Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"Justified" recap: I will always tolerate you

Spoilers for this week's episode of "Justified" below. Don't click through if you don't want to know.

You might have noticed a dearth of blog posts lately. I've been busy with some personal things, and haven't yet had time to pull together articulate blog posts on "Game of Thrones" and the like. I hope to offer more in the future (in particular, I am planning to do a mid-season progress report on the heavily hyped "Thrones" -- which I do sort of like, but have only seen two episodes of so far).
In the meantime, this will be a short-ish "Justified" recap. I didn't love this episode quite as much as past installments, but it did offer many pleasures -- particularly Raylan and Tim playing the most half-assed version of "evade the bodyguard" I've ever seen. Tim, in a funny twist, is more annoyed by Raylan outsmarting him than he is angry or upset. After all, Tim is a military man. He should be able to keep an eye on one man. But he also regards this task as sort of dumb and demeaning, so he's not exactly putting his all into babysitting duties. Thus, Raylan is able to get the upper hand rather easily.
I also liked Boyd recruiting Arlo as a member of his new gang, though I doubt that the law wouldn't have done SOMETHING to compensate for Arlo's severed house arrest bracelet. I mean, it certainly makes more sense for Tim to babysit a dangerous guy like Arlo than to charge him with keeping Raylan from investigating the shoot-out. But who I am to quibble? Particularly since I like the idea of Arlo and Boyd as a team -- and I love the wise, weary discussion between Helen and Ava on the advantages of not knowing what your criminally intentioned significant other is up to. Speaking of Helen -- that was a shocking ending, wasn't it? I actually think it worked well. It's been a while since we've actually seen Dickie kill someone. It's important to be reminded of what an evil little troll he is. And the death of Helen (I'm pretty sure she died, aren't you?) might finally give Raylan and Arlo a reason to put their problems aside and team up. So I'm on board.
However, I was a little underwhelmed and irritated with the "twist" about who was behind last week's warehouse shootout. Yes, Gary is a weasel. And yes, he is convincingly hurt and angry about Winona rekindling her relationship with Raylan. But we've never really seen him be violent or blood-thirsty enough to make me believe he'd do something like this. And I definitely don't believe he's smart enough to come up with the idea of drafting off of Winona's protection to hide out from Duffy's men.
Still, I always like seeing Jere Burns as Duffy. And I love Raylan sneaking up on the peeing man stationed outside Winona's house. 
What did you think?

2 comments:

Thomas said...

I've really enjoyed watching Raylan's downward spiral this season, especially since it's mostly caused by Winona. Who would have ever thought that he'd learn to get control of his life while dating Ava only to lose it while back with Winona.

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Barracuda said...

I do not find Raylan to be spiralling at all. Actually, I think Raylan is one of the few people who konws what he has to do. He just does not do his thing in a conventional way. Regarding the killing of his step-mom/aunt, I believe Raylan is about to go nuts and will hook up with his father to seek out whatever punishment is due.