Season 1, Episode 6: “The Collection”
What I’d like to know is, was Raylan Givens put on this earth solely to peel off and talk to the wives and widows of the world? His instant ease with Mrs. Carnes was such that for a second I was ready to throw in my lot with the marshal service, hell, looks easy enough to me. When the conversation about the Hitlers gets a little dull, just find yourself the lady of the house and wait for her to offer you a drink slash reveal her true feelings slash casual racism. You’ll save yourself the trouble of a long investigation, which will pay off since apparently murder isn’t the marshal’s lot, except when it is.
Now I’m joshing with you, Justified, but I think we all know that this husbandicide plot was just a thin piece of backbone meant to hold up a somewhat heavy-handed parable about the dangers of giving over one’s life to the task of scrubbing away one’s father’s influence. The best thing we get out of the plot proper was the frustration in Art’s face when Raylan comes out of his hotel room with his shirt off and his jeans as low as can legally be shown on cable television. I can’t even remember if there was dialogue in this scene, I was too busy staring at—no, wait, there was, there was that top-level joke about nipples, then something something plot something. And a chorus of a thousand million screencaptures going click click click.
So putting the case aside, then, we are left with a fine batch of tangos. Let’s talk first about Raylan and Ava. Beginning at him lying on his back asleep while she puts on his boxers and gets him a cup of coffee from a machine, the two of them bantering lazy and quick. You hardly ever get the feeling that Raylan’s not in control of that situation, that he doesn’t feel secure in every word he says to her. Plus Ava’s got something underneath her that’s hard, that he’s not going to be able to reach, and that itself probably has some appeal. Bold and messy attraction wrapped around a woman who’s under investigation, a woman who hardens right up when you suggest to her that she might want to leave the state lest she get revenge-killed. Raylan probably believes there’s no real commitment in being with Ava, and Ava probably believes the same of him. After all, he’s got his own toughness, his own unreachable core, and she is not exactly an unconfident woman. They are too alike, in that, making them as doomed a pair as I have ever seen. Too bad they won’t hear it.
On the other side of it you have Raylan and Winona, and if you want to know what that’s like, watch him sputter at her when she comes to ask him a favor. Not the first time we’ve seen him get so unsettled in her presence, and the why turns out to be heartbreakingly simple. He just doesn’t understand what happened. When he asks her, hat off, abrupt, it’s like he’s had the question at the front of his mouth for a good long time. The ninety-mile stare of US Marshal Givens is shattered by the thing that happens to folks all the time: being left. Finding that yesterday you thought you were fine and today you are not at all fine. Realizing that figuring out the reasons why are not half as easy as, say, solving a murder in 24 hours because you just happen to be super, super clever. And when Raylan admits to her that losing her has been eating him up, that is a thing much harder to say than why’d you leave me. It’s a little sentry from his heart, crawling out on its hands and knees and gasping for air. It left me wondering what kind of husband he was then, and what kind of marshal, too. Did he get harder after Winona left, or has he always been like this. Did they banter like him and Ava do, or did they somehow talk another way, and when they married, what did they each expect would happen? She says, “Weren’t you just the littlest bit relieved when I took up with Gary?” And immediately he’s on to something else, but. If he ever wants to know the reasons, really, probably he should figure out why on earth his own wife would think that he’d be relieved to have her gone.
Then finally we come around to Raylan and Boyd. Stung still by his father’s newest betrayal, Raylan goes to Boyd for information that could put Arlo away for good. And I’m sure these visits seemed like a good idea to Raylan’s wounded mind, clenched jaw, wide-whited eyes, except they’re clearly not. I mean they are clearly…not. But it’s delightful, watching Boyd talk about Raylan’s soul like it’s an attractive young lady down the end of the bar, like hey, you ever give a good long think to asking her out? Because I think she likes you, sure you’ve made mistakes in the past but a good woman can change everything. Except the whole time Boyd can see that that young lady is married. Except the whole time Boyd can see that leading Raylan to look into his soul would freeze him straight in his tracks. And for too long, and while a train is coming. So I still don’t believe Boyd when he preaches. I wish I could say that Raylan doesn’t believe him either but there is something that tells me Boyd has a hook in Raylan the size of which we are not yet aware. Raylan trusts him, at least, to do him this favor. Opens himself up wide to Boyd as Boyd presents temptation: the opportunity for righteous revenge.
Swagger, it seems, can save neither your soul nor your marriage, though it’s terribly handy in all other cases. So what is going to save Raylan? Maybe knowing himself as something more than a good shot, that might be a start. The horse trainer says, “People change.” Raylan says, “I don’t think I have. ‘Course that might have been part of the problem.” He’s got a smile on his face and it’s all part of the play, but I’ll be the one to tell him, Raylan, that’s not exactly the problem. The problem is the not-changing. The problem is the unreachable core, the covering yourself when you no longer have to. Not changing might make you feel like you’re just, and rule-abiding, but in fact it leaves you vulnerable. And that is when the snakes come in.
