There’s plenty to get to from last night’s episode of Justified, and we will get to all of it in a moment, but first I think it’s important to point out that the last 10 minutes spoke volumes about Raylan Givens. Moments after having sex with his new social worker lady friend, he listened to her tell a heart-wrenching story about having to remove an abused and neglected child from a home while the father threatened her with violence, and by the time that story bleeped and blorped itself through his thinker, the lesson that popped out on the other side was “Hey, I can get the court to remove young Kendall Crowe from his brother’s custody because he was working behind the bar at a whorehouse, and I’ll go enforce the order by myself, with no back-up, in a room full of murderers, even though her story specifically included the phrase ‘He’d have beat me to death if the police weren’t there.'” I’m no psychologist, but that might not be the takeaway a mentally healthy person pulls from all that. It worked, thanks mainly to Kendall Crowe being the only grown-up in the room, but yeah, our hero is a bit of a sociopath. Don’t ever forget that.
Oh, and one other note: Boyd’s hair. Especially when he was meeting with Ava and Johnny in the jail. I mean, we’ve seen it spiked up to the heavens so often that sometimes it doesn’t even register anymore, but this was the first time I can remember seeing it also spiked backwards out from the back of his head in profile. It looked kind of like he dunked his head in a liquid-y gel product and then drove there at 100mph on a motorcycle, sans helmet. Amazing. One day I’m just going to collect 100 screencaps of his hair in various states of electrified disarray and post them all here with no explanation or captions. It will be my finest work.
And now, the highlights:
- Dewey and Wade’s adventure in the woods was one part The Blair Witch Project, one part the “Pine Barrens” episode of The Sopranos, and one part Homeward Bound, all shaken up and garnished with a dash of Three Stooges. Or, if you prefer a different analogy, it was like a very dark episode of Benny Hill that someone slowed down and stripped the music from.
- In a season full of mind-bending pronunciations by the Crowe family (Daryl’s attempts at “cousin” and “business,” to name two), Dewey’s work with the word “Webelo” is now the gold standard.
- Refresh my memory, which Psalm is this from again?
- I think Raylan/Tim is my third favorite Raylan pairing on the show, coming in behind Raylan/Boyd and Raylan/Art, and just ahead of Raylan/Wynn, Raylan/Rachel. It’s close, and subject to change from episode to episode, but I think that’s where I’m at now.
- That said, we were long, long overdue for some Tim sarcasm, and “History of violence, in a hurry somewhere, with a gun, victim was a CI against him… I say we let him go” really hit the spot.
- Actually, that whole scene with Raylan, Boyd, and Tim in the bar was fantastic. I kind of want to transcribe the whole thing, from “I’m not armed, as such, just transporting goods from Point A to Point B” and “And suppose… he just went fishing…” all the way until they let Boyd go. This show does that type of back and forth dialogue as well as any on television.
- This Boyd vs. Tim Scrabble game… it was a blood bath, yes?
- Let’s run down a few things we learned about Danny Crowe last night: He has a male dog named Chelsea who has giant balls, and he doesn’t take kindly to lawmen pointing this out while standing on top of the cars parked in his lawn; he sometimes wears sleeveless flannel shirts with no pants or underwear; he’s extremely trigger-happy; and he is very concerned when the bar runs out of Wild Turkey.
- “Consider what happens after what happens next.” – Raylan Givens, philosopher
- Raylan found Wade’s body thanks to a murder of crows, after Wade was quite literally “murdered” by “Crowes.” There are layers here. Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled at those birds so much. You know, if they’re gonna be helpful.
- There’s something weird about hearing Raylan talk about “pinging the GPS” and whatnot. Just doesn’t sound right coming out of his mouth. Like hearing your parents say “Twitter.”
- Okay, circling back to the stuff with the jail, am I the only one who thought the giant prison guard tasked with protecting Ava Crowder looked a little bit like a roided-out version of Mellie from Scandal? I am, aren’t I? Crap. Look, there’s no reason for this to get weird. It was just a thought.
- The whole time that little dude was trying to corner Ava, I just kept picturing her kabonging him with a frying pan. Ava don’t play. You picked the wrong one, pipsqueak. Protection or not.
- And speaking of Ava not playing, hooooooooo boy. Oh, did you get put in “the friend zone” one time? Yeah, well Johnny Crowder confessed his love for Ava, and she confessed that she’d like to see him strung up and bleeding out.
- “I’m as serious as the Pope, Johnny.”
- Compare and contrast: Johnny Crowder from last night…
- … and Nicky Augustine from last season.
- Poor Art. Flew all the way up to Detroit on short notice just to find out the guy he needs to talk to was in his backyard all along. Jesus Christ, Detroit Marshal’s office. You couldn’t, like, take some notes, ask Art’s questions, and relay the message? Get it together. That was wasteful government spending at its most egregious. (But at least Art got a nice little Justin Bieber burn in there. AND SO TIMELY. I guess it all worked out in the end.)
- Well, it looks like Raylan’s “STAY OUTTA KENTUCKY, BUB” speech to Hot Rod didn’t work. Now it’s Boyd’s turn. And Boyd’s already stacking the bodies Raylan just threatened to stack. Which is funny, because Raylan is usually the man of action, and Boyd is usually the man of words. Things are getting intense. This is terrific news.
- Oh, and in case you missed it last night, best fundraiser ever.
Okay, that sums it up. Feel free to chime in below. As always, thanks to Chet Manley for the GIFs. Please do not leave me for dead in the woods after shooting me and beating me with a Wee-buh-lo shovel.
