Quick Take: Justified, "The Collection"
"You are a violent man, my friend. You have left a trail of dead behind you." – Boyd Crowder
Review: Justified, "The Collection"
(S0106) It's always a good thing for Justified when Walton Goggins makes an appearance in the form of Boyd Crowder. Boyd and Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) have a unique relationship between a lawman and a criminal, one that you can't really compare to any other on television. For all of Crowder's terrible qualities (white supremacist and armed robber amongst them) he's a charming and articulate fellow, which automatically accords some respect from the likes of Raylan. But it goes much deeper than that. I was thinking about Goggins' amazing work on The Shield (as Shane Vendrell, sidekick and later bitter enemy to Michael Chiklis's Vic Mackey), and how in that world there was never anything close to real respect, let alone friendship, with the thugs and criminals the cops dealt with daily.
On Justified, the line between law abiding and law breaking is much thinner, which is exactly how exec producer and legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard sees the world himself. And for Givens, the family and cultural ties that put him close to Crowder force him, perhaps despite himself in some ways, to have a bond with the man. That ties into Givens' purposefully not killing Crowder when he had the chance. Now Boyd is in prison, has "seen the light," and has invited Raylan to join his "ministry."
Despite the ironic touch, Boyd's particular background and experience with Raylan allows him to say from behind the prison visiting area partition: "You are a violent man, my friend. You have left a trail of dead behind you."
As Justified evolves, I hope that we will not simply see "one off" episodes of Raylan's quirky lawman adventures, but we'll get to claw past Raylan's stoicism and to the heart of his deep anger (ex-wife Winona, played by Natalie Zea, calls him "the angriest man she's ever met"), about why he operates the way he does, about why he has a code.
I believe that we will see that kind of show, and that's why I'm enjoying the ride so much thus far. Raylan's encounters with his screw up dad Arlo and his semi-screw up step-mom last week also play into the notion that we'll be diving deeper into Givens' world each week. And that is certainly justified.
If Raylan was simply a stoic lawman with a code who shoots bad guys and then fades off into the night, he'd be pretty one dimensional. What makes Raylan and Justified likeable is that he has a code, but that code only goes so far. It doesn't necessarily have to extend to his romantic engagements, for instance. (Same goes for drinking on the job.) Boss man Art Mullen, played by Nick Searcy, gets the drop on Raylan's entanglement with Ava (Joelle Carter), for instance, when picking him up to go on a run to Cincinnati involving an art dealer. Art, disgruntled but sympathetic, advises Raylan to be smart as Ava is still tied up in the investigation involving her shooting her lousy husband (also a Crowder, we should add).
Raylan responds, "Let me tell you something. There are other things than smart."
It turns out the art dealings involve "Hitlers" being sold in Cincinnati. That is, original paintings by Adolph Hitler. "You know I ain't no Nazi lover," Carns the art dealer says. It further turns out that the "Hitlers" are fake Hitlers, so Carns pleads his case to the original dealer David Mortimer. Mortimer is played by Tony Hale, who I must point out is one of my favorite actors and deeply deserving of his own series (he was great fronting the web series Ctrl, produced by NBC). The plot thickens, as they say, and from there the remainder of the episode is fairly plot heavy and a bit lighter on the character stuff. Greg Davis, a hired hand on the Carns horse ranch, conspires with Caryn Carns (Katherine LaNasa), to kill her husband. Or, we should say, Caryn is the one calling the shots, literally speaking.
There's a great scene in which Raylan slyly confronts Davis. Davis is holding a pistol beneath his desk, and Raylan knows it. It's a duel of words, in a sense, and Raylan wins without having to resort to his now legendary modern day quick draw in impressing Davis that if he keeps taking his actions further, it can only end in terrible consequences. That leads into a pretty cool twisty end run in which a nice modicum of justice is levied on the baddest bad of the week (that'd be Caryn, if you follow).
We also get to see more of Winona this week, who has asked Givens to "look up some names." While it's not explicitly laid out, looks like her current husband and realtor Gary, played by William Ragsdale, is into something shady. Raylan had the opportunity to share the shadiness with Winona and perhaps earn some points with his ex-girl, but he chooses not to in order to protect her. In a somewhat similar fashion, Raylan returns to jail and asks Boyd Crowder to call off any sort of investigation into Arlo's dealings. The reason being that he has seen what obsession into family matters can do (see: the creepy art dealer's "collection" of ashes of "real Hitlers") and doesn't want to go any further down that path himself.
Justified is taking its own sort of ambling path. It's still finding its way in some fashions, but the journey's a hell of a lot of fun.
Recap: Justified, "The Collection"
After an apparent suicide on an opulent Kentucky horse farm, Raylan must resist the sexy widow as he searches for the dead man's missing art.
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