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Season 2, Episode 7: “Save My Love” It’s every...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 20:44:00 -0500

Season 2, Episode 7: “Save My Love”

It’s every movie slogan, every television teaser, every scrap of copy written at the eleventh hour because you know you haven’t got anything better than: How Far Would You Go For Love? I couldn’t tell you how often I’ve heard that and not thought a thing of it, how-far-would-you-go I mean, I would go just as far as necessary, I mean, I would probably lay a cold compress on his head or whatever, what are you getting at, exactly? Are you getting at death, or are you getting at where my soul will hang, before death takes it for its own?

How far would you go, and then, once you’ve gone that far, would it feel very far at all? Winona took not just a hundred dollar bill but all of the hundred dollar bills, it seems like, in a leather bag that is frankly too good for gym clothes. She could have confessed to Raylan the night before, or the morning after, or any time around in between but she waits until there is a very good chance that she is going to be in very big trouble. And he can only say, “Wow.” Her words from before ringing in his ears like he’s been sleeping under the pipe organ: “I think you’re gonna save me.”

To save Winona, Raylan must also get himself in the line of trouble. Which is his job, isn’t it, getting in trouble when other people are getting in trouble? But it’s different, here, because there aren’t any guns and there aren’t any bad guys, at least not traditional ones. There’s his ex-wife who has made a mistake, his ex-wife who he loves. Everyone can make a mistake, which is why she got away from him in the first place, why things between them always seem to be tenuous. Why Winona looks down, and then up. Why he sets his jaw, like he must always have done before.

Everyone can make a mistake, which is why now he’s shuffling suspiciously around his own office, trying to retrieve the evidence before the evidence can make her trouble real trouble. He’s so bad at breaking the law, it’s almost charming. Picking up the hat and putting it down, going down the elevator and going up. In “Blaze of Glory” Winona reminded him what it was that broke them apart: his inability—and unwillingness—to put his marriage before his career. And yet here, he hardly hesitates before he’s risking his badge for her. Sighs, sure, looks incredibly irritated, but does it, and does it, and between that and some convenient conveniences Winona might actually get away with it. But for Art. But for Raylan standing between his love and his conscience, as his conscience looks on with factory-new hearing aids turned up.

So what then is the difference between Raylan then and Raylan now, or in fact is there no difference at all? Was it just that Winona was asking the wrong questions, when she was asking. When she said, let’s have children, should she have asked, what would you do for my love? And when he said anything, should she have said, children? Only then, reverse it, and wonder: what did Raylan ask of her, and did she deny it. Because what-would-you-do cuts both ways, Winona. I do believe that what she did was a mistake, and not some sublimated revenge, but then again. Will she take any pleasure in this, in being saved by the man who before couldn’t seem to give her what she wanted?

And behind them, a simmer begins. A suit from the coal mine wants Boyd on her side, wants Boyd on her side against the Bennetts, heaven help it-all. Wynn Duffy is back, and Gary with his fine pens and horse-related opportunities. You can be ready for anything, if you are Raylan at full strength, but you cannot be ready for everything that these meetings portend. Not if you have already gone and given everything for love. Exposed yourself, and that love, to something much worse than the lack of it.

Season 2, Episode 6: “Blaze of Glory” It can’t...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:32:00 -0400

Season 2, Episode 6: “Blaze of Glory”

It can’t be easy to be a man getting older in the vicinity of Raylan. Near his incessant good looks and youthful disregard for policy, it can’t be easy to be Art, newly outfitted with hearing aids, time and time and time again forced to rein in that spark. Can’t be easy, either, to be a recently-paroled bank robber whose self-inflicted disease forces him to rely on an oxygen tank and a pack of dumb men, young men. Art once thought he’d make his name on Frank Reasoner, and Frank Reasoner once thought he’d always be one step away from men making names. Didn’t work out the way either of them thought. On paper it appears Art got the better end of things—he’s got charge of an office, after all—but you wonder what Art means when he says he meant to make his name on Frank Reasoner. Make his name with what goal in mind, with what would come after that? Did Art maybe never mean to be in charge of this marshal’s office, wagging his finger and drinking whiskey. Did he maybe mean to be someone else, did he maybe have some potential untapped? Did he mean, I wonder, to change?

That word again, I know it. That thing you want from others, but hardly ask of yourself. That look in Winona’s eyes when she gets Raylan down to the evidence lock-up, gets wistful about a yard full of little Raylans with little guns, gets to wondering out loud what-if this-time-around. Could things be different if she and Raylan were together, could things be different now that their chemistry is undeniable, now that she stays awake at night staring at the ceiling and thinking of him. But what is she asking him, when she asks him if things could be different, when she is asking for his change. Is she just asking if he would consider giving up the marshal service in order to raise a family? Or is she asking if he’s got tin where his heart should be?

When he dodges the question, Winona must hear: no, I don’t choose you, no, I’ll never choose you. She must hear that his work is more important to him than anything. And I can’t say I blame her, not wanting to start a family with such youthful disregard for policy. But it’s getting to be clear that Winona is working herself overtime, fitting square pegs in round holes. Making everything the way things should be, where should be is according to some vision she had some time long ago. She wants things that are reasonable to want, she wants love and companionship and a partner but she is ignoring the evidence that proves these things come in odd-sized packages. She thought Gary fit the mold, and he did on paper, but Gary turned out to be a mess of a man who’s bet their house on a horse. She thought Raylan didn’t fit the mold, and he didn’t, on paper, but Raylan has turned out to be a strange sort of constant. A man who loves her. A man who wants to be with her. And a man who will cover for her when she does something incredibly stupid.

Almost too stupid to be believed, but a woman in trouble can do many things. Can shoot a man, even, can lie to law enforcement to cover for him, straight up-and-down like Ava does for Boyd. Hard to believe but not impossible to believe. Taking money from the evidence lock-up was harmless, anyway, a victimless crime. Or not even a full crime, just a meditation on one. And maybe that’s just how bad it’s got for Winona, when we weren’t looking, when we were just meeting her for another night at the motel. That look in Winona’s eyes when she stood at the front of the line at the bank, unwilling to go forward. Perhaps a part of her has started to recognize that her vision was cracked from the beginning and has started to act on its own. Raylan scolds her for not releasing the money during the robbery, victim-blames until she changes the subject but maybe it doesn’t matter, how good Raylan trained her. Because deeper than any training laid on you by others is the pain you lay in yourself. A pain that begins to dictate your life, the deeper it sits.

Season 2, Episode 5: “Cottonmouth” What are you? Are...

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:07:00 -0400

Season 2, Episode 5: “Cottonmouth”

What are you?

Are you someone who accepts himself, a gunslinger-lawman, hillbilly-whisperer who easily acknowledges that he did indeed tase a suspect in the nuts because what of it? What of it, that is who he is, Raylan Givens, in fact you are lucky he didn’t have a chance to get a good shot off. There are many Raylans to love but “Cottonmouth” gives us the one who lays back, infuriatingly confident and bold. Not even Arlo’s brief appearance can ruffle Raylan today, as today he is the thing that he is, the thing that everyone knows him to be. Gunslinger-whisperer, hillbilly-lawman. Before I have wondered, is it Raylan’s confidence that feeds his drive? Is it his steady hand that makes him so terribly good at wearing a badge? But it is not, I don’t think, anymore. What it is, is, he’s smart and he is prideful. Terribly, terribly prideful. You tell this man, this smart man, that he’s seen just but the tip of the iceberg? And he will do what it takes to see the rest of it. And why not? It’s who he is. And he can’t change that.

Right?

You can’t change. You can’t change in Harlan. You can’t change, Boyd to Ava like he is in confession, or interrogation. Boyd’s been cutting deals with himself, daily deals like you can imagine, today I will not, today I will not. But today he did. Accepted a challenge, three broadforeheaded co-workers who have what they feel is a very smart plan. A heist, in fact, and I do love a heist. Boyd agrees to be a man in it, but Boyd—no matter what he tells you, later—had one foot out from the beginning. To Ava, later, he says he had no choice, but then to Ava, later, he passes her a bag full of money. He had no choice because this is who he is, he is a man who can reverse-engineer a plot and then shoot the last survivor twice, for insurance. Only what is not yet clear, to me and not to him either, is if Boyd understands the difference between being a man who is because he can and being a man who is because he is. Because we all have got tools. We all have got smarts and we all have got guns. But we haven’t all got to say yes to the broadforeheaded men who mean us harm. Unless—it’s not the men. And it’s not the money, really. Unless what it is at the core of Boyd is not that he’s a villain, not ever that he was, but that he is an incorrigible believer in perfection. Perfection, as God. And perfection, as love. As a bag of money is but a road to.

Ava must will lie for him, I can’t see that she won’t. Women in Harlan love lying for their men almost nearly as much as the men love lying for the women. Brilliantly and on a shoestring Boyd did a fine job keeping the evidence at a low simmer. Which is not to say it can’t be traced, of course it can, but it’ll be by whom, and for what purpose, that makes all the difference. As ever the scene with perhaps the most tension was the simplest, that of Raylan visiting Boyd to ask a few questions about one of Bowman’s old rackets. Boyd and Raylan together in the half-sunlight, bad men looking on from the porch, there is nothing so charged. Boyd has in these scenes the confidence of Raylan, and Raylan has in these scenes the calculation of Boyd. Between them is trust, though not the noble kind. Just the sort where you trust you know the man across from you. Trust that doesn’t change, because neither does the man.

But I keep saying change. And I imagine you might want to know. Change—from what? Where is the root, the source of the you-you-are, the point from which you no longer change? What were you like, at 14, growing up in Harlan? Raylan is asked, and let’s all ask it. Of him and of Loretta McCready, slinging weed and talking trash to the 5-0 like phew it ain’t nothing so much as air. Are you born confident with a gun in one hand and a taser in the other, born trembling with a Bible in one hand and a bag of money in the other? Or is it hammered through you, like Mags with her ball-peen and Coover saying he’s sorry to her. We say nature versus nurture but it stands to reason it might not be one or the other. Might be a pinch of both plus chemistry, plus the shape of the world as you come into it. So it might also stand to reason that there are many ways to make, or save, a man.

Boyd and Raylan, two sides of a wooden nickel, Raylan not the only man who can mete out justice and Boyd not the only man who can believe in perfection. Raylan just a hint of sheepish as he sits down next to Loretta and passes her a cell phone, tells her he’ll come for her no matter when, or why. Loretta’s face goes hard, then soft again as he leaves. Not for a second a young woman who needs saving but also not for second is there a being who can’t use some help, sometimes. The phone will beat under her floorboards, reminding her there are men who are smarter and do not resent her for being what she’s barely grown into. Whether she pulls up those floorboards—whether she’ll want to, whether she’ll have the opportunity—might be the final word on what it means to change, in Harlan.

(screencap via)

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

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:06:00 -0500

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 3: “The I of the Storm” Folks...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:03:00 -0500

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 2: “The Life Inside” A pregnant...

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:08:00 -0500

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 1: “The Moonshine War” Last season...

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:52:00 -0500

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 1, Episode 13: “Bulletville” Was there ever...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:32:00 -0500

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 12: “Fathers and Sons” Over the...

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:56:46 -0400

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 One, Episode 11: “Veterans” It is of course...

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:05:00 -0400

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 10: “The Hammer” Oh my god,...

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:06:00 -0400

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 1, Episode 9: “Hatless” “Little old to...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 21:24:00 -0400

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 8: “Blowback” How many times have...

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:56:00 -0400

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.

Sorry hang on, just this one more thing before we get to proper...

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 09:30:02 -0400

Sorry hang on, just this one more thing before we get to proper assessments. The hostage-taker in “Blowback” is of course played by the fully excellent W. Earl Brown, previously known to English-language cursing completists/Timothy Olyphant aficionados as Dan Dority of Deadwood. And so, above please find a charming Dan Dority scene, that is also brief, that needs neither introduction nor prior knowledge of the show.

Now I’m going to go get some thoughts together, and I had best not come out of this goddamn kitchen and find goddamn cinnamon on the fucking meeting table.

Get yer smug faces out, we’re about to officially...

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:16:56 -0400

Get yer smug faces out, we’re about to officially requisition some chicken!

Season 1, Episode 7: “Blind Spot” Seems like...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:58:00 -0400

Season 1, Episode 7: “Blind Spot”

Seems like everybody’s trying to tell everybody else something. Something important. Something hard to say just right. Johnny Crowder for instance says he’s just trying to warn Ava, says all it is is he doesn’t want a pretty girl to get hurt. Except instead of being decent and straightforward about it he chooses to make a loud shopping list, duct tape and a chainsaw and plastic sheeting, yeah, in case there’s a mess. Thank goodness for Aunt Helen, that beacon of directness who ends the farce by dint of a shotgun pointed at Johnny’s nethers. Ava seems fairly capable of handling herself, except she’s constantly got the eyes of the town on her, and trying to do anything under that amount of scrutiny is going to feel precarious. Even if it’s a thing as simple as living. Even if it’s a thing of sorting out how she feels about the fact that, right. She’s killed a man. “‘s a big deal, innit?” she says and Raylan “I am not completely unaware of my motivations in life” Givens doesn’t try to tell her anything. And she says, to his silence: “Hmm.”

Art is trying to tell Raylan something, and he’s doing it with shouting. I like seeing Raylan get yelled at, I like the way he sucks lemons but won’t lie when asked a direct question. Except something Art hasn’t learned is that yelling is not the way to get at Raylan, he’s clearly had enough of that in his life and the noise in that man’s head cannot be turned up any further. Only way to get to Raylan, it seems, is to be Boyd, quietly quoting Romans 12:19: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place to wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, said the Lord.” Raylan slamming Boyd against the prison wall is both an excellent fanfic prompt and Raylan’s way of weeping uncontrollably. He is trying to tell Boyd something, in his coming to visit him over and over like Boyd is his legit crimefighting sidekick, the Mulder to his Scully, or more accurately, the Neal Caffrey to his Peter Burke. You start to get to wondering how it is that Raylan ever solved a crime without Boyd nearby. It didn’t occur to you at all, Raylan, that the shooter might be after you? I guess, yeah, I guess that’s the blind spot. But from back here it almost seems like an excuse. Which might be what Boyd was trying to say.

Winona’s trying to tell Ava something, or maybe she’s trying to tell herself something. Don’t get involved with a Leo, sorry, a L(aw)E(nforcement)O(fficer), or do, it’s your funeral, what am I even saying, ha ha ha ha ha. Is Winona feeling softer toward Raylan ever since he tore the labels off of some beers and gave to her a tiny piece of his honest heart? Does she miss him, is she jealous. It’s a hell of a fun scene to watch, I’ll admit (“You a lawyer yourself, Winona?”), though the last thing you want for your show with your two smart female characters is Bechdel disapproval. So therefore, giving the benefit of the doubt, this scene is about Winona’s doubt plus also another example of Ava having people give her unsolicited, un-useful advice. For god’s sake, she shot her husband. And her support system currently consists of a man who gets pissy about Bible verses and an old woman who’s quick with a shotgun. Someone better put out a hand for Ava Crowder, and soon.

The monster of the week has a fair twist, good casting (really liked our Marc Maron-looking hitman), an excellent piece of episode-ending violence, and the news that Raylan’s got another enemy, the Flordia cartel. Sheriff Hunter stars in the Parable of The Man Who Liked Revenge Too Much, And Also Was a Lawman In Case You Thought They Were Above It. Except of course Raylan’s not going to learn that lesson, not yet. If we’re talking about a blind spot, let’s talk about his likely inability to see himself in Sheriff Hunter, because after all, Sheriff Hunter turned out bad. Got himself involved with lawbreakers. Would Raylan ever do that, I can’t say never. We’ve met his father. But the way he talks to Sheriff Hunter in the car, sassing him like what Hunter’s doing is the dumbest dumbest dumbest thing ever, really? If you think you’re that far above it, your fall is going to hurt bad.

And, oh Boyd. We have a new ally in believing he’s full of it, where “it” is a nefarious plan, and that ally is none other then Bo Crowder. Pop spends the whole episode getting talked about and arrives just as his boy’s clerical collar begins to run askew: “I might be a man of the cloth…BUT I SURE AS HELL AIN’T NO LAAAAAAAAMB!” Perversely, Boyd’s in a spot reminiscent of Ava’s: he’s protected so long as his protection is around, but his protection won’t make promises. Bo will be free of prison soon, and Raylan, as Art points out, is not likely to stay by Ava’s side for the rest of her life. Meanwhile, Bo hasn’t the slightest idea what Boyd’s game is, which tells us first that Boyd has a game and second that Boyd’s game is good enough to keep his father off his back and third that Boyd doesn’t trust his father. In an episode of people talking in circles, Boyd is the unparalleled champ, with his mouth that doesn’t quit and his close-cut words of faith. You know the rule. Men of God are not to be touched. But the hell of it is, you might not believe him, we might none of us believe him, but back there, up in Romans 12:19, that’s about the best advice a man could give Raylan, or Bo, or Hunter. Leave the vengeance to God, or Whomever. Only the lucky ones get away, and there aren’t many of them.

Season 1, Episode 6: “The Collection”What I’d...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 20:33:00 -0400

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.

Season 1, Episode 5: “The Lord of War and Thunder” I...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:51:00 -0400

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.

Season 1, Episode 4: “Long in the Tooth” So Raylan...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:39:00 -0400

Season 1, Episode 4: “Long in the Tooth”

So Raylan “Ray-Ray” Givens, the man with the hat and the swagger, he once upon a time took the word of a cartel accountant, all right, he took it right on down next door to 31 flavors and had himself an ice cream cone while he waited for that cartel accountant to be ready for cuffs first and a life in witness protection second. Would be a nice story except then this cartel accountant, name of Rollie Pike, he went and skipped out, reformed himself, became a dentist for the uninsured of Southern California. So I suppose it’s still a nice story. At least until Mr. Pike finds himself wronged by a snitty bastard and takes it upon himself to extract justice (figurative) and fillings (literal), without first administering anesthesia. Also in a parking lot.

Rollie Pike does not have a gun, which is important. He is a man of some moral fiber, which is also important. Compare and contrast, if you will, between the fates delivered unto Rollie and the two cartel thugs pursuing him. Rollie is a man on the run, pulling along with him a digestively-impaired girlfriend-receptionist (Mindy! Who is excellent!), seeking only a beach and a beer and Belize. When Raylan tracks him down, that offer of witness protection is still on the table, despite that embarrassing 31 flavors slip of six years prior. Rollie Pike is all right by Raylan, who tells him on the phone, “I thought I had you measured,” in a way that means “I still think I have you measured.” Our marshal judges folks fast, then sticks to those judgements. Which is why you do not see our marshal fumble with a draw, which is why he is so dead-eyed when he is telling a man of his intention to kill him. There is no hemming and hawing with a gun, is there, there is only “Use it, or throw it away.” You can wing a man, if you like, but that’s just a sign you don’t really know why you have your weapon out at all.

The thugs, meanwhile, are hired, and not very bright, and armed. They’re doing a job. They are “bad men.” They are also borderline about to break into “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” all the time. Also they’re fun, and I like them. “You see the one in the hat?” “The tall one?” … “The one in the hat.” Raylan kind of likes them too, somehow, likes them enough to crawl into the back seat of their car and grin at them like hello, Christmas presents I found early. He even gives them choices, though he knows they won’t take them. He’s read ‘em before they even open their mouths.

So: Raylan takes down the thugs in a pretty little quick-draw high-sun highway showdown. Then he walks through the desert—a good long walk, so long he’s got to unbutton his shirt and sweat just so—and shoots not to hurt but to protect the cartel accountant. Except by then, of course, Rollie cannot be saved. He’s got blood pouring out of his stomach and that’s not even the worst part, the worst part is that as his seams have started to stretch he has noticed, in himself, a lack of good. An ability to harm. Alan Ruck does a beautiful job with Rollie, flashing between earnest hope and furious frustration in a way that only Alan Ruck can. When he throws himself in front of the sniper he says it’s because he doesn’t want that witness protection job at Wal-Mart, but I think it’s because Wal-Mart wouldn’t even be the worst part of living on, for him. It would be knowing what he’s capable of. It would be knowing that he never did separate himself from the bad things he assisted, not really.

“Long in the Tooth” is full of relative justice, and not just Raylan’s. Everyone seems to be operating under their own commandments. There’s Mrs. Pena, who is grateful to Rollie for caring for her daughter’s teeth but not so grateful that she’s not willing to dial 911 and call him in. There’s Mrs. Pena’s father, who is grateful to Rollie enough to mislead the marshals, but still willing to give up the truth when presented with Raylan’s soft-talked argument about the kind of danger Rollie is in. There’s Mindy, who will stick to Rollie’s side so long as he stops lying to her. And, best of all, there’s our grumpy old Vietnam veteran who lost his leg to diabetes, not the war, but he thanks you for thanking him for your service. He seems like trouble at first, calling out our cartel dentist as he tries to steal a car, but is easily placated by car-shaped payoff of his own. Placated enough that when he is pulled over by a couple of cops who do not know what the Mekong Delta is, he stubbornly, truculently covers for Rollie. He does it because he liked Rollie, or he liked the car, or he hates the fresh-faced cops, or all of those things, but it doesn’t matter exactly. He’s operating on his own code, like the rest.

Rachel is also dealt a hit by our crabby veteran, who accuses her of dropping her Rs to get in good with him. It’s one of many swipes she takes in the episode, unfairly so, I’m going to say. She’s assigned lead on the case, much to Raylan’s displeasure, and it doesn’t take him long to dismantle her authority. He starts by apologizing, backhandedly, about how he hopes he hasn’t upset her by being so awesome ever since he got to Kentucky. When she has the gall to admit that yes, she is a little annoyed with the way he’s been dipped in gold, he bites back that she’s stupid, he’s good at his job, and furthermore, if she wanted, she could also wear a big hat. To which she is like, whatever. I had high hopes for Rachel in this episode, but soon enough she’s held to the background, watching Raylan get the right information at the right time and then do the right thing in the—well, his way. On the ride home, Raylan asleep, she slips his hat off, tries it on. Looks pleased, momentarily. Until he opens his big stupid swagger mouth and asks if the hat fits. Her face hardens. She says no. He holds out his hand, and she gives it back.

I cannot tell if we’re meant to be on Raylan’s side in this little conflict, because I’m not, in particular. I would rather have seen Rachel succeed, I am never really interested in the Hero is Right All The Time Show. Watching her watch him talk to Mr. Pena, I suppose, we’re meant to see Rachel understanding that Raylan is more than a holster and a nice set of teeth. And he is, but we know that. We know he’s good at his job. But he’s also a loner, going off on that desert trot with nothing but a gun and a badge and a Blackberry, that’s ridiculous. I mean absolutely I love watching it, but it is ridiculous. So let’s not judge Rachel so harshly, Raylan, I think you could use her, I think you could use each other. And furthermore it’s not like you’ve been so hot at judging women, it’s not like you’ve all the time figured them out quite as fast as you’ve figured out those hired thugs.

So we’re going to talk about “Long in the...

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 23:58:45 -0400

So we’re going to talk about “Long in the Tooth” in a second, but first, can we just. With this, can we just have a moment, all of us? Light a candle, or, shake some juniper, you know, however you thank your god.