Season 1, Episode 5: “The Lord of War and Thunder”
I suppose this episode is meant to be the episode known for being where we finally meet Arlo Givens, but goddamn it, for me this episode will now and forever be known as
~*~*~*~***~~~THE EPISODE I MET AUNT HELEN!!!!$$%%%^^^****~*~*~
For as much as I am a sucker for these muddled-up heros and their muddled-up hero pain, I am infinitely more a sucker for the women who raised them. Aunt Helen is both a joy to watch and a character of great heart-poking value, and you see that in every scene she has with Raylan, you see how important and complex their relationship is. They start with snippy banter, in the diner, esclate to Raylan’s cool admission that he bailed his father out of jail not as a favor to his father but as a favor to Aunt Helen, and come down in pieces upon Raylan’s realization that Helen and Arlo were playing him in a two-man con. Business as usual, we can see, between Arlo and Raylan, but between Helen and Raylan, it feels new. No pain hurts like the I-should-have-known-better pain, except maybe the I-did-know-better-and-I-still-got-burned pain, which is what Helen’s up against as she yells after him in the hospital parking lot. Trying to lodge arrows of guilt into a man now freshly, fully encased in armor.
And what’s that like for Helen, is this the first time he’s walked away from her? I think it is. I think previously there was always a window for Helen, even if it was narrow. She earned it in Raylan’s youth, as she and her cable TV and fridge full of Cokes gave him refuge from the Arlo tornados. Took him in and let him watch Rawhide and Have Gun Will Travel (so now we know). She didn’t interfere further, though, and who knows why. Maybe because she was already in love with Arlo, maybe because that’s just not what you did, but I’d be willing to bet that whatever the reason, it’s living alongside the reason she helped Arlo con Raylan. Out of thinking that even the most shattered-up men can eventually be taught to love their sons and treat them with respect, out of thinking that long-damaged sons can be taught to forgive their fathers and treat them with respect, out of thinking that family is a duty you can and should not jilt. Aunt Helen, she who guards her husband with a shotgun and takes a swipe at household intruders with a butcher knife, she’s really a softie.
On to the men, now, the fathers and the sons. Here’s what I learned. Sons running hard from their fathers will stop, one day, to see how far they’ve gone, and then they will take a step further, and notice with horror that their fathers are deep within them. Arlo rebelled from his hellfire and brimstone preacher father, only to become a criminal who believes deeply in retribution (the sort delivered via baseball bat in a diner). Raylan rebelled from his criminal father only to become a US marshal who believes deeply in, what’s that now. Oh, retribution. He is capable of playing by the rules, of course, capable of finding an excuse to have his shirt unbuttoned/stake out a fugitive’s safehouse by doing some yardwork until he can get himself indoors, cuff the bad guy, and talk the bad guy’s wife out of blowing his head off (sidebar does anyone want to know the sound my heart makes when I see Karina Logue? it goes eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!). But. But.
But Raylan can also walk into a pusher’s house with hard, bright eyes, tell a nice monologue, select himself a weapon, remove his jacket, put aside the pusher’s guns, search the house, and hit the pusher’s ankles with a baseball bat. The way Raylan moves around that house, the way he pushes the pusher with the head of the bat, that’s both the straight-backed walk of a lawman and the cold flint of a preacher. Even when he’s in that house, realizing that he’s been had, he keeps his teeth a-clenched, lets the pusher know he’s getting off lucky. Raylan may think he is holding himself back, and I suppose he is, but do they teach bat-beating in the marshal service, or is that in fact a tornado’s talent asserting itself. We know Raylan’s choice of weapon to be a gun, but this whole episode he doesn’t use it once. He throws a punch, he swings a bat, but he keeps his gun in his belt, and:
Arlo: Hey. How many men you shot?
Raylan: Why you wan’ know that?
Arlo: All the shit I pulled over the years, I never shot anyone. Not a one.
Everyone’s got a bat in Harlan County. Arlo leaves his at the pusher’s house, so when he goes after the thugs who attacked Aunt Helen, he needs a new weapon. Stalks up and down his home looking for his own, then sputters that he’ll just have to use Raylan’s. And it’s with Raylan’s bat in his hands that he goes off on those men, a heart attack the only thing keeping him from retributionally bashing their heads straight in. Later on at the pusher’s house, Raylan points to a bat in the corner. “Is that my father’s bat?” Yes. Picks it up. And then, he swings. So sure, Raylan can keep on running, back to Louisville, back to Miami. But that bat looks mighty good in his hands, and he knows it.
