Here are some things that happened in the first five minutes of last night’s season premiere of Justified: A mysterious, seemingly felonious parachuter from the past crash-landed to his death in a cul-de-sac; a very attractive bail bonds lady bared her butt; Raylan quoted The Big Lebowski; a fugitive tried to curry favor with his ex by bringing his kids Happy Meals; and Raylan apprehended said fugitive — after they both pulled guns on each other, obviously — by shooting the steering wheel of his car so the airbag exploded into his face. All of that happened before the theme song. If the rest of the season maintains a similar pace, I will need to be hooked up to a heart monitor by February.
More highlights and a bunch of GIFs after the jump. There’s a lot to get to. Let’s dig in.
- We got our first glimpse of Patton Oswalt as Constable Bob, and he is at least as mall cop-y and self-important as I hoped he’d be, as evidenced by his demand that people pull on him so he can turn them into beef stew, and his go-bag “in case sh-t goes Road Warrior.” Please stay exactly this frosty throughout the season. More would be too much, less might not be enough.
- Boyd is back, and doing lots of Boyd things. I’ve said this many times, but there are not enough backwoods Southern Oxy dealers who can comfortably quote Psalms, Isaac Asimov, and John Maynard Keynes as part of threats aimed at newly-Saved lackies who are holding out on them.
- Speaking of Boyd — which I will be doing a lot throughout the course of this season, because he delights me to no end — I really enjoyed the exchange he and his Mitch Hedberg-looking buddy had on the bridge at the end of the episode. “You kill people?” “People have been killed.” Boyd would make a great criminal defense lawyer if he ever decides to give up on the drug business.
- We also got a bunch of great lines from Raylan last night: The Lebowski reference, “Ain’t gonna cover that up with the smell of baking cookies,” the speech about assholes (“You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”), “Jesus, girl. You just showed me your titties 45 minutes ago,” etc. Sometimes the dialogue on this show is so good I feel like I should just post a PDF of the script and some GIFs and call it a day.
- On that note, Justified gets a lot of credit for being badass and action-packed, rightfully so, but it is also really, really funny sometimes. The old man in the hardware store being one example. His creepy, satisfied smile after being flashed by a teenage girl, and his matter-of-fact description of it (“She flashed me her titties and scooted out the back”), cracked me up.
- How much happened in last night’s episode? I’m on my sixth bullet point and I am just now mentioning that a drug-addled prostitute shot a furry — a local judge, mind you — because his bear costume was too realistic and she got scared.
- Ava seems like a tough but fair madam. Just don’t gripe about being hit.
- So … #TeamBartenderLindsey?
- I am incredibly intrigued by the snake-handling preacher, not only because I’m looking forward to the inevitable face-off with Boyd (a former Man of God himself), but also because the actor who plays him, Joseph Mazzello, played Tim in Jurassic Park. I think that’s important.
- REMINDER: Raylan is impossibly cool and tough, but he is kind of an awful marshal.
- Any finally, HOLY SH-T, ARLO.
Two notes about the GIFs: First, I’ve slideshowed them this time, only because our pal Chet Manley made a bunch of high quality ones and I don’t want to lock up your computers and phones. And second, the last slide is NSFW, unless you work somewhere where sexy bail bondswoman butt is above board. In which case, congrats on your cool job.
