This helps to explain what’s been so unsettling about Boon, who’s still trying to write this love story narrative with Loretta that you’d need a mad man’s eyes to read. Naming his pistol Jennifer just adds to the creep factor, but aesthetics have always been this guy’s paramour. An unrequited showdown with Raylan later on gives Boon some, uh, colourful things to say about anatomy, adding to our impression of him as a hunting dog bred for one purpose. The garden-variety crooks of Harlan may be unpleasant, but at least they all want the same thing. But a man who loves violence more than money is just about the most dangerous thing on Earth.
Increasingly with each episode, Boon seems to exist as a dark mirror to Raylan (we learn tonight that they can relate on the subject of abusive fathers). Who else can we think of in all of Justified that’s never seemed to care much for money? Raylan has a way of doing things that’s unorthodox, and often unethical, but the one thing he’s not is corrupt. The thrill of the chase was always what seemed to drive him, but the hunt of his life isn’t nearly as fun as it once should have been. There’s a wife and child waiting for him that have shifted Raylan’s priorities. No wonder that as suspicion of his character mounts, and the threat of being taken off the case looms, Raylan starts to lose his cool.
“The marshals service has spent a lot of time and effort apprehending a fugitive that’s now out on the run. And lives are in danger because of it. And so every time you open up your mealy mouth to lie, I think of that, and I start picturing how you’d look without any of your goddamn teeth,” Raylan says to dirty local cop, seething as he stares down the kind of bent authority figure that Vasquez, and even his own people think he might be (“If I help you out, are you gonna cut me in on that $10 million?” Tim asks Raylan, his usual sarcasm now ambiguous). Only hours after casually refusing a shot at the stolen money from Boyd, Raylan’s back in the same hospital room, anxious to get after the loose Crowder, but held back by a leash of his own making.
This season was always going to end in a bloodbath for Harlan’s criminal element; that’s just how these things go. Justified is the grandmaster of character deaths, so of course Katherine and Mikey go out in a blaze of glory, in an R.V. of all places. Accompanied by Pachelbel’s Canon in D, Katherine gets one last taste of married life (call it the Red Wedding Procession), before Mikey’s “code” gets them both killed. The whole sequence is ridiculous, hilarious, tragic, and so, so right. Even as Duffy screams for Mikey, holding him as he bleeds out, you have to laugh at Wynn Duffy, king of the cockroaches, once again getting away. But there’s sorrow in that R.V., just as there is in the Pizza Portal when Raylan breaks the news to Markham. “All this…is on you. As you undertake your grieving, may that guide you as you contemplate your next move,” Raylan says, taking the horrified Markham to church with a tone of Old Testament retribution.
For the law, though, things are different. I’ve still got my fears for Raylan’s safety, but “Fugitive Number One” does an impressive job of putting everyone on the chopping block before the final two hours. Art, shaved and subordinate, would fall on his sword for Rachel; the reins were in her hands, but Art’s the one who took them off Raylan to begin with. The whole season has been about the marshals trying to bury Boyd with the actions of his past, but now it’s Raylan’s own that have come back to haunt him.
That’s how we get to that last gorgeous image of the evening, Raylan walking down a main street like he really is Gary Cooper in High Noon. Of course, it was daytime in the movie, and Cooper gave up his badge after the final showdown, not before. “Art, do you see where I got a choice?” Raylan asks. “You got 48 hours,” he replies. “I’ll be the one coming after you.” Art’s easier on fugitives than his protégé, giving two days notice to Raylan where Raylan gave one to Tommy Bucks way back when. Justified has often wondered who Raylan would be without his badge. Looks like the final two episodes aim to answer that question once and for all.
- Stray Thoughts
-Kudos to director Jon Avnet for including another nod to the pilot, that great shot of the helicopter flying overhead in the mountains. The distance from Miami to Harlan seems to pale compared to how far the show has come in these six seasons.
-Ava and Zachariah’s plan of escape hits a grisly dead-end. “He knows the trails blindfolded,” Ava says of her guide out of Harlan, a little foreshadowing of the rat-gnawed husk waiting for her up the mountain.
-“I have been to Mordor, but not through the mines.” Oh, Tim. I will miss your smart-ass quips so dang much.
-There’s a huge motif of rings this season, between Raylan’s, Ava’s, and Katherine’s. But Boon really steals the show, overdoing it on jewelry as he does everything else. Now it seems like he’d been interested in adding Raylan’s ring to his collection, as he’s already acquired a new hat. But the more this showdown seems inevitable, the more I think of Danny Crowe, always talking about the 21-foot rule.
-Timothy Olyphant modulates his performance so well that Raylan breaking his composure is something of a big occasion. Whether it’s the hint of desperation in his voice as he pumps Tim for information, or his rising anger at the bent sheriffs, these glimpses of other sides to Raylan have impact much greater than bigger performances elsewhere on TV. These last two hours are going to be a great showcase for Olyphant, no doubt.
-There are only two more episodes of Justified left. Nope, nu-uh, not ready for this.