Justified
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.
I wrote two weeks ago about the reserve and slight bemusement with which Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan; even more so, Walton Goggins has played Boyd as an utter mysery: his domestic terrorist phased into a self-anointed prophet into a ‘guy just trying to get by’ with all the authenticity of the televangelist he always seems to be channeling, without ever really giving us a hint of who really lies behind all of these roles. Tonight, I think, we get a sense of who Boyd is, and it’s just that: someone struggling with identities, knowing he’s above the likes of Dewey Crowe and the Dixie Mafia, but for all that unable to resist their pull, someone who through it all hasn’t really changed all that much. The struggle that Raylan and Boyd both face in this show with their histories, and the way those histories are inextricably tied into the social codes of Harland county; this mutual dilemma provides a spark that lights up the screen every time these two characters face off. Their fight is in many ways the same – which is why their temporary alliance in last season’s finale worked so well, and also why Raylan can’t bring himself to trust Boyd. Ironically, this puts him on the same level with Dewey and Boyd’s coalmine coworkers – unable to believe that Boyd’s turnaround is for real. And by the end of the episode, when Boyd drags Kyle from his pickup window, he screams with the frustration that maybe, for all his attempts to come clean, it won’t be for real after all.
So this week is all about thinking you have something, only to watch it slip away – as captured in Dave Alvin’s line above (the song, “Harland County Line,” is here). Boyd is watching his opportunity at living on the right side of the tracks slip away by sheer force of inevitability; to bookend that final scene of frustration, we had Raylan and Winona squabbling over their relationship in a bar at the opening of the episode.* Now, I’m not totally feeling the Winona-Raylan relationship – I’m not certain the writers know what to do with Ava or Winona just yet. But I completely buy Raylan’s desire to be with Winona, even if the lure of a transgressive hookup last season has quickly turned into the inevitable repetition of their first failed attempt at a relationship. And so the pretense of change slips away. Moreover, their argument found unexpected solemnity when they noticed Tim at the bar – for all of his swagger in Art’s office (“I don’t miss”), Tim is clearly haunted by the shooting last week, and I can’t help but see that as a comment on Raylan’s attempts to live a bit less bloodily this season. I don’t want to make too much of this, but it’s striking that for three episodes now, someone else has done Raylan’s shooting for him – first Rachel, who didn’t shoot, but had the draw on Jimmy Earl Dean; then Tim takes out the kidnapper; and now Doyle is the one to shoot the Oxy thieves. But with as much potential bloodshed as this season holds, that just seems to highlight that Raylan’s attempt at changing ways will be frustrated by the weight of inevitability.
For a moment, I thought she was mine…
Travis
*I’m with Raylan here – “C’mon – it’s Dave Alvin!”
Travis,
I’m totally with you on Boyd (and Raylan). I wonder, though, whether we can’t make your suspicions even stronger. To me, it feels like the writing is trying entirely to complicate the notion of agency surrounding these two characters. Not only are they having trouble “sticking to their path,” but it seems like knowing what their path is is just as difficult. The comment that I found most striking was when Boyd states: “You don’t know anything about me or why I did the things I did.” That last bit seems to apply as much to himself as it does the coal-miner who is his interlocutor. What I get from these several episodes is that there is no simple distinction here between inside/outside–it is simply not the case that these two characters (and perhaps any of the others…although I haven’t made a careful study) take something on the “inside” and just translate it into something on the “outside.” It is not that they merely take an intention and turn it into action, but rather part of the argument seems to be that intentions are only revealed retroactively through the course of actions…and actions themselves are never pre-given or determined in a vacuum, but rather themselves open to the interpretation of others (as Boyd poignantly puts: “The real question is whether you would believe my answer.”) They operate along paths of recognition (or not) and so the entire process of self-change is made incredibly complex. We saw this last season with Boyd and I think we saw it with Raylan also, but it didn’t strike me as much with the latter until you now mention it.
Aside from this point, I am excited by what is being set up here. We know that the Frankfurt mafia will be making a visit now and we know that Raylan’s suspicions about the Bennett’s are starting to be confirmed. Furthermore, we are also seeing how the Bennett’s themselves are hardly unified and have various levels of competency when it comes to the underworld. Mostly, I think this episode was a sort of comic relief (they always seem to be when Dewey is involved…”You telling me a man can’t buy a mask in America?”), but it was well done and moved the plot forward with Boyd, Raylan and the two women in their lives, Eva and Winona. I am also interested in what will happen when Winona meets Boyd and/or Eva. Should make for more great television.
Finally, I have to add that Boyd’s admitting that “he has never met any Jews” was totally classic and a total throwback exactly to the first season opener, where Raylan asks him exactly that question. So your linking of the two is quite plausible and apt, and it is interesting to see how they are reacting to each other. I am curious to see whether and how Boyd rubs off on Raylan.
Until next week,
Martin
“You kicked the man out of the house, when he’s on house arrest?”
– Raylon Givens
Justified, “Life Inside”
Dear Travis,
What a satisfying show and what a great start to this season. As far as I can tell there are two broad themes developing here; these themes are equal parts conceptual and equal parts character-driven. The first is what Raylan’s step-mother aptly calls a “neat trick” — trying to escape the past. While the second is the rise and role of women in this show.
On point of the former, it’s exceedingly well done how the entire show tracks various elements of the past: from the 9 months prior to the present moment to last week’s murder of Loretta’s father, to the even more ancient past of Raylan’s relationships (not to mention Boyd, Eva, and Raylan’s Miami past). All of these themes and motifs are expertly presented so that they interweave into a dynamic tapestry…one that is driven as much by the characters as much as broader themes dealing with the most abstract (good vs. evil) to the more general (e.g. the legacy of racism and sexism, as the image of the confederate flag aptly hints immediately after Helen’s comment about the past).
On the point of the latter, we see women front and center in this episode, but in a strange way. First, I am extremely excited by the prospect of so many interesting female characters this season. Not only do we have Eva and Winona, but this season we have the addition of Mags, and I suspect, Loretta. this episode was quite elaborate in the way the various female facets interacted (“I never had a daughter before” was both apt and just plain creepy.) What struck me, however, was how pivotal women were, but nonetheless how indebted and anchored to the men they still were. Although they wield power, they essentially exist in a man’s world (a phenomenon you aptly pointed out in Sons of Anarchy as a sort of post-feminism). Here, we have the episode centering on two women, first Mags and Loretta, then Cassie and the guard’s wife. All are central to the action (no second half without Cassie, no Raylan finding the bad guys without the guard’s wife), but they are essentially at the whims of the men and, in one case, are a mere carrier for the man. It’s a strange sort of agency, that isn’t fully demeaning, but neither fully activated or potent.
In any case, I am looking forward to seeing how things develop with Raylan and the women in his life, but mostly I am interested in seeing how Raylan and Mags interact and what will unfold between them. I am certain it will be nasty as both of them are quite stubborn, unrelenting, and set in their ways. Both–to speak with Omar Little–have a code.
Until next week,
Martin
Justified: “The Moonshine War”
Martin,
So on Wednesday we had the return of one of my favorite shows (and FX’s second-best new series of last year*). The first season of Justified managed to do several things, all at once: it developed a great cast of characters, especially Walton Goggin’s maddeningly devious Boyd Crowder; it pulled off the nearly impossible feat of sustaining Elmore Leonard’s stylized and witty dialogue sans a Leonard script or source; and it neatly balanced standalone and big-arc storytelling in a relatively unique way, all while pulling the threads together at the end of the season nearly perfectly. Perhaps most memorable to me, however, was Justified‘s extraordinary sense of place. Earlier this year, I wrote aboutSons of Anarchy as one of a crop of superb shows, such as Breaking Bad and Friday Night Lights, that are grounded in somewhere totally outside of bicoastal, primetime-drama America. Red state shows, if you will; and even more remarkably, all of these shows have developed a nuanced sense of the rules and structure of small, deeply traditioned communities, and played out their dramas against the backdrop of settings and characters portrayed without condescension or caricature.
Thus, one of the best dynamics of Justified has been Raylan’s ability (reluctantly, at first), to draw upon his history and kinship ties with the Crowders and other undesirables of Harlan, KY to effectively walk in places a “federal” wouldn’t normally be able to in rural Kentucky. While the law would normally be viewed as an interloper, an outsider to be stonewalled and resisted at all costs, Raylan has a ties to the community that run deeper than those of his badge, and the best moments of the first season showed how adeptly and craftily he negotiated and exploited those ties. That said, for all the strength Justified displayed in playing out its stories as steeped in local color, Raylan has remained a mysterious figure (deliberately so, I think). Timothy Olyphant’s laconic reading of his lines has a way (kind of Agent Mulder-like, come to think of it) of playing Raylan with just enough irony and bemusement to make his way of straddling two worlds fascinatingly insightful, so that we never quite know his read of the situation. With Walton Goggin’s bizarre Boyd an inscrutable foil to play off against, this gave the first season a powerful dynamic to work with, and allowed it to deepen the world of Harlan, and particularly the Crowder family, in a way at that was at once realist and mythological.
Interestingly enough, that dynamic characterized the film that best captured Justified‘s world last year, the superb Winter’s Bone,** which similarly portrayed both the poison and power of blood and soil in rural communities, and the contemporary blight of meth in so many of those communities. “The Moonshine War” feels in many ways like it’s cut from the same cloth – a young girl at the mercy of the more vicious elements of these rural societies gives us this week’s (presumably) episodic arc, and the leering menace of James Earl Dean was, I thought perfectly portrayed, very dark but not cartoonish, and with a real sense of ugliness. But aside from giving us the best line of the night, quoted in the title, as well as a chance for Raylan to exercise his non-lethal use of force, this plot merely provided the entree into the sphere of the crime family of Mags and Dickie. I loved how this all played out – Raylan’s childhood memories of Mags and her “apple pie,” the nuanced way both Mags and Dickie were played (I love Jeremy Davies, and am thrilled to see how he’s going to play off Olyphant) , and tension that Rachel’s presence brought to the proceedings. Rachel was an underused character last season, and her presence as an African-American in such a reflexively racist setting automatically amped up the tension (as she very well knew). The standoff outside of Davies’ house, in fact, was probably my favorite scene of the night; I love that not once, but twice, it was Rachel that had the draw on the bad guy, and I really hope we get a chance to see her character emerge this season.
I grew up in a small mountain town myself, and when Mags says, “there’s knowledge in the hills,” she’s right. Such knowledges can be healing, sometimes, but they’re also poisonous, to outsiders and to those who make themselves outsiders, like the unfortunate McCready. That’s the truth of a place like Harlan, and one of the struggles of Raylan’s character has been figuring out exactly where he stands within that tension. This episode sets up this dynamic beautifully, and I think we’re off to a great start. Boyd? A total wild card, just as he should be.
Travis
*Yes, I’m still mourning Terriers.
**All quibbling about big-name films aside…
Travis,
I’m totally with you on all of your points and am so pleased by this first episode and by the return of this show, and more importantly, by FX in general (having just caught up with Sons of Anarchy!)
First, let me expand a bit on your thoughts about these sorts of shows. I find them very powerful, especially at this moment in time, with our country so palpably split along red/blue state lines. What impresses me most, aside from the way they manage to execute their storytelling (as you say without caricature or condescension), is how they put into question the very project of America. I know I must sound like a broken record with my continual references to Cavell, but these shows seem through and through Cavellian in their approach to America: it’s an unachieved, oftentimes unapproachable America. From Raylan’s split loyalties to his skirting the law to the judge from last season to Doyle’s obvious involvement with the drug trade, we see that the solutions to the various problems the show presents will not, and indeed fundamentally cannot, by means of a reliance on some “pure” or “ideal” institution(s). But neither are the problems purely, let’s say, interpersonal (as in, e.g., the sort of issues Raylan still has with his ex-wife and now, Ava). Rather they are a strange combination of structural, personal, and, for lack of a better, term, American: the obvious legacies of racism, structural forms of poverty, radically anti-government libertarian streaks, and, perhaps, even, the preponderance of firearms. I am extremely excited to see how Justified pursue and elaborates these points–how it draws and re-draws, critiques and dreams, America.
Second, I am just wholeheartedly attracted to these characters. They’re so complex and so well-acted (and so well, likable and funny) that it is always a pleasure to watch the show. Similarly, the dialogue is, as you touch on, brilliant. In addition to the standoff you mention, I especially liked the dialogue between Loretta and the sex offender. It was so perfect and captured that locale, age, and uncertainty (both moral and personal) to perfection. I don’t have much to add about this week’s episode. I am very curious to see where Boyd’s character goes and I hope they continue to pursue the religious themes they so wonderfully presented last season. Similarly, I am quite excited by Jeremy Davis’s character and by the character of Mags. We know already that she is ruthless, but she also has a strange tenderness to her and this combination (and in a female) character will prove, I think, to be very interesting, not only in this context, but on its own.
So, until next week!
Best,
Martin
