If he couldn't make this face, he'd be out of a job
Before I begin, it must be said in advance that Justified is the kind of program that will grow on you. Like a cyst or a carbuncle. But in all seriousness it is just enough fun to pull you in to watch the second episode, despite how dirty you feel about having to hear the theme song play through the introductory credits more than once.
Believe me, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
We begin the episode in Miami as Raylan Givens (artfully played by Timothy “If you want me to act I can scowl for you” Olyphant) approaches a criminal who has over stayed his welcome in their fair city. This scene can be viewed in one of two ways: either drawn out and down right silly or just plain bad ass. The reason for this being that after the two exchange a few words, facilitating the first among many (and I do mean many) time limit based ultimatums is proposed before it suddenly turns into the canteena scene shoot out from Star Wars: A New Hope next to a pool full of witnesses.
Because of the press fiasco that ensues, poor Raylan is transferred to a unit based in his home town in Kentucky. His methods are just not acceptable despite his attempts to convince his superiors that the shooting was “justified”. Here we have our premise and establish the setting for the rest of the show. If you can ignore the convenient writing here, you will enjoy the remainder of the episode as many interesting side characters are introduced along with the beginnings of Raylan’s back story. And what a surly man he is.
The fact his ex-wife happens to live in his home town is no accident, encounters with her are brief and somehow manages to always make Raylan seem even more angry on the inside but I find her character far more interesting than the blonde ditz of a thing that continually throws herself at him during every given opportunity despite his spurning of her overt advances. Naturally these characters will provide all the external tension that isn’t provided by the main case storyline throughout the series.
There will be sexual tension, oh yes.
Boyd, the villain of the piece during this episode, is actually endearing which surprised me since I didn’t think I could really relate all that much to a rocket launcher toting Nazi revivalist stereotype of Southern American culture. None the less, Raylan is in town to investigate an African-American church (which is really just a front for drugs somehow) getting exploded which they manage to deduce the crime could be committed by Boyd who happens to be an old friend of his. I started to ask myself if there is a character with screen time in the town of Lexington who doesn’t have some kind of connection to Raylan’s past. This factor makes the reason for him being transferred to Kentucky more reasonable, however it doesn’t seem to occur to the U.S Marshals that involving Raylan in the case would potentially compromise their efforts specifically because of his previous friendship with Boyd (who has since turned into a characterture of intolerance).
Now from what you know so far, it would be safe to assume that Raylan keeps some interesting company. The fact that it is revealed that his father is a no good crook as well makes his chosen profession rather odd but we can ignore that because there is more good stuff to come. That’s right, there is some more time constraint related gun pointing just around the corner. Dewey is a fun character in the show because whenever he is on-screen with Raylan you can almost guarantee that poor man is going to get some new kind of bad ass beat down laid on him. Raylan snatches Dewey’s shotgun off him after he hesitates then proceeds by smacking him in the face with his own steering wheel. All in the interest of sending Boyd a message or something, I wasn’t too sure to be honest but apparently it was “justified”. And that’s all you really need.
Dewey will return in the next episode to get beaten up some more, but more on that in my next Justified review.
As you might be able to tell by now, I’ve gone ahead and skipped the blow by blow approach of analysing this program and just narrowed it down to stuff I thought was interesting. If you feel like I’ve missed key story elements feel free to comment but if you are complaining about that here than really you’re on the wrong blog my friend.
Anyway, I’m going to skip ahead to some parts where bad ass stuff happens and ignore the fluffy stuff between Raylan and Blondie McWhoreface (or Ava if you don’t particularly appreciate the sexist tone of that statement) where she cleans her husband’s blood off the floor as well as other essential plot information. In case you haven’t guessed, Ava claimed the shooting was “justified”. Raylan decides to pull Dewey and his friend over and intimidates him some more. Shooting out Dewey’s windscreen from the back seat with his own gun just goes to show how inept criminals seem to be in the presence of Raylan Givens. There is a real shoot out between the U.S Marshalls and some white supremacists while Raylan runs off to save Ava from Boyd. Meanwhile after sneaking up behind the white power brothers, token black lady agent manages to land a solid one liner. Perhaps not delivered as sassy as I would have liked but the sentiment was definitely there, so there is hope for her yet as she builds her confidence in that role.
Finally we have our big show down between Boyd and Raylan, Ava happens to be there making dinner for Raylan which makes sense I guess but I really don’t know how he got into her house as easily as he did considering this woman is well capable of shooting a man. It wouldn’t be a show down without quips about what a nice dinner it is Ava’s made and what else… oh yes it’s a gun pointing scenario. This time Ava gets in on the action and goes to find her shotgun that’s just lying around in her kitchen or something. How she couldn’t have gone and grabbed that before Raylan showed up I don’t know. I’d scrutinize the severe story issues in that but why would I when there’s a three way stand off at a dinner table. When Ava comes into the room packing heat, Boyd aims his gun towards her and boom… Boyd takes a justified bullet to the chest.
There is some soppy stuff about their past that comes up around here. The flashback to their coal mining days was the slightest bit unnecessary for me personally, there could have been a far better way of setting up their deep brokeback mountain eske connection with each other than some lame five second tracking shot of them running through a collapsing mine shaft. Boyd pays him out for not killing him but really this just shows that Raylan has some ounce of restraint deep inside that surly exterior of his.
One of my favorite scenes in the episode would have to be the very last one as it sums up more about Raylan’s character than most of the previous put together. Showing up at your ex wife’s house and scaring the bejesus out of her new husband just because is for the win. She reprimands him for doing so but then goes on to say that Raylan hides his feelings well but deep down and I quote “you’re the angriest man I’ve ever met”. Really? He hides it well? Has she seen the last forty minutes beforehand or is she just oblivious about the personality of a man she used to be married to. Perhaps if she saw how Raylan treats poor Dewey each time they meet she’d see things a little differently.
