There’s a lot to get to from this week’s episode of Justified, including SPOOKY GHOSTS and HUGE PILES OF MONEY and POTENTIAL DINOSAUR ATTACKS QUESTION MARK. Let’s start at the beginning, though.
Last night marked the eighth episode of the show’s 13-episode final season. Time to get cranking away on some potential fates for our favorite collection of Kentucky hooligans and lawmen. And crank away we did. First and foremost, Ava is burned as a C.I., and everyone knows it. She doesn’t know everyone knows it, though, which puts her in the unenviable position of choosing between Boyd’s offer of $50k to run with no safety net, Raylan’s secretly revoked offer of $50k and witness protection, and a plot to steal $10 million that is looking more like a death trap now that Raylan knows about the dynamitin’. Not ideal.
And about that $10 million. Raylan and Markham’s plot to smoke out Ty Walker resulted in two major events. One, it finalized the very brief partnership between Boyd and Ty, which started with a hostage situation and ended with a handful of bullets in Ty’s back, as all good partnerships do. (R.I.P. Ty “Beardman” Walker.) Two, it led to Boyd getting a peek inside the vault when he collected his reward, and the subsequent box-stacking math that got him to the $10 million figure. You can’t just wave a piece of meat like that under the nose of a tiger like Boyd Crowder. Now he’s just hungrier. Which might have been the plan all along.
Meanwhile, at the Givens’ household…
I suppose it was reasonable to assume that Raylan would careen into a mini-spiral after being confronted with his Daddy-dom by Winona last week because Raylan has daddy issues supreme. Throwing a bunch of Arlo’s junk in a chest and lighting the whole thing on fire in his yard like a redneck Angela Bassett from Waiting to Exhale? Sure, why not? I imagine it’s a cleansing way to find closure. Nonchalantly digging up both of his parents’ graves with heavy machinery? Ummm, somewhat less healthy, even if it’s practical that he intends to sell the land after all. (“This lovely home comes with three bedrooms, one and a half baths, and the remains of its owners buried out front. Would you like to make an offer now or sleep on it?”) More the way he went about it, I guess. But then we got to Ghost Arlo.
GHOST ARLO.
I’m still not entirely sure how I felt about that. On one hand, Raymond Barry is a delight as Raylan’s scoundrel father, and I will make many exceptions in order to get more of him on my television screen. On the other hand, that was a little weird, right? Like, I do get it, and it gave us some more insight as to why Raylan went on that digging and burning rampage, but it just felt like a non-Justified thing to do. I don’t know. I’m willing to be swayed on this. Especially if Raylan has acquired a Ghost Whisperer-like ability to talk to all the deceased characters from the show. I’m picturing Ghost Mags pulling up in a pickup truck and asking for directions to Sinatra’s poker game. If we’re gonna get weird, let’s get really weird, I say.
And now, the highlights:
– Big fan of the fact that the local radio stations in the Harlan/Lexington area will apparently open up a slot in their daytime schedule to put a multi-millionaire drug kingpin slash pizza magnate on the air, live, to offer a reward/bounty for a fugitive. Also a big fan of Raylan and Boyd doing a synchronized “creep leering at passing woman” lean when Markham opened the vault. Only thing that would have made it better is one or both of them sliding sunglasses down their nose to get a better look.
– Most of the discussion about the Pizza Portal has been focused, understandably, on the millions of dollars of drug money stacked up inside its ancient bank vault cellar, but I have another question that I think is of equal importance: Do you think the pizza is good? I would pay good money to read Tim’s Yelp review of the restaurant.
– Speaking of Tim, I like that he has essentially become the Greek chorus for the show. As dramatic as it is to light a box filled with trinkets and such on fire in the middle of your front lawn, it’s, like, not a normal thing to do, and it does raise a few understandable questions for people who stumble across the charred remains of your lawn the next day. Questions, for example, like, “What happened to your lawn?” And, “Dude, what happened to your lawn?”
– Perhaps I’ve seen Jurassic Park too many times (impossible), but my first thought upon seeing this…
… in the Pizza Portal cellar wasn’t so much “someone is blasting their way up through an abandoned mine to access the vault” as it was “HOLY SH*T TYRANNOSAURUS ATTACK EVERYBODY RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.” This is one of the many reasons Raylan Givens is a better lawman than I am.
– We are learning so much about Wynn Duffy this season. First, it was the personal tanning bed in his hotel, then it was the backstory about him being a teen surf king, now it’s that he loves guacamole so much that he eats it for breakfast. Ship the man to San Diego and give him a spin-off. I’m not even joking anymore. Send Mikey, too. Mikey is the best.
– All the good lawyers have ponytails. Everyone knows this.
– Kind of a shame we didn’t get more from Garret Dillahunt. He was great, and a great fit for the show. Such is the fate of a bad guy introduced in the final season, though.
– Let us never take for granted how good the dialogue on this show is. Last night was a prime example. The scene with Art and Katherine in the hotel, the scene with Raylan and Markham in the Portal, the scene with Raylan and Boyd in front of Ava’s house (lotta front yard action last night), etc. It’s all just so… so…
Yup, same. Your thoughts below.