Justified: "Debts and Accounts"

Season 2, Episode 10

A busy episode sees everyone dealing with consequences.

“I’m stuck with a man who’s a lousy Marshall, but a good lawman.”

-Art

Up until this point, Raylan has yet to suffer consequences for his actions, at least beyond his initial transfer to Kentucky. Part of this is no doubt due to his attempts to temper his own impulses, but it’s also because he’s such a presence – so aggressive and so stubborn – that most of those around him don’t even try to change or punish him, because it likely wouldn’t do any good. Yet the past few weeks have been pushing hard down on Raylan, and he has been forced to push back, and that has landed him in even deeper shit. For starters, even though Art, rational man that he is, has determine that no good would come out of directly punishing Raylan, it also seems that Raylan is stuck in his current career path. His solution? Move away with Winona and teach at the shooting range.

Such is development is problematic for a couple of reason. First, and most obvious, is that this move will never stick. The premise of show is based on Raylan taking down bad guys, not spending his days teaching kids how to fire guns. (Although…no. Stop it.) Yet beyond the obvious non-starter nature of this plotline, the bigger problem is that it is meant to reflect on Winona and Raylan’s relationship, which I found myself not particularly caring about tonight. Raylan and Winona are much more dynamic when they are antagonistic, and despite the nice moments the show got by disrupting that status quo at the beginning of this season, their best moment so far has been those in “Blaze of Glory” and “Save My Love,” where they were both working together yet just barley refraining from yelling at one another. For the show to pretend that the two of them are or could be as happy as a normal couple just feels false to me.

“What do we gain, soaking these hills with more blood?”

-Mags

Raylan has also set himself up for some backlash from the criminal world, though that will come in future weeks. For now, we are seeing the devastation that his actions have caused. Mags, for one, in a mess, having lost both a son and a surrogate daughter. And though she is obviously driven by desire for revenge, she has decided to hold back on this desire – for now, anyways – both for her desire to keep the peace in Harlan, and because she realize that she must shoulder the blame for Coover’s actions.

Well, maybe not her. Instead, she has taken out her anger irrationally on Dickie, blaming him for being unable to keep everything under control. It was a heartbreaking scene, both for Mags, who is attempting to regain control, and for Dickie, who feels slighted, having once again been reminded on his low status within the Bennett clan.

Yet all of this is about to change, thanks in no small part to…

“It’s always about you Boyd”

-Johnny

…Boyd Crowder. Boyd has taken a fairly interesting path this season, and though I would be lying to say that I hate this new direction that he’s headed in, or that I don’t liking watching it play out on the screen. Because, IN THE MOMENT, it is entirely fascinating, mostly due to how Walton Goggins plays the character. However, outside of the moment, when I stop and think about the totality of Boyd’s arc in season 2, it gives me pause. I have spent most of this season praising the show for the direction they were taking Boyd him, placing him in these situations where he would face the decision of staying on his newly chosen moral path, or returning to his familiar, criminal roots. And while I always more or less accepted that Boyd would at some point return to his criminal ways, yet here, in the moment, it feels a bit like the show is returning Boyd to his original function due to a lack of ideas of what else to do with him.

But just a bit, as the show still seems committed to growing Boyd as a character, even if it seems content keeping him in the same role. In a beautifully written and delivered monologue, Boyd laid out how his fear of being his father drove him away from being a criminal, but now he is using those same distorted Oedipal feelings in order to drive his recaptured political career. He plans on creating a bigger, better, more stable criminal empire, both to show up his late father/restore the “honor” of the Crowder clan, but also – in move that reflects some of Boyd’s newfound compassion – to make sure that Harlan regains a necessary structure, an overseeing force, that regardless of its intensions, can provide some sort of stability to this modern, lawless, backwards slice of America.

Yet Dickie seems equally driven to fill that power vacuum, and it’s anybody’s guess as to who will come out on top. Dickie might be incompetent compared to Boyd, but he’s also good a networking with and using lowly criminals, and perhaps more importantly, he’s desperate enough to do whatever takes to defeat Boyd.

In a way, Boyd’s twisty character arc seems to be reflective of the series as a whole. As organic as it may be, the show has made a bold choice this season by rejecting the standard “Big Bad” story structure that has been tried and true since the days of Buffy and The X-Files. Instead, the show has set up two or three potential main villains, and has been playing whack-a-mole with them, having letting their potential wax and wane as various developments have warranted. And though such moved should work (think Spiderman 3), the show has a well-known character in Boyd, and has made sure to fully realize the Crowder, so that we feel connected to the fate of these characters. It has drawn us into to a plot that could have been off-putting, and though it seem like the show has cemented its direction for the next three episodes, all of the twist and turns up until this point guarantee that nothing is certain.

What did everybody else think?

Additional Thoughts:

“Tell me, in you emotionally crippled way, what is eating at your heart.”

“OK, your cell is dead. I’m sorry for your loss. What can I do for you?”

“I’m a bit out of sorts….Shot and killed a man just three days ago.”

“She talks like Oprah.”

“I don’t know what color it is. It’s the one with the ringing bells.”