The Moth Chase

Justified – Episode 13 – Bloody Harlan

Hi Travis,

There are no more appropriate words to end this season than Brad Paisley’s ominous words. They’re so appropriate and capture not just the feel of the scene in which Mags dies, but also the feel of this season in general. Before I explain that, let me sum up what’s happened in the way of setting us up for next season. Consider this a sort of promissory note: Read the rest of this entry »

Hey Travis,

Wow…I feel like every week I say the same thing: what an amazing episode. Several things really struck me about this week’s episode. First, the amazing economy of storytelling. It’s incredible how much stuff was compacted into this episode. We get all of our characters (even Loretta) appearing. Furthermore, we get amazing tension between all of them. Some absolutely classic scenes. Read the rest of this entry »

Loyal Moth Chase readers,

Martin is at a conference this weekend, and Travis had some family issues arise this week. Check back soon for this week’s review!

Justified: “Brother’s Keeper”

Martin,

So we have our answer on how long Raylan’s no-kill streak would last, and of course it ends protecting Loretta. In many respects, this episode feels like the one we’ve been heading toward all season, only to have the promise of a truly vicious fight with Mags emerge in the final moments. We’ve probably exhausted our stock of superlatives for this show the last few weeks, and “Brother’s Keeper” brings multiple trajectories converging together in one brilliant series of confrontations after another. Any number of scenes warrant comment, but I’m afraid I’m a bit pressed for time today, so I just want to make a couple of observations before passing the baton to you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Justified – “The Spoil”

Hey Travis,

‘Wow. I feel like every week we comment on how awesome this show is and every week it seems to get better and better! I mean, honestly, I feel like it is not at all too much of a stretch to say that Justified is easily the best show on TV right now. My only disappointment about this week’s episode is that I have to wait a whole week to find out what is going to happen at Mags’s party! So many things going on. I’ll say a few things:

(1) The theme of mutual recognition that I’ve been talking about. Read the rest of this entry »

Justified – “Save My Love”

“Art.”

“Raylan.”

“Art.”

“Winona.”

Really, I could just stop there. Because, look, the thing is, it’s episodes like this that show just how good Justified is at upending expectations and taking radical changes of direction, all while doing so in a way that resolves problems a lesser show would have let stand as a gap in logic or storytelling. This week’s episode had two “Oh!” moments:* first, that little issue of Winona randomly stealing a single hundred dollar bill? Yeah, she took the whole bag. I mean, of course she did, and here’s what was so genius about this, the show played the mislead out enough to make Winona’s irrational act fully believable – and then effectively acknowledged the unbelievability of that act with revealing the bag of cash just at the point when we – and Raylan – thought it all just amounted to a little hiccup. It’s a nice piece of storytelling both because Read the rest of this entry »

Justified – Blaze of Glory

Travis,

*grabbing some snuff* (Just kidding)…but what a classic scene!

So we have another absolute winner in my opinion…but with a much lighter, softer tone. I have to say this season has thus far been impeccable. No bad episodes, no bad writing, and nonetheless a variety of types of episodes. So, on the whole, this week was a sort of pause from all of the major storylines…it is a testament to the quality of the writing that this episode still worked so well. Part and parcel of this pause was that we also took a pause (except for the awesome beginning) from the Boyd storyline which we have been so intently discussing. It was interesting, however, not only how Ava agreed to Boyd’s scheme, but also how Boyd framed it to Raylan. I wasn’t quite sure which moment Boyd had in mind–was he referencing the final showdown of last season (the finale), where Raylan told Boyd and Ava to leave? Or was he referencing the episode where Raylan originally shot Boyd? Or both? Read the rest of this entry »

Justified – “Cottonmouth”

Martin,

So I’m a bit torn how to talk about this week’s Justified – not because I have misgivings about its quality, but because it was so good that I’m at a loss where to begin. I could easily waste several hundred words talking about half a dozen super scenes, but I also want to continue reflecting on some fascinating themes we’ve been tracking that developed in interesting ways last night. I think we can safely say that, just as (say) a Xander story is bound to be a phenomenal episode of Buffy, so when Justified gives us a Boyd-heavy episode, it’s going to be Justified at its best. So we see this week, with “Cottonmouth” capitalizing on storylines the show has been building toward for several weeks. Boyd’s gradual recognition of the inevitability of his actions – that he steals because it’s in his nature to do so – was superbly affecting, and Goggins delivered the scene with real emotional weight. That Goggins plays Boyd so radically different from Shane on The Shield only makes the gravitas in that scene with Ava better; Shane was always reacting, a step behind the rapidly descending shitstorm that perpetually followed Vic’s machinations, reflexively panicking and impulsive. When stripped down to the core, his actions came from pure self-preservation; Boyd, like Raylan, operates by a code. Read the rest of this entry »

“How’s it work?”

“It doesn’t…someone shot it.”

“Why would someone shoot a Furbot?”

Episode 4: Foor Blood or Money

Hey Travis,

I just have to say, that I feel like overall, this season of Justified is turning out to be even stronger than the last and I think so much of this has to do with episodes like this one. I don’t think the episode was particularly amazing or anything, but it did flesh out and bring some background to Rachel’s character. The subplot with her sister-in-law felt slightly contrived (it wasn’t quite presented/developed/act well enough to be seamless inserted into everything), but it carried a level of reality (surprisingly hammered home by Flex’s character) that made it work overall. Of course, this follows the theme that I’ve taken to be emerging this season: the past. Not only do we get this very visceral reminder of Rachel’s past, but we have a reminder of some element of Raylan’s past (“My boy ain’t walked right for 21 years now.”) (I should note here, too, that anytime Raylan and Mags are interacting it is pure magic–Olyphant and Martindale just rip it up when on screen together.) What seems like an improvement over last season is that more characters are being filled in and in more detailed ways. Similarly, all of these past events point to an unknown, but exceedingly exciting future (Mags bigger plans, the arrival of the “non-existent” Dixie mafia, and so forth). And I must note–that following the theme of the past weeks–Raylan once again has someone else do his shooting for him. I think this has been an excellent plot device and it’ll be interesting to see how long it continues. (My hope is as long as Boyd’s new life does…this would make for great parallelism). Read the rest of this entry »

Justified: “The I of the Storm”

“For a moment, I thought she was mine” – Dave Alvin

Martin,

I’ll ask you to forgive the slightly misleading Herzog reference in the title, as I really want to talk about the two enigmas of this show: Raylan and Boyd. Although the action of this episode centered around Raylan and the (hilarious) attempt by Dewey Crowe to frame him for an Oxy (re)heist, the heart of this episode focused on the blank presence of Boyd Crowder. The episode finds them both in a particularly interesting bind: Boyd is trying hard to live right, to extricate himself from the criminal world of Harlan County, and finding that his history and associations keeps dragging him back in. Everybody comes looking for him, and when they do, the only way Boyd has of keeping them at bay is to huddle over his bourbon and speak in deliberate, measured, and slightly exasperated tones. It’s not a bad way of describing Raylan, too, whose presence in Harlan is marked by the same coincidence of reluctance and inertia, and who continually finds, like Boyd, that the only way to exist in the world of Harlan is to play its way – dirty. Read the rest of this entry »