of speaking, in a mine. Fire in the hole, wearing wonderful glasses, seeking, I can only imagine, redemption at the hand of legal explosives. “Are you stealing gas?” asked the fugitive of Raylan. “Yeah,” he lied. “Shit. You caught me. I’m stealing gas. I don’t know why I do it! It’s not like I can’t afford it.” Well, we’ll see.

Nov 23

Season 1, Episode 13: “Bulletville” Was there ever anything more satisfying than watching Raylan and Boyd team up to fight crime? The second Boyd walked into Raylan’s room a surge of something went through me, a jubilation or an urge to write fanfiction or something. I flashed on their future together, the two of them taking road trips and playing darts in a bar and giving each other away at their weddings or whatever else it is men do once men have realized that it is rare indeed to find another soul who understands you, and when you find that soul it is imperative that you hang onto him. You could argue, I suppose, that for all this about how it’s a show about Raylan Givens it was ultimately Boyd Crowder had the fuller journey. Just a few episodes ago I noted that although we know Boyd to be the sort of man who will cast his lot where it is most convenient, his conversion was starting to grow wings of its own. If you act like a churchgoing man long enough, you will find that you are simply a man who goes to church. The flicker in his eye that we noted when he accidentally killed a man in a meth lab, that flicker turned flame here as he returned to his camp to find his flock strung up and shot dead. Boyd’s final conversion took place under that grotesque fruit, and I say. I say maybe he will be tempted, in the future. I say maybe he will give in to that temptation. But I say he is a man of God, now, baptized by fist and by flock and now searching for answers he previously thought he had.  Of course once you know God, you will also know guilt. Or responsibility, I forget what the Bible calls it. Raylan and Boyd, driving together, are guilty men. Men to whom all responsibility can be traced. If you believe responsibility is a straight line, and I don’t. It isn’t. But it doesn’t matter what I believe because that is what the two of them believe. “I set all this into motion, didn’t I?” says Boyd. “Actually, I think me shootin’ Tommy Bucks mighta had something to do with it,” returns Raylan. If you take responsibility, is that the same thing as atonement? Is that is why Raylan will go to Bulletville for Ava and why Boyd will train his gun on his father? But, or. God works in mysterious ways and maybe God is the cartel, and maybe it was God who shot Bo Crowder from out from under Boyd. To save Boyd’s soul. And maybe it’s been God this whole time who has been after Raylan, and maybe it’s Him, or a version, who will continue his pursuit of our marshal. And then there are the Godless, the men who are just men, the fathers, in this case. Bo, who sets a man to soundly beat his own son, in front of him. Arlo, who embraces the opportunity to turn his son over to the cartel. Both are hungry for power and status, both in debt so deeply to morality and goodness that what is the matter of one more body, even if he is part of your own. This show has a heart for redemption but a mind for what’s more often true: men who believe they have nothing to gain by changing, they will not change. Why, after all, was Boyd’s transformation only in voice and composure, up until he hit bottom? Because for awhile, having God was a way to have power. Once that power had been stripped, he sought real change. Arlo and Bo have hit no such bottom, in their lives, and won’t ever. Bo because he’s dead. Arlo because he’s convinced himself that digging deeper is the way to survive. Raylan shooting his own father was the least he could have done, considering. Boyd going to Raylan was a similar stroke. Both avoiding the killshot for as long as absolutely possible. In the end, amid the God and fire, there was the shootout you were demanding without even knowing it. Better than a showdown, I think, is the entrenched versus the oncoming. We know Raylan draws fast but here we see him witty and clever. Setting Ava to shoot as a distraction, lying hatless and low under a window until his prey is near. A shootout creates violence that is blameless and triumphant, but no marshal should have to be there, on the floor of the cabin, two childhood friends slash parolees his only assistance. And though a shootout is not a shooting, our finale sees our marshal as violent and lonesome as ever. Maybe now he can trust Boyd, or Ava, or Winona, but he’ll be hard-pressed to do so without hesitation, at the least. And the funny thing about hesitation, is that’s what kills you. Life draws first, and faster, and without regard for your soul. You may be a clever man, quick with a gun, handy with a joke, and good with a hat. But if you have a heart—and Raylan Givens has—then you aren’t ever going to survive it all alone.

Season 1, Episode 13: “Bulletville”

Was there ever anything more satisfying than watching Raylan and Boyd team up to fight crime? The second Boyd walked into Raylan’s room a surge of something went through me, a jubilation or an urge to write fanfiction or something. I flashed on their future together, the two of them taking road trips and playing darts in a bar and giving each other away at their weddings or whatever else it is men do once men have realized that it is rare indeed to find another soul who understands you, and when you find that soul it is imperative that you hang onto him.

You could argue, I suppose, that for all this about how it’s a show about Raylan Givens it was ultimately Boyd Crowder had the fuller journey. Just a few episodes ago I noted that although we know Boyd to be the sort of man who will cast his lot where it is most convenient, his conversion was starting to grow wings of its own. If you act like a churchgoing man long enough, you will find that you are simply a man who goes to church. The flicker in his eye that we noted when he accidentally killed a man in a meth lab, that flicker turned flame here as he returned to his camp to find his flock strung up and shot dead. Boyd’s final conversion took place under that grotesque fruit, and I say. I say maybe he will be tempted, in the future. I say maybe he will give in to that temptation. But I say he is a man of God, now, baptized by fist and by flock and now searching for answers he previously thought he had. 

Of course once you know God, you will also know guilt. Or responsibility, I forget what the Bible calls it. Raylan and Boyd, driving together, are guilty men. Men to whom all responsibility can be traced. If you believe responsibility is a straight line, and I don’t. It isn’t. But it doesn’t matter what I believe because that is what the two of them believe. “I set all this into motion, didn’t I?” says Boyd. “Actually, I think me shootin’ Tommy Bucks mighta had something to do with it,” returns Raylan. If you take responsibility, is that the same thing as atonement? Is that is why Raylan will go to Bulletville for Ava and why Boyd will train his gun on his father? But, or. God works in mysterious ways and maybe God is the cartel, and maybe it was God who shot Bo Crowder from out from under Boyd. To save Boyd’s soul. And maybe it’s been God this whole time who has been after Raylan, and maybe it’s Him, or a version, who will continue his pursuit of our marshal.

And then there are the Godless, the men who are just men, the fathers, in this case. Bo, who sets a man to soundly beat his own son, in front of him. Arlo, who embraces the opportunity to turn his son over to the cartel. Both are hungry for power and status, both in debt so deeply to morality and goodness that what is the matter of one more body, even if he is part of your own. This show has a heart for redemption but a mind for what’s more often true: men who believe they have nothing to gain by changing, they will not change. Why, after all, was Boyd’s transformation only in voice and composure, up until he hit bottom? Because for awhile, having God was a way to have power. Once that power had been stripped, he sought real change. Arlo and Bo have hit no such bottom, in their lives, and won’t ever. Bo because he’s dead. Arlo because he’s convinced himself that digging deeper is the way to survive. Raylan shooting his own father was the least he could have done, considering. Boyd going to Raylan was a similar stroke. Both avoiding the killshot for as long as absolutely possible.

In the end, amid the God and fire, there was the shootout you were demanding without even knowing it. Better than a showdown, I think, is the entrenched versus the oncoming. We know Raylan draws fast but here we see him witty and clever. Setting Ava to shoot as a distraction, lying hatless and low under a window until his prey is near. A shootout creates violence that is blameless and triumphant, but no marshal should have to be there, on the floor of the cabin, two childhood friends slash parolees his only assistance. And though a shootout is not a shooting, our finale sees our marshal as violent and lonesome as ever. Maybe now he can trust Boyd, or Ava, or Winona, but he’ll be hard-pressed to do so without hesitation, at the least. And the funny thing about hesitation, is that’s what kills you. Life draws first, and faster, and without regard for your soul. You may be a clever man, quick with a gun, handy with a joke, and good with a hat. But if you have a heart—and Raylan Givens has—then you aren’t ever going to survive it all alone.

Oct 23

Season 1, Episode 12: “Fathers and Sons” Over the last few episodes we have seen the show do a remarkable thing to its hero, which is, it has made him look fairly unheroic. If your complaint in the early episodes was that Raylan was always getting off too easy or succeeding too much, good news, that is no longer happening. Having his father nearby has brought out what appears to be the absolute worst in him. Raylan-as-bitchface. Raylan as “It’s astounding to me that you’re just now realizing that’s why we’re here.” Raylan as petulantly drinking his boss’ bourbon. Raylan as got to the point where I was thinking, for god’s sake, Raylan, give your damn father a break. I truly thought that! And the episode leads you on, there, by presenting us the scene in the VFW where Arlo talks a young veteran (all Iraq veterans must be named Lucky, that is television law) out of blowing up the only bar in town by feeding him a line of bullshit about his own service in Vietnam. It’s an awfully clever deke, because of course it puts you in the mind of Raylan’s own hostage negotiation, and you start to think you know there’s a lot to be said for the things we inherit from our fathers and maybe a man can change, right, a man can change, I kind of wish a man could change, and then (a) Arlo tells the VFW bartender that “My son’s been fighting wars since the day he was born,” and (b) Arlo tells Raylan that he will wear a wire and you are like SEE THAT SEE THAT A MAN CAN CHANGE A MAN CAN Except he can’t. One line of bullshit follows another, and the wars that Raylan’s been fighting march ever onward. Arlo takes that wire, he does, and he marches straight into Bo’s hideaway and he proceeds to double-cross the marshals. And Raylan. Red-faced, petulant Raylan. Who has done his honest best to warn us off falling for his father’s tricks! Can’t stop this one. It’s not that he’s cried wolf too frequently. It’s that anything rings hollow if it’s heard too often, if it’s shouted too stridently. If it appears to be coming from a heroic man who is recently acquainted with desperation. Plus Raylan must certainly want his father’s redemption, in some way. That want is a form of hope. And if Arlo destroys it, here? That’s a far fall for our marshal, who has guarded so carefully and who told the truth so much. The Crowder family is meanwhile fighting on a different plane, one where both parties are being entirely open with one another and waiting to see which will crumble first. Two bucks and horns and a mountain and something something, right? Boyd is bold and Boyd is crafty, Boyd certainly knows that his father is on the hook to the Miami cartel and Boyd certainly knows that blowing up that shipment will put his father in trouble. I suppose it could put Boyd in trouble as well, but he’s lately got the air of a man protected by God, so I’m not too worried about him. His play is complex, his play is a shuffle in the aisle at church as well as a rocket launcher on the side of the road. All that wondering I’ve done about whether or not he’s a good or bad man, it may all be irrelevant. It may all be about fathers and sons, it may all be about disposing of his own roots so that he can grow fresh. In the eyes of God or in the eyes of becoming the new Crowder in town. Either way. What would Boyd do, with his father gone. What would Raylan do, without his. If you have leaned on a stuck door your whole life, and it falls open all of a sudden, how do you learn to walk through? Ava walked through. Back in episode one she did. She shot her husband and fell in love with a new man, and look, now, where all those choices and chances have got her. When Winona came to Raylan, at night, and she took off her wedding ring and the two of them fell together I could not figure it. It was smart to keep the scene wordless, to give me room to think all sorts of things: was it just sex, or just power, or just something deeper. Why now, why, now. Hard to say, except for Ava’s car out front. I don’t know why now for Winona or why now for Raylan, but I do know why now for Ava. I know that she’ll never go back, now. I know that it’s important she went to Aunt Helen, then, and asked her for a gun. Aunt Helen looked at Ava and no doubt saw a piece of herself. Aunt Helen warned her dutifully, about picking the lifestyle with the sawed-off shotgun and you sitting in the dark, but Aunt Helen knows that sometimes you can’t and shouldn’t rely on the ones who swear to protect you. Particularly the men. They have their own battles, their father and son battles. You are easy collateral, because you love them so much. In church Boyd said that he is “a new creature,” and though it was part of a shuffle-and-hop, I believe him. I believe him and I believe that this is the way to survive in Harlan. Ava is a new creature now, and I believe she will survive. Does Raylan have it in him? You hope. He could choose the other path, he could be Bo or he could be Arlo and he could hang on tenaciously, unchanging and cruel. Raylan may think he’s a new creature, but being different than your father does not make you new. That is a position he took years ago. What he needs now is more than righteousness, more than a quick draw, more than confident negotiation tactics. What he needs now is to be reborn.

Season 1, Episode 12: “Fathers and Sons”

Over the last few episodes we have seen the show do a remarkable thing to its hero, which is, it has made him look fairly unheroic. If your complaint in the early episodes was that Raylan was always getting off too easy or succeeding too much, good news, that is no longer happening. Having his father nearby has brought out what appears to be the absolute worst in him. Raylan-as-bitchface. Raylan as “It’s astounding to me that you’re just now realizing that’s why we’re here.” Raylan as petulantly drinking his boss’ bourbon. Raylan as got to the point where I was thinking, for god’s sake, Raylan, give your damn father a break. I truly thought that! And the episode leads you on, there, by presenting us the scene in the VFW where Arlo talks a young veteran (all Iraq veterans must be named Lucky, that is television law) out of blowing up the only bar in town by feeding him a line of bullshit about his own service in Vietnam.

It’s an awfully clever deke, because of course it puts you in the mind of Raylan’s own hostage negotiation, and you start to think you know there’s a lot to be said for the things we inherit from our fathers and maybe a man can change, right, a man can change, I kind of wish a man could change, and then (a) Arlo tells the VFW bartender that “My son’s been fighting wars since the day he was born,” and (b) Arlo tells Raylan that he will wear a wire and you are like SEE THAT SEE THAT A MAN CAN CHANGE A MAN CAN

Except he can’t. One line of bullshit follows another, and the wars that Raylan’s been fighting march ever onward. Arlo takes that wire, he does, and he marches straight into Bo’s hideaway and he proceeds to double-cross the marshals. And Raylan. Red-faced, petulant Raylan. Who has done his honest best to warn us off falling for his father’s tricks! Can’t stop this one. It’s not that he’s cried wolf too frequently. It’s that anything rings hollow if it’s heard too often, if it’s shouted too stridently. If it appears to be coming from a heroic man who is recently acquainted with desperation.

Plus Raylan must certainly want his father’s redemption, in some way. That want is a form of hope. And if Arlo destroys it, here? That’s a far fall for our marshal, who has guarded so carefully and who told the truth so much.

The Crowder family is meanwhile fighting on a different plane, one where both parties are being entirely open with one another and waiting to see which will crumble first. Two bucks and horns and a mountain and something something, right? Boyd is bold and Boyd is crafty, Boyd certainly knows that his father is on the hook to the Miami cartel and Boyd certainly knows that blowing up that shipment will put his father in trouble. I suppose it could put Boyd in trouble as well, but he’s lately got the air of a man protected by God, so I’m not too worried about him. His play is complex, his play is a shuffle in the aisle at church as well as a rocket launcher on the side of the road. All that wondering I’ve done about whether or not he’s a good or bad man, it may all be irrelevant. It may all be about fathers and sons, it may all be about disposing of his own roots so that he can grow fresh. In the eyes of God or in the eyes of becoming the new Crowder in town. Either way. What would Boyd do, with his father gone. What would Raylan do, without his. If you have leaned on a stuck door your whole life, and it falls open all of a sudden, how do you learn to walk through?

Ava walked through. Back in episode one she did. She shot her husband and fell in love with a new man, and look, now, where all those choices and chances have got her. When Winona came to Raylan, at night, and she took off her wedding ring and the two of them fell together I could not figure it. It was smart to keep the scene wordless, to give me room to think all sorts of things: was it just sex, or just power, or just something deeper. Why now, why, now. Hard to say, except for Ava’s car out front. I don’t know why now for Winona or why now for Raylan, but I do know why now for Ava. I know that she’ll never go back, now. I know that it’s important she went to Aunt Helen, then, and asked her for a gun. Aunt Helen looked at Ava and no doubt saw a piece of herself. Aunt Helen warned her dutifully, about picking the lifestyle with the sawed-off shotgun and you sitting in the dark, but Aunt Helen knows that sometimes you can’t and shouldn’t rely on the ones who swear to protect you. Particularly the men. They have their own battles, their father and son battles. You are easy collateral, because you love them so much.

In church Boyd said that he is “a new creature,” and though it was part of a shuffle-and-hop, I believe him. I believe him and I believe that this is the way to survive in Harlan. Ava is a new creature now, and I believe she will survive. Does Raylan have it in him? You hope. He could choose the other path, he could be Bo or he could be Arlo and he could hang on tenaciously, unchanging and cruel. Raylan may think he’s a new creature, but being different than your father does not make you new. That is a position he took years ago. What he needs now is more than righteousness, more than a quick draw, more than confident negotiation tactics. What he needs now is to be reborn.

Sep 18

Season One, Episode 11: “Veterans” It is of course best if the conflict can be personal. It is all well and good to have your hero roughed up by a thug, or, perhaps, to have your hero rough up a thug. But it is infinitely better to have your hero set his jaw and sneer at his own father within the walls of a VFW. Better still if the VFW in question can be the one outside of which your hero, as a child, whiled away hours, bouncing balls against a rough-stone wall, waiting for his father to stumble out and drive them both home. Raylan marches into that VFW with two good and brave men in tow, the Christian snail-killer Art and the on-his-way-to-drunk Afghanistan-veteran Tim, and both of those men know to steer clear of the blood between the blood. The trouble so old its mold has mold. They hang back, and Arlo slaps Raylan, and Raylan condescends to Arlo, and the two of them both stare the other down like they have always and will continue to be. But fathers are tricky, as we continue to learn, and Arlo saved some of that attitude for none other than Bo Crowder, that patriarch of Harlan crime who is also not in a particularly good place with his son. Arlo ran Bo’s business while Bo was in prison, Arlo ran Bo’s business poorly, Bo means to collect, Arlo has nothing to give. That should be, and is truly, the problem between them, but you wouldn’t know it from the spitting argument the two have about their sons, each man defending his. Your son’s gone off the deep end! Well, at least mine isn’t a marshal! Well, at least mine doesn’t preach and blow stuff up! Well, I’ve got mine under control! Well, mine wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for yours! One generation speaks through another; Raylan and Boyd may think themselves rebellious youths, but so long as they fight fights as brutally as their fathers do, they are all the same. Speaking of the kids, it seems that Boyd’s accidental transformation is progressing nicely, or, at least, his fraud is getting insanely elaborate. There are cracks showing amidst his posturing, preaching, and control. Sure, he’s still able to rile up his father by righteously refusing to take a cut of the protection money Bo has taken from the meth cooks with the burnt-up lab. And absolutely, he’s able to get under Raylan’s skin by casually dropping a line about how Bowman Crowder, Ava’s late husband, was co-running Bo’s business along with Arlo. He’s even able to convince one of his men to turn himself into the marshals and take full responsibility for the meth lab explosion. But when it comes time to kill the weakest dog in the pack, the goony Dewey Crowe, Boyd falters. Lets him go. Looks straight to the heavens and seems unable to understand what he sees. A man’s relationship with his god, now that’s personal. Even if that relationship was initially feigned. Then Raylan, our dear one. Determined as ever to extricate the personal from all conflicts, even when a touch of the personal is exactly what’s called for, such as when you’re speaking to your recently jilted ex about crimes possibly committed by the husband she shot dead. Raylan deals with drunk and angry Ava the same way he’d deal with any other belligerent witness: simple logic, rough handling, and a pair of handcuffs. Then, as a bonus, a ride to his ex-wife’s house, into the arms of the slowly-warming (and, earlier, possibly-flirting) Winona. It is, obviously, a bad decision. It may be the right decision. It may be the safe decision. But it is a bad decision, and when Ava shakes off that hangover, the decision will have consequences. Because our Raylan cannot modulate between lawman and man, not expertly, the way that Art is able to both calmly lead an investigation and angrily slam a Bible down on Boyd’s knuckles. That is the sweet spot, letting yourself in just enough. Raylan cannot, he cannot hold a professional conversation in the VFW with his father, he can barely hold a professional conversation with his stepmother-aunt in her garden. “I came here as an officer of the law,” he says to his father, and everybody in the entire room is like “HORSESHIT.” And you know what: that’s fine. You don’t have to be going in there as an officer of the law. You could go in as a son concerned for his father’s safety. I’m not saying that’d work. I don’t know exactly what works with Arlo, except the prospect of briefly having money that no one else knows about. But what’s worrying me is how much Raylan is asking of himself, in the face of problems that would run a lesser man ragged, I mean, is he sleeping, even, anymore? Not likely. Our marshal takes each fresh problem and files it, hidden, it behind his badge. Then he shines that badge up better than before, and he continues. So that we’ll only know by the quickness of his draw how personal all of this really is.

Season One, Episode 11: “Veterans”

It is of course best if the conflict can be personal. It is all well and good to have your hero roughed up by a thug, or, perhaps, to have your hero rough up a thug. But it is infinitely better to have your hero set his jaw and sneer at his own father within the walls of a VFW. Better still if the VFW in question can be the one outside of which your hero, as a child, whiled away hours, bouncing balls against a rough-stone wall, waiting for his father to stumble out and drive them both home. Raylan marches into that VFW with two good and brave men in tow, the Christian snail-killer Art and the on-his-way-to-drunk Afghanistan-veteran Tim, and both of those men know to steer clear of the blood between the blood. The trouble so old its mold has mold. They hang back, and Arlo slaps Raylan, and Raylan condescends to Arlo, and the two of them both stare the other down like they have always and will continue to be.

But fathers are tricky, as we continue to learn, and Arlo saved some of that attitude for none other than Bo Crowder, that patriarch of Harlan crime who is also not in a particularly good place with his son. Arlo ran Bo’s business while Bo was in prison, Arlo ran Bo’s business poorly, Bo means to collect, Arlo has nothing to give. That should be, and is truly, the problem between them, but you wouldn’t know it from the spitting argument the two have about their sons, each man defending his. Your son’s gone off the deep end! Well, at least mine isn’t a marshal! Well, at least mine doesn’t preach and blow stuff up! Well, I’ve got mine under control! Well, mine wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for yours! One generation speaks through another; Raylan and Boyd may think themselves rebellious youths, but so long as they fight fights as brutally as their fathers do, they are all the same.

Speaking of the kids, it seems that Boyd’s accidental transformation is progressing nicely, or, at least, his fraud is getting insanely elaborate. There are cracks showing amidst his posturing, preaching, and control. Sure, he’s still able to rile up his father by righteously refusing to take a cut of the protection money Bo has taken from the meth cooks with the burnt-up lab. And absolutely, he’s able to get under Raylan’s skin by casually dropping a line about how Bowman Crowder, Ava’s late husband, was co-running Bo’s business along with Arlo. He’s even able to convince one of his men to turn himself into the marshals and take full responsibility for the meth lab explosion. But when it comes time to kill the weakest dog in the pack, the goony Dewey Crowe, Boyd falters. Lets him go. Looks straight to the heavens and seems unable to understand what he sees. A man’s relationship with his god, now that’s personal. Even if that relationship was initially feigned.

Then Raylan, our dear one. Determined as ever to extricate the personal from all conflicts, even when a touch of the personal is exactly what’s called for, such as when you’re speaking to your recently jilted ex about crimes possibly committed by the husband she shot dead. Raylan deals with drunk and angry Ava the same way he’d deal with any other belligerent witness: simple logic, rough handling, and a pair of handcuffs. Then, as a bonus, a ride to his ex-wife’s house, into the arms of the slowly-warming (and, earlier, possibly-flirting) Winona. It is, obviously, a bad decision. It may be the right decision. It may be the safe decision. But it is a bad decision, and when Ava shakes off that hangover, the decision will have consequences.

Because our Raylan cannot modulate between lawman and man, not expertly, the way that Art is able to both calmly lead an investigation and angrily slam a Bible down on Boyd’s knuckles. That is the sweet spot, letting yourself in just enough. Raylan cannot, he cannot hold a professional conversation in the VFW with his father, he can barely hold a professional conversation with his stepmother-aunt in her garden. “I came here as an officer of the law,” he says to his father, and everybody in the entire room is like “HORSESHIT.” And you know what: that’s fine. You don’t have to be going in there as an officer of the law. You could go in as a son concerned for his father’s safety. I’m not saying that’d work. I don’t know exactly what works with Arlo, except the prospect of briefly having money that no one else knows about. But what’s worrying me is how much Raylan is asking of himself, in the face of problems that would run a lesser man ragged, I mean, is he sleeping, even, anymore? Not likely. Our marshal takes each fresh problem and files it, hidden, it behind his badge. Then he shines that badge up better than before, and he continues. So that we’ll only know by the quickness of his draw how personal all of this really is.

Sep 16

Season One, Episode 10: “The Hammer” Oh my god, what is up with Boyd! Or: Oh my God, what is up with Boyd! No seriously, pick one, because I don’t know. Keeps his cards so close to his chest he might as well just have his ribs made out of spades or diamonds. He has himself a gang of lowlifes, this much we know. He is claiming church, again, we know that as well. And while Raylan thinks he is up to no good, I will admit to you, right now, that there is doubt in my head, just a little. I am not sure at all if we are seeing bullshit or true belief (thanks Johnny), and furthermore: have you ever seen bullshit turn into true belief? It’s happened, surely, and watching Boyd watch the meth lab burn, knowing now that there was a man inside when he threw the Molotov cocktail, he’s got an expression that could be anywhere on the sliding scale of good and bad men. Did he know there was a man inside? Did he know there was a man inside, and also, did he know that man was an informant? Or was it accidental, and did his own sermons come back to him as he watched it all burn? Now, the state police believe that in blowing up the meth lab, Boyd is trying to “send a message on behalf of his father.” Indeed, the meth cooks are in debt to Bo, but first of all blowing up a meth lab doesn’t make it any more likely that debtors will pay their debts and second of all, Boyd does not appear to be working for Bo. Boyd appears to be working for Boyd. And if I know my Justified, and I am getting to that, one likely scenario is that all of this is an elaborate way for Boyd to deal with his poppa issues. Putting together a gang, or a church, now that’s one thing. Going straight for the necks of men who have business with your father, that’s something else. A something else that appears not to be a message on behalf of his father so much as a message directly to his father. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a man has turned to religion in order to shake himself free of his parents. Boyd’s prayers may in fact be working, for me at least, because in addition to all that we got ourselves a Stephen Root guest spot! And I will praise him. Root plays a hard-nosed, trigger-happy judge who’s recently received a death threat in the form of an actual deadly snake in his bed. He’s heard the tale of gunslinger-Raylan and so requests him specifically for his evening protection detail. I think every person who has ever watched television ever knows how wonderful Stephen Root is, and here he mixes quirky bravado with firm convictions that border on the dispassionate. And as it turns out, it’s the lack of passion that’s got him into trouble, as the man putting snakes in his bed is a criminal named Virgil who the judge barely remembers (well played by Sean Bridger, a/k/a Deadwood’s Johnny Burns, so now we’ve had nearly the whole Gem Saloon stopping by). Meanwhile, Raylan’s spending all his off hours trying to scrape together a case against Boyd, first by being “hilariously clumsy” in a head shop and then bullying the fake pastor from “Fire in the Hole,” trying to convince him to testify against Boyd. It’s a smart little monster of the week that forces Raylan—still bearing last week’s bruises—to defend himself against his own legend, over and over. First off, when he finds the fake pastor and the pastor says no he still won’t testify against Boyd and Raylan gets a little pushy about it, the pastor spits, “You gonna shoot me if I don’t testify?” Then when Virgil finally does get the judge at gunpoint, both he and the judge fully expect Raylan to end the situation with a bullet. Except Raylan plans to do what we know he can do, which is, he means to talk Virgil down. Except just as he begins negotiations, the impatient judge hauls off and shoots Virgil himself. As he bleeds, Virgil shouts a whole bunch about consequences, then mumbles about how he thought marshals were always shooting folks like him. Raylan protests, “Not all the time, and never lightly.” Later, when the judge asks why Raylan didn’t shoot Virgil, he says, “If I thought I had to shoot him, I woulda.” And now we’re getting down to it, the fatal presumption of Raylan’s morality. He’s utterly convinced of his ability to hold the line between “I think this man should be shot” and “I think this man should not be shot.” And probably, typically, were all going well, he’d be able to hold that line. He’d be able to do it “never lightly.” Except this is not the Raylan we met originally, this is one who’s getting himself drunk and into bar fights, this is one who is feeling guilt. He’s guilty even before he learns about the meth lab explosion, he is guilty all up and down. And when it turns out the fake pastor had a good reason to refuse to testify—he actually, honestly, couldn’t identify Boyd—Raylan maybe realizes, for just a second, that he’s been pushing too hard. “I’m not that guy,” he says, and I know he’s sure of that. I don’t doubt that he knows it. But is he able, in this state, with these stakes, to let his behaviors match his belief? Or is he perhaps going to inadvertently kill a man with a bullet, or a Molotov cocktail. Or a woman. Ava, I mean. The patron saint of lost causes herself shows up to Raylan’s motel room with coffee and baked goods only to be told that the fantasy has been canceled in order to give Raylan more time with his feelings about Boyd. “I don’t want to be with you when I get that call that he’s hurt someone, or worse,” says Raylan. Which is a painful construction. I don’t want to be with you when this thing that I feel responsible for, that you are also responsible for, goes horribly wrong. What would happen, if Ava were there? Would it be that much much worse than what he does, here, which is take it out on her, anyway. Which is end something that was going well, which is harm her because he can’t handle consequences (thanks Virgil). Violence is not the only violence. And bad men are not the only men capable of bad things.

Season One, Episode 10: “The Hammer”

Oh my god, what is up with Boyd! Or: Oh my God, what is up with Boyd! No seriously, pick one, because I don’t know. Keeps his cards so close to his chest he might as well just have his ribs made out of spades or diamonds. He has himself a gang of lowlifes, this much we know. He is claiming church, again, we know that as well. And while Raylan thinks he is up to no good, I will admit to you, right now, that there is doubt in my head, just a little. I am not sure at all if we are seeing bullshit or true belief (thanks Johnny), and furthermore: have you ever seen bullshit turn into true belief? It’s happened, surely, and watching Boyd watch the meth lab burn, knowing now that there was a man inside when he threw the Molotov cocktail, he’s got an expression that could be anywhere on the sliding scale of good and bad men. Did he know there was a man inside? Did he know there was a man inside, and also, did he know that man was an informant? Or was it accidental, and did his own sermons come back to him as he watched it all burn?

Now, the state police believe that in blowing up the meth lab, Boyd is trying to “send a message on behalf of his father.” Indeed, the meth cooks are in debt to Bo, but first of all blowing up a meth lab doesn’t make it any more likely that debtors will pay their debts and second of all, Boyd does not appear to be working for Bo. Boyd appears to be working for Boyd. And if I know my Justified, and I am getting to that, one likely scenario is that all of this is an elaborate way for Boyd to deal with his poppa issues. Putting together a gang, or a church, now that’s one thing. Going straight for the necks of men who have business with your father, that’s something else. A something else that appears not to be a message on behalf of his father so much as a message directly to his father. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a man has turned to religion in order to shake himself free of his parents.

Boyd’s prayers may in fact be working, for me at least, because in addition to all that we got ourselves a Stephen Root guest spot! And I will praise him. Root plays a hard-nosed, trigger-happy judge who’s recently received a death threat in the form of an actual deadly snake in his bed. He’s heard the tale of gunslinger-Raylan and so requests him specifically for his evening protection detail. I think every person who has ever watched television ever knows how wonderful Stephen Root is, and here he mixes quirky bravado with firm convictions that border on the dispassionate. And as it turns out, it’s the lack of passion that’s got him into trouble, as the man putting snakes in his bed is a criminal named Virgil who the judge barely remembers (well played by Sean Bridger, a/k/a Deadwood’s Johnny Burns, so now we’ve had nearly the whole Gem Saloon stopping by). Meanwhile, Raylan’s spending all his off hours trying to scrape together a case against Boyd, first by being “hilariously clumsy” in a head shop and then bullying the fake pastor from “Fire in the Hole,” trying to convince him to testify against Boyd.

It’s a smart little monster of the week that forces Raylan—still bearing last week’s bruises—to defend himself against his own legend, over and over. First off, when he finds the fake pastor and the pastor says no he still won’t testify against Boyd and Raylan gets a little pushy about it, the pastor spits, “You gonna shoot me if I don’t testify?” Then when Virgil finally does get the judge at gunpoint, both he and the judge fully expect Raylan to end the situation with a bullet. Except Raylan plans to do what we know he can do, which is, he means to talk Virgil down. Except just as he begins negotiations, the impatient judge hauls off and shoots Virgil himself. As he bleeds, Virgil shouts a whole bunch about consequences, then mumbles about how he thought marshals were always shooting folks like him. Raylan protests, “Not all the time, and never lightly.” Later, when the judge asks why Raylan didn’t shoot Virgil, he says, “If I thought I had to shoot him, I woulda.”

And now we’re getting down to it, the fatal presumption of Raylan’s morality. He’s utterly convinced of his ability to hold the line between “I think this man should be shot” and “I think this man should not be shot.” And probably, typically, were all going well, he’d be able to hold that line. He’d be able to do it “never lightly.” Except this is not the Raylan we met originally, this is one who’s getting himself drunk and into bar fights, this is one who is feeling guilt. He’s guilty even before he learns about the meth lab explosion, he is guilty all up and down. And when it turns out the fake pastor had a good reason to refuse to testify—he actually, honestly, couldn’t identify Boyd—Raylan maybe realizes, for just a second, that he’s been pushing too hard. “I’m not that guy,” he says, and I know he’s sure of that. I don’t doubt that he knows it. But is he able, in this state, with these stakes, to let his behaviors match his belief? Or is he perhaps going to inadvertently kill a man with a bullet, or a Molotov cocktail.

Or a woman. Ava, I mean. The patron saint of lost causes herself shows up to Raylan’s motel room with coffee and baked goods only to be told that the fantasy has been canceled in order to give Raylan more time with his feelings about Boyd. “I don’t want to be with you when I get that call that he’s hurt someone, or worse,” says Raylan. Which is a painful construction. I don’t want to be with you when this thing that I feel responsible for, that you are also responsible for, goes horribly wrong. What would happen, if Ava were there? Would it be that much much worse than what he does, here, which is take it out on her, anyway. Which is end something that was going well, which is harm her because he can’t handle consequences (thanks Virgil). Violence is not the only violence. And bad men are not the only men capable of bad things.

Sep 15

Season 1, Episode 9: “Hatless” “Little old to be fightin’, aren’t you?” says Winona to Raylan but she might as well be saying it to half the folks in this episode as “Hatless” has got fists flying like fight coordinators are going out of fashion. Says Raylan to Winona, “Certainly too old to be losin’,” and who knows about that, I mean are you ever too old to lose? At fighting, I suppose, but in general, I think not. I think in general you have your whole life to make mistakes and that is why you don’t want to go blowing your head off near the site of your proposed open air feng shui’d shopping mall plus horse stables for the kids.  But I might be getting ahead of myself. Let’s go on back and talk about these men who are fighting. The losers and the winners. Start first with Winona’s husband, and yes I did learn his name this time around but primarily so I could scribble a note to myself that reads “gary SUCKS.” Prior to this episode I had thought Gary was a little slimy, a little bad in the core, but now it turns out that Gary’s just a real estate dreamer who’s in too deep. And boy! Do we get sold a wishy-washy bill of goods with this guy, in particular thanks to William Ragsdale playing him so puppy-eyed and floppy-spined. Watching Gary stand in Crazy Wynn Duffy’s office, stammering away, I had as hard a time liking him as I imagine Raylan does. What the hell does Winona see in this guy, I started to wonder. And then she told me. She said it had mostly to do with those dreams. She said it had mostly to do with how excited Gary gets about things. And, most damning of all, she said, “I needed a little hope in my life.” Hope, how about that. Raylan, you ever hear of this thing called hope? Or are you too busy being consumed with actions begetting actions and nonsense like that. Uh-huh okay that’s what I thought. Did get your hat back, though. (And before we veer off Winona, I will say, I’ve never wanted to know so much about her as I did in moment where she casually loaded a gun in Raylan’s car. Give that scene entirely to Natalie Zea, write her a thousand scripts just for that.) Much of the episode’s fight card is crowded with has-beens: a football player with a bad knee, a boxer with a bad brain, and a criminal too crazy to run his own operation. Wynn Duffy is a good sort of character to have around, both unpredictable and violent (sewed a face on a soccer ball violent, or at least that’s the word from our friend Pinter) so’s the tension feels awfully high once you know he’s got it in his head that he might want to kidnap Winona. Jere Burns (who also kills it every time he shows up as an addiction support group leader on Breaking Bad) does some phenomenal things with a twitchy mouth and a long stare, in every scene giving off the impression that things like “logic” and “kindness” aren’t things he’s discarded so much as entirely foreign concepts. His hairpin turn on his boss, the bellow of “WHAT AM I A FARMER!?” once he learns that the payoff is coming in land, all of that will surely put him in contention for Sociopath of the Year. And then we’ve got ourselves a federal marshall on a forced non-Tahitian vacation. Watching Raylan talk his way into an ass-kicking at the top of the epsode was a guilty pleasure for me; though every move he makes now seems self-corrosive I can’t help but be excited for the rock-bottom to come. Not so much because I like seeing a man get his ribs broken. But because I heard once that hitting bottom is an excellent way to quit a downward path, and, now that he’s found it, Raylan appears determined to stick that path. His edges are in fact getting so rough that this episode might be retitled “A Man Goes Looking for Trouble in Order to Keep Himself From Trouble.”  But, now, certainly. I am getting ahead of myself again. Raylan’s not a lost cause yet, and once again in this episode he demonstrates a keen ability to identify the emotional needs of a men in crisis. And to do so as unsentimentally as possible. In this case, Gary needs to be reminded of his hopes, and Raylan coaxes him, gamely and profanely, until Gary puts the gun away and talks about what he once envisioned. Raylan provides a similar, blunter, briefer service for the once-promising featherweight/now-active muscle Billy Mac: “Just because you can’t box and you’re stupid don’t mean you gotta end up dead.” Which is absolutely fair. I do wish Raylan’d take his own advice every once in awhile, but I suppose that’d upset that rock-bottom situation I was speaking of, and anyway Billy Mac doesn’t take the advice, either. And that is how he ends up shot. Little old to be fightin’, aren’t you. Everybody?

Season 1, Episode 9: “Hatless”

“Little old to be fightin’, aren’t you?” says Winona to Raylan but she might as well be saying it to half the folks in this episode as “Hatless” has got fists flying like fight coordinators are going out of fashion. Says Raylan to Winona, “Certainly too old to be losin’,” and who knows about that, I mean are you ever too old to lose? At fighting, I suppose, but in general, I think not. I think in general you have your whole life to make mistakes and that is why you don’t want to go blowing your head off near the site of your proposed open air feng shui’d shopping mall plus horse stables for the kids.  But I might be getting ahead of myself.

Let’s go on back and talk about these men who are fighting. The losers and the winners. Start first with Winona’s husband, and yes I did learn his name this time around but primarily so I could scribble a note to myself that reads “gary SUCKS.” Prior to this episode I had thought Gary was a little slimy, a little bad in the core, but now it turns out that Gary’s just a real estate dreamer who’s in too deep. And boy! Do we get sold a wishy-washy bill of goods with this guy, in particular thanks to William Ragsdale playing him so puppy-eyed and floppy-spined. Watching Gary stand in Crazy Wynn Duffy’s office, stammering away, I had as hard a time liking him as I imagine Raylan does. What the hell does Winona see in this guy, I started to wonder. And then she told me. She said it had mostly to do with those dreams. She said it had mostly to do with how excited Gary gets about things. And, most damning of all, she said, “I needed a little hope in my life.” Hope, how about that. Raylan, you ever hear of this thing called hope? Or are you too busy being consumed with actions begetting actions and nonsense like that. Uh-huh okay that’s what I thought. Did get your hat back, though.

(And before we veer off Winona, I will say, I’ve never wanted to know so much about her as I did in moment where she casually loaded a gun in Raylan’s car. Give that scene entirely to Natalie Zea, write her a thousand scripts just for that.)

Much of the episode’s fight card is crowded with has-beens: a football player with a bad knee, a boxer with a bad brain, and a criminal too crazy to run his own operation. Wynn Duffy is a good sort of character to have around, both unpredictable and violent (sewed a face on a soccer ball violent, or at least that’s the word from our friend Pinter) so’s the tension feels awfully high once you know he’s got it in his head that he might want to kidnap Winona. Jere Burns (who also kills it every time he shows up as an addiction support group leader on Breaking Bad) does some phenomenal things with a twitchy mouth and a long stare, in every scene giving off the impression that things like “logic” and “kindness” aren’t things he’s discarded so much as entirely foreign concepts. His hairpin turn on his boss, the bellow of “WHAT AM I A FARMER!?” once he learns that the payoff is coming in land, all of that will surely put him in contention for Sociopath of the Year.

And then we’ve got ourselves a federal marshall on a forced non-Tahitian vacation. Watching Raylan talk his way into an ass-kicking at the top of the epsode was a guilty pleasure for me; though every move he makes now seems self-corrosive I can’t help but be excited for the rock-bottom to come. Not so much because I like seeing a man get his ribs broken. But because I heard once that hitting bottom is an excellent way to quit a downward path, and, now that he’s found it, Raylan appears determined to stick that path. His edges are in fact getting so rough that this episode might be retitled “A Man Goes Looking for Trouble in Order to Keep Himself From Trouble.” 

But, now, certainly. I am getting ahead of myself again. Raylan’s not a lost cause yet, and once again in this episode he demonstrates a keen ability to identify the emotional needs of a men in crisis. And to do so as unsentimentally as possible. In this case, Gary needs to be reminded of his hopes, and Raylan coaxes him, gamely and profanely, until Gary puts the gun away and talks about what he once envisioned. Raylan provides a similar, blunter, briefer service for the once-promising featherweight/now-active muscle Billy Mac: “Just because you can’t box and you’re stupid don’t mean you gotta end up dead.” Which is absolutely fair. I do wish Raylan’d take his own advice every once in awhile, but I suppose that’d upset that rock-bottom situation I was speaking of, and anyway Billy Mac doesn’t take the advice, either. And that is how he ends up shot. Little old to be fightin’, aren’t you. Everybody?

Aug 09

Season 1, Episode 8: “Blowback” How many times have you been in this situation! You’re about to prepare for your meeting with the Assistant U.S. Attorney, right. And this is just a little meeting, just a sit-down to straighten out a simple misunderstanding about oh say how you shot this guy in Miami. Right? Then all of a sudden some four-consecutive-sentence lowlife goes and takes a couple hostages! Ugh! Hugely relatable, also fairly inexpensive to shoot. I mean film. But it’s all right, Justified, ‘cause I like a good hostage negotiation. Particularly when you book me a hostage-taker as fun to watch as W. Earl Brown, a man who knows how to put a twist on the psycho-with-a-brain-of-gold situation. His Cal Wallace is somehow both conniving and tender, a fully necessary dichotomy considering the leap of faith necessary to believe in the fried-chicken denouement. In which Cal Wallace is nothing but a man who wants to be taken seriously? Or treated properly? Or listened to. I’m going to go with listened to. Because the last episode was about talking, didn’t we say? It was about trying to tell folks something. And “Blowback” is about listening, and who’s doing it, and who isn’t. Who’s able to improvise and who’s stuck tight on their own script. Raylan successfully negotiates with Wallace because he listens to him and picks up his cues. Now, of course, he’s got no other choice, because Wallace doesn’t have a list of demands, and also, Wallace has a weapon. Which doesn’t make him far off of the Crowder men, both of whom seem to speak between the lines and carry all sorts of concealed weapons (literal and non). So you wish, you absolutely wish, that Raylan could take this keen listening behavior over into the rest of his damn life. That he could hear, for instance, that Boyd is now free because of something Raylan did. Instead of hearing, as I suspect he did, that Boyd is free because everything sucks and no one ever does what Raylan wants them to do ever ever ever and it’s up to him and him alone to fix it goddamn it goddamn it. So Raylan heads over to prison to meet his true love, Boyd. And he does it I guess to issue a threat and to let Boyd know that freedom ain’t free. Except doesn’t it seem like every time Raylan and Boyd talk, Boyd has the upper hand, and Raylan has really good posture? Does he even know that Boyd is beating him here? Goofy old racist Boyd, with his thrown-up hands and his fully hilarious run towards his pie-plate-licking father? He doesn’t. Not consciously, anyway, not in a way where looking at a lineup he could pick out the thing that upsets him most. Raylan doesn’t even know the name of his angst or else he wouldn’t be taking it out on Ava. Because although he’s a million zillion times ignored advice that told him to stay away from her, he’s picking now, with the Crowders free and Ava at her most vulnerable, to decline her calls. And I’m not saying, but I’m saying, where I come from, we call that a self-destructive move. Of course Raylan’s not the only man stepping wrong, she said as she turned to the B story that may have been the C story. Though it wasn’t particularly well-embedded in the episode, the scene where Winona comes home to find a hugely creepy man in her kitchen was a nice escalation of a thead I’m looking forward to understanding. Her husband’s cagey inability to answer direct questions reminded me not a little of Raylan’s posturing. Both men using talking points and proven technique instead of doing a little hard truth-facing. So we can’t trust Winona’s husband, I can barely remember his name is how little I trust him. Whatever he’s into is bad and that’s fine and let’s see how it goes and I hope it brings back the super-creepy guy, because he was super-creepy. Postgame honors go to Nick Searcy’s continuing excellence as Chief Deputy Art and Rick Gomez’s weasely hands-on-hipness as the Assistant U.S. Attorney. Both fellas turned in great work. I liked Art offhandedly instructing Raylan as to how to close the office blinds and I liked him in the background of every negotiating shot, poker-faced but fuming. I liked Gomez’s cool hostage negotiation attitude and how it turned right over to serious business at the end of the episode, as he spread a naked Raylan-and-Ava photo shoot across the desk. Art has been the real surprise for me; I was fully expecting big character things from Marshals Rachel and Tim, but episode after episode it’s Art with the words of wisdom, Art with the love and pain in his eyes. Which is not to say I didn’t appreciate Tim’s chicken run, or Rachel’s research, but I’m going to need more from them both if they hope to make the highlight reels. So Bo is free, and Boyd is free, and those free streets of Kentucky are getting awfully full, and Ava’s getting ignored, and Winona’s being called a marshal’s wife, and the marshal himself is burying his feelings in deep dark holes. Hey, you know what grows well in holes? Smugness and rage, my friend. Keep your hand on your gun. 

Season 1, Episode 8: “Blowback”

How many times have you been in this situation! You’re about to prepare for your meeting with the Assistant U.S. Attorney, right. And this is just a little meeting, just a sit-down to straighten out a simple misunderstanding about oh say how you shot this guy in Miami. Right? Then all of a sudden some four-consecutive-sentence lowlife goes and takes a couple hostages! Ugh! Hugely relatable, also fairly inexpensive to shoot. I mean film. But it’s all right, Justified, ‘cause I like a good hostage negotiation. Particularly when you book me a hostage-taker as fun to watch as W. Earl Brown, a man who knows how to put a twist on the psycho-with-a-brain-of-gold situation. His Cal Wallace is somehow both conniving and tender, a fully necessary dichotomy considering the leap of faith necessary to believe in the fried-chicken denouement. In which Cal Wallace is nothing but a man who wants to be taken seriously? Or treated properly? Or listened to. I’m going to go with listened to.

Because the last episode was about talking, didn’t we say? It was about trying to tell folks something. And “Blowback” is about listening, and who’s doing it, and who isn’t. Who’s able to improvise and who’s stuck tight on their own script. Raylan successfully negotiates with Wallace because he listens to him and picks up his cues. Now, of course, he’s got no other choice, because Wallace doesn’t have a list of demands, and also, Wallace has a weapon. Which doesn’t make him far off of the Crowder men, both of whom seem to speak between the lines and carry all sorts of concealed weapons (literal and non). So you wish, you absolutely wish, that Raylan could take this keen listening behavior over into the rest of his damn life. That he could hear, for instance, that Boyd is now free because of something Raylan did. Instead of hearing, as I suspect he did, that Boyd is free because everything sucks and no one ever does what Raylan wants them to do ever ever ever and it’s up to him and him alone to fix it goddamn it goddamn it.

So Raylan heads over to prison to meet his true love, Boyd. And he does it I guess to issue a threat and to let Boyd know that freedom ain’t free. Except doesn’t it seem like every time Raylan and Boyd talk, Boyd has the upper hand, and Raylan has really good posture? Does he even know that Boyd is beating him here? Goofy old racist Boyd, with his thrown-up hands and his fully hilarious run towards his pie-plate-licking father? He doesn’t. Not consciously, anyway, not in a way where looking at a lineup he could pick out the thing that upsets him most. Raylan doesn’t even know the name of his angst or else he wouldn’t be taking it out on Ava. Because although he’s a million zillion times ignored advice that told him to stay away from her, he’s picking now, with the Crowders free and Ava at her most vulnerable, to decline her calls. And I’m not saying, but I’m saying, where I come from, we call that a self-destructive move.

Of course Raylan’s not the only man stepping wrong, she said as she turned to the B story that may have been the C story. Though it wasn’t particularly well-embedded in the episode, the scene where Winona comes home to find a hugely creepy man in her kitchen was a nice escalation of a thead I’m looking forward to understanding. Her husband’s cagey inability to answer direct questions reminded me not a little of Raylan’s posturing. Both men using talking points and proven technique instead of doing a little hard truth-facing. So we can’t trust Winona’s husband, I can barely remember his name is how little I trust him. Whatever he’s into is bad and that’s fine and let’s see how it goes and I hope it brings back the super-creepy guy, because he was super-creepy.

Postgame honors go to Nick Searcy’s continuing excellence as Chief Deputy Art and Rick Gomez’s weasely hands-on-hipness as the Assistant U.S. Attorney. Both fellas turned in great work. I liked Art offhandedly instructing Raylan as to how to close the office blinds and I liked him in the background of every negotiating shot, poker-faced but fuming. I liked Gomez’s cool hostage negotiation attitude and how it turned right over to serious business at the end of the episode, as he spread a naked Raylan-and-Ava photo shoot across the desk. Art has been the real surprise for me; I was fully expecting big character things from Marshals Rachel and Tim, but episode after episode it’s Art with the words of wisdom, Art with the love and pain in his eyes. Which is not to say I didn’t appreciate Tim’s chicken run, or Rachel’s research, but I’m going to need more from them both if they hope to make the highlight reels.

So Bo is free, and Boyd is free, and those free streets of Kentucky are getting awfully full, and Ava’s getting ignored, and Winona’s being called a marshal’s wife, and the marshal himself is burying his feelings in deep dark holes. Hey, you know what grows well in holes? Smugness and rage, my friend. Keep your hand on your gun.