Justified: "Brother's Keeper"

Once I try waking up a passed out man using bong water, I’ll offer up a review of tonight’s episode, after the jump…

“What’s wrong, girl? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” – Coover

Justified has taken a lot of twists and turns this season, and I mean that in a good way. As often as I and other critics have claimed that we suddenly see where this season is going, the show will often offer up something that we weren’t expecting. This isn’t to say that the show’s plotting has been wildly incoherent, but rather that it has been so rich that the show’s dropping in and out of the various plot threads of the season give the episodes a sense of freshness and surprise to any returning plotlines

Take for example tonight’s episode. Though the beginning minutes, as well as the network previews, made it appears as if the hour was going to be focused on Mag’s “whoop-dee-doo,” and the Black Pike business. And though this took up about half the episode, it wasn’t what most people will remember, nor was it what made it so fantastic. No, the best part of this episode revolved around Loretta, something that we’ve known to be coming for a few weeks now, yet somewhere made a bigger impact than ever predicted.

Though the whole of this sequence was fantastically plotted and executed – Loretta attempting to steal back her father’s watch, Coover choking Dickie, and Raylan’s showdown with Coover at the mineshaft were all gripping moment – the real power of this development laid in the closing minutes, as Mags, sad and angry at the loss of both her son and her surrogate daughter, stares down Raylan, no doubt planning her revenge. Like Coover taught us earlier in the episode, as dangerous as the Bennetts are when they are (relatively) sane, nothing is more dangerous than a Bennett spurned

“I used to tell people I dropped him on his head when he was baby. Truth is, I got no excuse for it.” – Mags

And that’s what added an extra layer to all of this action. Though we haven’t spent a whole lot of time with the Bennetts (at least not as much as the other characters), there was a surprising amount of pathos incorporated into all the action. Though Coover’s jealousy of Loretta as an object of Mags affection isn’t the most original angle to play for this story, it was presented with such a raw intensity and anger as to be wholly affecting

Yet even more affecting was Raylan’s reaction to all of this, as we saw yet another side of his angry personality. Though last week we saw Raylan become highly irritable to those around him, this week he was a man driven to his dark side as he scrambled to do the heroic thing. As much as Mags has been affected by this week’s events, she didn’t tap into anything new. She has always been quick to anger and malicious in her revenge. Raylan, on the other hand, has never let a case push him over the edge until now. The important question now is whether or not this has opened some sort of floodgate, whether in the future Raylan would be more likely to express his darker impulses in order to get the job done.

“I’m making it up as I go along, but I sure am glad that you came along.” – Boyd

Though the Loretta stuff was far more powerful – and thought it pales in comparison – the scenes at Mags celebrations were equally important to the overarching narrative, thought the future payoff from these scenes isn’t readily apparent.  The biggest mystery – and perhaps the biggest problem with this storyline – is that Boyd’s role in all of this isn’t entirely clear. I still can’t figure out whether or not Boyd contacted Mags before the shindig, and I have no idea what this deal means for Boyd’s future. Given how excited Boyd (and Eva) were to have pulled out this bit of underhanded chicanery, we can assume that Boyd’s return to his evil ways in imminent. Sure, one could argue that this mystery is meant to create a bit of dramatic tension going forward, but there is also something in this planning that feels off. (Sure, I might end up eating these words in a week or two, but as of tonight, this is where I stand on the issue.)

The other question – and one I am far more interested to discover the answer to – is what this land deal means for the show going forward. Is Carol Johnson going to return? (Or will we come back next week to find she has yet to leave?) And since Mags was so willing to screw over the other people in Harlan County for a legacy deal for her kin, where does the future of the county stand now that most of the land will be paved over for roads and parking lots?

There was a lot of ugliness at the heart of tonight’s episode. Though Coover’s rampage was a very obvious example of this ugly side, there was something uglier, more Machiavellian in all of the back-room wheeling-dealing that goes on. Harlan County is a place caught between the past and the future, and until the crossover is finally done, it will also be a breeding ground for the heartless.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

Though we saw Carol kissing Raylan, which confirms that those were intended flirtations last week, I am personally glad that Raylan didn’t sleep with her. He has so much going on that this would have been an unnecessary complication.

“Why isn’t he here?” “Eh…wife shot him.”

“Now am I right, or am I damn right?”

“Yes, a supremely overqualified doorman.”

“You look like a monkey humping a football.”