The most important part of last night’s episode of Justified was the end, when a bunch of the loose ends from the first two episodes started knotting themselves together, especially when it comes to Boyd. We — and he — finally found out what exactly he’s been doing, and who he’s robbing, and how it all ties in to Ty and his beard. It’s very exciting stuff, to be sure, and it is all going to have to wait for a few minutes because Ava got druuuuuuuuuunk and that’s what we’re talking about right now.
How fun was that opening scene? Just Ava and Boyd drunk as can be, yammering about high school and who may or may not be throwing up in the near future. And then Ava getting hauled in for a meeting with law enforcement, DWS, (Driving While Sh*tfaced) with increasingly angry elephants marching around in her skull. And then Ava doing hungover recon work in the basement of a pizza restaurant that used to be a bank and may contain treasures in its old vault. I could have watched The Adventures of Slowly Sobering-Up Ava Crowder for a full hour. Maybe she and Choo-Choo could have shared a pepperoni pie while she extracted more information out of him. Or maybe she could have just gotten hammered again. Ava seems like a fun drunk. I think that’s my point.
And now, the highlights:
– One other note about that opening scene in the bar. The episode was directed by RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, who pitched the scene thusly, according to showrunner Graham Yost in his weekly postmortem at Yahoo:
“So he was really engaged and emailing me, ‘Hey, how about if I start this scene here with Boyd and Ava lying on the bar, because one time I found myself at three in the morning at a closed bar in New York and I was lying on the bar with a woman.’ And we said, ‘Okay, let’s do that.'”
Being a showrunner is cool because sometimes RoboCop emails you drinking stories. That’s what I’m taking away from this.
– But anyway, the ending. Turns out the person Boyd was robbing at the behest of Katherine and Wynn is Avery Marcum, a mustache-less menacing weed baron played by Sam Elliott, who (a) knew Boyd back when Boyd was just a tiny spiky-haired tyke; (b) is Katherine’s deceased husband’s former business partner; and (c) is currently sleeping with Katherine. Quite a web we’ve got spinning here.
– Speaking of Wynn Duffy, it was somehow both shocking and the least surprising thing I’ve ever seen when he stepped out of that personal tanning bed he keeps in the luxury hotel suite he currently resides in. The complete list of Wynn Duffy’s passions now reads as follows: crime, tanning, and women’s tennis. The man is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wearing a Speedo.
– I really enjoyed the scene where Ty politely confronted Boyd in his bar because it referenced two of my favorite Justified things: One, the fact that the bar continues to be frequented by crime lords and their menacing underlings exclusively, and two, Boyd’s pattern of loquaciousness, which was turned on its head by having Ty yammer away while Boyd attempted to cure his hangover with a greasy cheeseburger. Justified is getting a tad meta on us and I kind of love it.
– Oh, and Boyd got kidnapped from the bar, too, bringing our total of people abducted from that particular establishment to, and I think my math is correct here, 5000.
– Poor, poor Rachel is starting to know Art’s pain, specifically as it relates to Raylan running around Harlan investigating criminal enterprises how he sees fit, which occasionally involves grabbing a low-level Crowder commando by the jumblies after heaving him into a wall…
… and then, well, saying this…
… when said commando chooses to disregard a perfectly reasonable warning. Add this to the time he tased a dude in the nuts way back when, and Tim’s delightful habit of announcing what does and does not give him an erection, and you’ve got a heck of a Wiener Stew brewing in that Marshal’s office.
– Unrelated to anything, Timothy Olyphant did an interview with Bon Appetite last week where he said this collection of words: “Yeah. I’ve taken a milk-art class; I can put a heart on top of the cappuccino. I’m very proud of that.”
– Do … do we think the pizza at Pizza Portal is any good? It seemed to be jumping at lunchtime, and I have no doubt that Avery Marcum runs a fine restaurant/criminal front, but all I can picture right now is Choo-Choo in a chef hat trying to toss pizza dough and getting it stuck on a ceiling fan 15 feet in the air.
– The line “Have you seen Chinatown, Boyd?” brings up an important point: If Boyd Crowder ran a weekly movie night and discussion at his bar, would you go, even knowing all the stuff I just mentioned about the bar having easily the highest per-customer rate of violent crime of any drinking establishment in the country? I think I would.
All in all, another solid episode, and another step toward our conclusion. Lot going on already. My recommendation: throw on a comfy robe, grab a cucumber water, then sit back and enjoy.
Thanks as always to Chet for the GIFs.
