My first gif! Or cinemagraph, or cinemagif, or whatever these things are called. Watch out. I’ve gone to the dark side.
No bother! Good question. I wanted to post it anyway, and post it this way since Tumblr won’t allow replies on asks. For me, it’s Harlan Roulette for her classy, awesome gifs, and of course the greatness of Fuck Yeah Justified, and then those like Hasser and Orcses who post beautiful things. Honestly, I’m lazy. When you guys reblog/like/reply, I find you that way instead of tracking the Justified tag[s]. Because of that I know there’s a lot I’m missing.
So, does anyone want to reply with some blogs? It feels like such a small community sometimes, which is great, which is perfect. It’s like we all get to participate in our own different way. I love finding out who we all are.
Of course, now the best Ale-8 is arguably the Tim Gutterson Ale-8 Molotov Cocktail Special.
On the subject of Kentucky: this was one of the first details, outside of the pilot, to make me go, whoa, someone is doing their homework. Boyd writing that note to Ava by the six-pack of Ale-8.
I’m from North Carolina. My mom’s family has roots in east Tennessee. I can’t claim to know Kentucky the same way— or be so condescending as to think they’re interchangable— but there are things about it I do know like home. And however much the show is handicapped by filming in LA, there’s the part where the Ale-8’s and the Piggly Wiggly’s, on top of the coal strikes and the feud culture and the bluegrass and the barbecue, show overwhelmingly they’re paying attention, they’re saying, hey, this belongs to this place.
I still look for those bottles every time I watch Cottonmouth. I have this story in my head where Ava likes Ale-8 and before they ever went around sitting on porches, that’s what Boyd would bring home.
“Far from condescending to southeastern Kentucky, or its residents, the show relies on an exaggerated version of the real thing. This grants Justified a sense of place, and its characters a home, that makes the story more durable, and far more interesting, than the millionth iteration of Law & Order or yet another serial killer drama. It may be one of the only good contemporary TV shows set in the South, but there should be some consolation in the fact that it’s better than most American shows, regardless of setting.”
— Justified at home in Kentucky :: Oxford American
This is a great piece in the Oxford American about one of the greatest of Justified’s great things: its sense of place. I’m so tired of the idea that generic = universal. No. Be specific to a place. Love a place. Ground it in home. The more specific it is, the more right and true you are to this one place and time, that’s when it’s universal. It reminds me of an old interview with David Simon of The Wire, where one of the things he said has stuck with me for years:
“There are two ways of traveling. One is with a tour guide, who takes you to the crap everyone sees. You take a snapshot and move on, experiencing nothing beyond a crude visual and the retention of a few facts. The other way to travel requires more time— hence the need for this kind of viewing to be a long-form series or miniseries, in this bad metaphor— but if you stay in one place, say, if you put up your bag and go down to the local pub or shebeen and you play the fool a bit and make some friends and open yourself up to a new place and new time and new people, soon you have a sense of another world entirely. We’re after this: Making television into that kind of travel, intellectually. Bringing those pieces of America that are obscured or ignored or otherwise segregated from the ordinary and effectively arguing their relevance and existence to ordinary Americans. Saying, in effect, This is part of the country you have made. This too is who we are and what we have built. Think again, motherfuckers.
And of course the last thing is that on some level, you have to love people. All different kinds. That seems to me a prerequisite for capturing dialogue well. Stand around and listen.”
At the time, it was the sadness that no one had done that for this place, my place. This little segregated piece of the ordinary. But now: “Think again, motherfuckers.”
In the Oxford article, there’s a link to an interview with Goggins in The Kentuckian, and he talks about wanting to give back to Harlan some of the debt the show owes. In a huge way, though? I think they already have.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword, right?”
“I suppose you’re gonna say ‘I told you so.’”
I’ll never stop eating it up, never ever, the patterns and parallels and contrasts of the two kids who once ran like hell in that mine. I mean, isn’t that why we sink our teeth into stories? Isn’t that why stories sink their sharp teeth into us? They give us the patterns and parallels we can’t see in real life.
Sigh.
gstrnat
Thank you!
I was all, “I’m going to take a nice long break and it’s gonna be so nice after all that watching and writing,” and I lasted… two weeks. No dice. (Hypothetical question. Is it re-watching if you never stop?)
4x13 – Ghosts
“Tell him the game’s the game, but you don’t go after a man’s family.”
The scene with Raylan and Boyd in the truck. Thirteen episodes of the season, fifty-two episodes all told, and that’s what I want to know, who wrote the scene with Raylan and Boyd in the truck? Was it one of those full-grown, first-draft lightning strikes of brilliance that stayed untouched throughout? Was it a never-ending revision, a head-acher or hair-puller, everybody on staff and on set tweaking word-by-word down to the wire? Probably, someplace in between but, as much as I’d like to believe there’s a brain that has these voices so clear in their head, I’m guessing it’s closer to the latter. The whole conversation, the blows land with millimeter-precision, not inches. It’s effortless in the way the work of blood and sweat and tears usually seems to be.
Boyd: You know what I think, Raylan? I think you’re just jealous that I’ve got to open a present that will never be under your Christmas tree.
Raylan: I think, you love anything lets you put your head on the pillow at night believing you ain’t the bad guy.
Boyd: So you face off with Nicky. And he says ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, never even knew you had a family,’ then what? You tell him anything he says can be used against him?
Raylan: Nothing gonna be used against him. This ends tonight.
Boyd: Well, maybe you get him to pull. Count it down like you did that old gun thug in Miami?
Raylan: Figure if it ain’t broke.
Boyd: Well, what if he won’t pull?
Raylan: They always pull.
Boyd: What if he won’t? Well, I guess you’ll just murder him where he sits. You know what I’m wondering? Is what do you tell yourself at night when you lay your head down, allows you to wake up in the morning pretending that you’re not the bad guy?
It’s Bulletville. All over again, or the incarnation of it four seasons later: that night drive to Bulletville to save Ava’s life, Raylan and Boyd each betrayed and the one rock-bottom thing in that car they share is the only rock-bottom thing they need right then, that neither of them was the one who did the betraying. Hell, it’s Fire In The Hole. And The Gunfighter, and Kin, and every other time these two get within fifty yards of each other: not two minutes reunited before they’ve found each and every weak spot and landed their blows— and grinned and grit teeth and tried to walk it off to show no harm done. It’s a surprise to me, though, this conversation. I mean, it shouldn’t be but it is, because I’ve been hearing from every quarter this year, from Yost and Olyphant and Goggins and co., that maybe this is the year Raylan and Boyd cross a line with each other that they can’t come back from, but here are the chips all down again and what I see is the same as we’ve ever had— the conversation Raylan and Boyd can only ever have with each other. Instead of weaker, it’s stronger, it’s against even more impossible odds. This isn’t Boyd thinking they’re friends. This is Boyd convinced they probably aren’t. But they’re in that truck. And they’re hauling ass in one direction. And they’re headed there with the same road behind them. “You guys ever figure out who was right about the astronaut?” asks Picker when Raylan gets out of the truck. (After Raylan hands Boyd his gun. After Boyd takes it: “Good luck, cowboy.”) Raylan smiles and shrugs at Picker: “We agreed to disagree.”
Back when we started the season, I made the joke about the two side mysteries besides the hole in the wall. 1, Raylan looking into his rearview mirror with Jody the bailjumper in the backseat, what was he going to do? and 2, Boyd’s stash of money in the ceiling. Except, in retrospect it’s ridiculous. It’s so obvious, there’s no question, it’s not even worth a comment. What’s Raylan going to do? What Raylan will always and ever do, the thing that lays his head down at night knowing he’s not the bad guy. Boyd tries that here, turning Raylan’s words around back on him, and it gets Raylan’s jaw to jump and it gets one of those Raylan looks that makes Art go “There! That’s why!” for all the reason he needs when he orders Raylan to stand down, but the blow is a glancing one. It’s not just the answer to the question from the start of the season. It’s the question from day one of the show: the what-if of Tommy Bucks. If Tommy Bucks isn’t packing, doesn’t pull, then what? Raylan, so sure they always pull but Boyd knows the voice in Raylan’s head and can keep pushing that button, What if he won’t? What if he won’t? But the what-if to that is Raylan stepping out of Nicky’s limo. Nicky doesn’t pull. Raylan doesn’t Tommy Bucks it, or High Noon it. He also sure as shit doesn’t let the threat to his family stand. “Cop threats,” mutters Nicky. “Relax,” says Raylan. “You’re still in the limo.” It’s the only threat that Raylan’s ever needed: that he’s always the man of his word. Unless he’s dead in the ground, there’s always a way he’ll make good.
“All the strife,” says Wynn Duffy at the end. The philosophical Wynn Duffy to the shattered Boyd Crowder. “All the bloodshed. The turmoil? Kings fall, princes rise up, and here we still are. The survivors.” Except that stash of money Boyd had in the ceiling was for the only thing a stash of Boyd’s would ever be for: for Ava, for their house, their home, their family, their future. Duffy silver-platters it for him now, everything Boyd wanted from him before: the state of Kentucky. Here it is. “We’re both gonna be very wealthy men,” says Duffy, and the ash and dust in Boyd’s mouth because who gives a goddamn for any of it without Ava? This was the season of goals. Of dreams, of futures, and because the story’s not worth a damn without it, we had to end the season reaching those goals at such a high cost. The twist is a cruel one, the victory— for Boyd it’s just bitter, for Raylan, bittersweet. Winona and Raylan, the kind of love that has them shooting up a nursery together but then Winona’s on a plane, the farthest away she’s ever been. Ava and Boyd, the kind of love that has them hauling dead bodies together but then Ava’s in custody, in cuffs, just that quick taken away.
Here’s what comes next, though. Because the story’s not worth a damn without it. The good stuff. The great stuff. Where Raylan’s family isn’t Arlo buried in the ground. Where Boyd scorches the earth and gets Ava free. Right now, here is Bulletville twice over too— Boyd, at the top of his lungs, in the dirt, beat to shit, outside and in. Ava was the one there to catch him from that fall, but this time? This time Boyd’s going to have to be the one to catch them both. It’s going to be wonderful. It’s going to big and it’s going to be one of the best things he’s done in his life. It’s the all-hope-lost kind of hope that’s the strongest of them all. If there’s one thing they know, it’s that— the two men who keep driving west towards Bulletville. That hope-lost kind of hope. One way or the other, Raylan and Boyd are always gonna end up driving west towards Bulletville. Wherever their metaphorical Bulletville happens to be on the map. But there’s always a way: to make good on it, to turn it around. Until you’re dead in the ground, there’s always a way. If not a door, a window, and if not a window, you bash a hole in the wall.
How do they do it? Even if the long tradition of bloodbath titles goes more foreboding than bloody with “Ghosts,” we are now four-for-four on finales that are just so satisfying. All the upheaval, all the turmoil, and still! It hurts but oh, it hurts so good. They even break my heart a little and it just makes me happy, it’s the downpayment on season five.
Sammy Tonin! Nicky: “Sammy’s a rat-faced bitch-boy.”
Picker: “He’s Theo Tonin’s rat-faced bitch-boy.”Vasquez on the Tonin family politics: “It’s all very Shakespearean.”
For all the Crowder crew we’ve (once again) lost, it’s close to damn touching how Jimmy’s stuck in there like glue. It’s about time he earned it, my MVP spot. (If, well, only by default.) I mean, Johnny did the impossible and survived the season (oh Johnny, where are you?), and Colt made good before he went out with a bang (sniff), but who are you gonna call when you need some comic relief hauling bodies around? That’s right. Little Jimmy.
“So, Crowder calls, says he’s bringing the marshal, and you drop everything to play High Noon? You want to explain to me how that makes any sense?”
Does Art not remember how Raylan earned this suspension in the first place? When Art cut him loose on two days’ leave? Can he really risk Raylan in the wind for thirty whole days? Can Raylan even survive that long off the job?
Until season five comes to top it, if you’re going to honor traditions, it’s about time he earned it: Dave Alvin with the coveted honor of covering “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”
Same time, last season: The Slaughterhouse showdown between the man in the hat and the man from Detroit, and it was Devil’s body sending Boyd to prison until Arlo took the fall. “I was just wondering,” said Raylan to Winona, after all the shit went down, “how this was all gonna work out?” Boy oh boy, aren’t we all.
Limehouse: Who in the hell is this?
Rachel: He’s gonna back me up I gotta put my boot up your ass out here in front of everybody.
Raylan goes, “Come on. This is what we do! Did you not wake up this morning thinking it was another opportunity to mess up some bad guy’s day?” Raylan grins, “I did,” and I love it when Raylan loves it when Rachel and Tim love to do what they do.
4x12 – Peace of Mind
“Nothing brings you peace but the triumph of principles.”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson said that,” says Boyd Crowder, so quiet in the midst of everything twirling, and here it is, here we are, the home stretch. That part of the season— so great and gut-twisting— that we get to every season. Every year, I swear I think it’s the year we’re going to go big with it and no, never, it’s right back full-circle, ever tighter and tighter, honing right in with a laser scope on the heart of the thing we care about most. That’s what this year has been, right from the start: what we care about, what matters most. We never really got around to facing down bad guys this year. Raylan and Boyd and Ava and everyone, it’s kept backfiring and instead, over and over and over, we’ve kept going back to the richer and harder fight of having to face yourself. Our mystery of the cutthroat drug-smuggling murderer: he’s the soft-hearted, badass local hero of a man who forfeits his escape to save a whore. Our original sin of Billy and the church tent and his cunning sister Cassie: but she’s the girl who, out of love, was only keeping her brother’s true belief afloat. “His heart was the pure one,” she says to Tim now. She says so softly, “Mine’s not so pure.” There it is, too. That self-awareness that’s dogged us all season. We haven’t lost it. Not a bit.
Self-deception, that’s a different story. Self-destruction; a little bit. The irony of the thing, where Boyd’s line about peace and principles sends him right out the door gunning for Limehouse and Ellen May. Raylan would love to be there to laugh at the irony of that one. But the same line for Ava, double standard or not, is what sets things to churning deep down in her gut. “I look at you, Ava,” says Limehouse, “and I see somebody I hardly even know anymore.” “The way you do business,” says Ava to Limehouse, “it’s a wonder you got any friends,” not even able to say the words and look him in the eye. They’re both talking to themselves. They’re both talking about themselves. They’re both the pot and the kettle covered in ash. The thing is, Limehouse knows it and is damn straight doing something about it while Ava knows it and is trying one last time to look away. Not for long. Just one last time. Because Limehouse can preach the hard-earned object lesson on self-deception: in this whole mess in the first place on account of what he thought Noble’s needed. In the process damn near lost everything in the world he holds dear. And Ava. In this whole mess in the first place because of who she is. Because of her principles, not in violation of them. It’s what Johnny called her out on the day Ellen May knocked on their door: her big heart causing trouble. The big heart that’s always had to bring in broken things to make them well. (“She ain’t a stray kitten,” Johnny said back then. “You can’t keep her.”) If you had to trace that line back to what landed her in this shit, there’s as good a place as any: caring for Boyd, for Ellen May. Nothing else. It was just so right and then it got turned around so wrong.
If I loved the Baby-I-respect-it scene from back then, I love even more the I-respect-it-on-every-level scene here. The dark mirror, the reminder, the back-to-basics sea change. The heart and principles in Ava, the Ava we’ve always known, that Boyd loves and honors and respects the most. It’s the thing in her that counterbalances him, makes him better, whole, accountable to a higher power. We got away from that this season, a little bit. Boyd this year has been Limehouse last year: uncharacteristically, myopically consumed with securing the future to the point that everything he cares about is what he stands most to lose. It’s so not like Boyd, to lack a grasp of the big picture. The Boyd of three months ago wouldn’t have been oblivious to Johnny’s duplicity, blind to Colt self-destructing right in front of his eyes. Wouldn’t have been so behind the game, scrambling to keep up, hanging on inch by inch to every whiplash of the Detroit mob. He’s always had the foresight to be ten steps ahead of every trick in the book. He’s always had the restraint to sit back and look at every piece in its place. In a way, this season, it’s what he’s chosen to look away from, instead of what he’s chosen to look towards, that’s come back to bite him in the ass.
It’s time— you can feel that muscle of it in the story, the full-tilt of it, the desperation— to get that balance back. It’s time for Boyd this season to be Limehouse this season. It’s time to course-correct. “I don’t believe in fate,” says Boyd, “I can’t.” The river of it, he says, is only what our actions dictate. Even this off-balance, scrambling Boyd has never chosen a word lightly. River is right— this rushing river of action that’s as impossible to take back as a handful of water. But with any small amount of luck and courage, the grace is there to step back and reevaluate the course at any time. “If, if, if,” says even Nicky Augustine. “Why are we trafficking in might-have-beens?” He gives his own kick in the pants to Johnny: “You’re the one who decided to bite the hand. Accept responsibility for your choices.” No need for might-have-beens. Only what-nows, what’s next? Boyd can quote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boyd knows there is another half to that line: Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ava: You think telling this girl what you done, that cleans your slate? Purifies your mortal soul? Well, it don’t. Not by a long shot.
Ellen May: I don’t believe that, Ava. I don’t believe a word comes outta your mouth. I know what I know.
Ava: And what’s that?
Ellen May: That if God can forgive me, I can forgive you too.
Ava: I don’t need your forgiveness, Ellen May. And I don’t talk to God.
Ellen May: There’s peace in repentance, Ava. It’s unlike anything you ever felt.
Ava: I always found peace comes from doing what your heart tells you’s right. And we ain’t got control over the rest. ‘Cause it wasn’t God that let you out of that room up in Noble’s. Or pulled you outta Colt’s car or put this gun in my hand. That was people making choices all down the line, Ellen May.
Ellen May: Well, what choice you making?
Ellen May with her chin up, jaw set, eyes bright. Looking Ava, unflinching, right in the eye. She’s been the heart and soul of this whole thing. Not even a clue how many of these miracles are ones she’s worked herself. Ava could no more pull the trigger on her than Ava could pull the trigger on Ava— that never has been or will be who Ava is. There but for the grace of God, et. al., and the showdown becomes Colt and Tim’s. Tim does pull the trigger. But Tim Gutterson, sniper in the Iraq and Afghan wars, is used to pulling that trigger through a long scope from miles away. Not this close. Not a face he knows. Not a man who’s been in the shit, who’s been where he’s been been, who’s lighting the cigarette and with a relish taking that one last deep, free breath. The right thing at the right time for the right reasons— and still, it can be a bitch.
Caring sucks. It hurts and it filets you like a perch and it’s so much easier to not care at all but I guess we got it straight a long time ago that easier’s not what we’re after. Who is it, after all, this new Raylan who cares so vehemently about his job? We’ve had vehement Raylan, yes, and crazy headstrong Raylan but only about something that deeply matters which is usually all kinds of personal and not so much at all about anything that’s gonna earn him a paycheck. The job, possibly, the deflection and self-deception now. The distraction, the substitute, for the heart of the matter he’d just as soon avoid. Because Jesus God, it can hurt. It’s walking around with your heart outside your body. A heart that’s vulnerable enough buried deep in a ribcage and now there’s not even that protection.
In the end, he lets Ellen May know it, that all this has been Shelby looking out for her. And he gives the go-ahead for her to run and throw her arms around Shelby, protocol be damned. It hasn’t quite been Drew Thompson and the Hooker with a Heart of Gold. It’s just been Shelby, and Ellen May. Neither quite worthy by half, a lot of folks might say, of that kind of selfless father-daughter love but that’s not the way it works, not by a long shot and instead they’re both worthy of it twice over. And how important it is, how major and crucial and precious, gets hinted at when Raylan turns his head away. Buries it in the paperwork of the case that’s haunted him to make his career. He won’t look it straight in the eye, all his own demons he’s been trying to ass-kick this season. The soft, awed “holy shit!” on the phone with Winona, it’s a girl more momentous than maybe the one round of applause the marshals’ office is ever gonna give him. (“What’s the matter with you, Raylan?” says Art. “You’re not used to positive attention?”) All the backslaps and congratulations (and suspensions) of the most important case to ever cross his desk and all it amounts to is a nuisance in the background. Here’s what really matters. And, same as Boyd, here’s what’s going right in the crosshairs. It’s time to care. It’s gonna hurt like a bitch. There’s nothing like it in the world.
Another knockout by Elmore and Leonard (as in Taylor and Chang), but what’s really fitting is that Gwyneth Horder-Payton— alumni of The Shield and just about every other show— gets to direct the episode that’s so full-circle from Loose Ends, her episode last year. Oh, to be so innocently cheering Ava on to take out Delroy again.
Nice touch as Johnny thinks he knows exactly what Boyd and Limehouse are up to, à la what we were so fond of last week, and it’s the hard-cut to Boyd gunning up to take out Limehouse and Johnny is wrong. (Right after Limehouse, incidentally, spells out Johnny’s predicament point by point.)
“It’s everybody wins-day here at Johnny’s bar!” Well, the theme of the season: “Everybody except Johnny.”
“Oh! Sexy!” Rachel v. Limehouse? 1. That’s a fight I will watch all day. 2. Watch Tim (as in Olyphant) crack up over Mykelti’s shoulder. 3. Limehouse? Oops, I mean “Lemonhead.” (Aww. Lemonhead.)
“I told the guy I was gonna toss the joint. Can’t just be an idle threat or I’ll look like a pussy.”
“It’s my job, being a dick. It’d be weird if you liked me.”
How To Be A US Marshal, A Field Guide by Raylan Givens.“Winona! I don’t know shit about girls.”
“That is so sweet, saying it like I don’t already know.”There is flat-out no one here I don’t care about, as evidenced by the 0.5 seconds it took my brain to synapse from delight at seeing Picker to oh shit Picker!, registering what that meant. I don’t even know what my wishlist is for next week. I don’t even care! I’m scared to re-up what I had for last year’s finale— 1. Boyd and Ava intact— but for the sake of my heart and head (and Boyd’s) those kids better be intact. (Shit. It hurts to care.)
Same time, season three: Boyd was getting the big picture on Dickie Bennett before Dickie Bennett ever walked in a room, triple-guessing all the double-crosses of Coalition. Limehouse and Raylan left Loretta with a shit ton of money, but it was Boyd who swore over the pulp of Dickie Bennett: “There ain’t enough money in the goddamn world.”
