Season 3, Episode 8
“It seems you dodged another in a long series of bullets.”
As great of a show as Justified is, the one thing that's always bothered me is that the show hasn't always done the best job of tracking an arc for Raylan. Sure, his characterization is strong, and the show creates good situations for us to learn more about him, but there doesn't always feel like the “growth” is there for the character, that we're not tracking in sort of change for him. (By comparison, look at how Breaking Bad has been slowly revealing Walter White to be a worse and worse human being.)
In the first season, we were introduced to Raylan as “the angriest man” Winona had ever met, and it seemed like something of a declaration, which was backed up by the rest of the season being about how Raylan was slowly trying to walk away from that persona, before he had to embrace it in the pilot. The second season once again say Raylan trying to be a better person, and actually succeeding in the season finale when he decided to let Dickie live for purely altruistic reasons. These are strong moments for the character, sure, but that's all they are: moments. So often the show gets caught up focusing on the other characters or (more often) keeping the story going at the right pace, that they just sort of leave him flapping in the wind unless they can find time to find some character work in a random episode.
It's surprising then that I still find Raylan dynamic and interesting, but I think that speaks to the way the show places story ahead of character, while still giving each one enough flavor that we buy them as distinctive identities. That's what makes an episode like “Watching the Detectives” kind of frustrating, because it plays so well off of the character that we know, while also reminding us that the show doesn't do this as often as it could/should.
Even if Raylan was originally presented to the audience in something of morally ambiguous terms, it often becomes difficult to think of him in such terms, both because he's often chasing down known criminals who are worse of a person than he is, and because the show often asks us to indulge in Raylan's main vice (his anger) as a way of reflecting that fault of the human condition back on us. But “Detectives” comes along and upends that perception beautifully, as we are asked to reflect back on Raylan's morally dubious actions so far this season, and even some from the past two as well.
The show recognizes how hard this maybe for some of us, by giving us an identification character in the cops investigating Raylan for Gary's death who are similarly won over by the badass nature of Raylan's throwing of a bullet at Wyn, and his lackadaisical telling of the same. Yet the show doesn't let us forget that this, as well as many other actions that Raylan has taken in the past are, if not morally wrong, then at least illegal, and it is Raylan's inability to control his anger that often lands him in trouble. And even if the trouble that Quarles is currently bringing down on him is more the consequence of Raylan sitcking to a moral code and not going dirty for Harlan's newest Oxy dealer, he still has to engage in no small amount of subterfuge in order to save his own ass from the trap set for him. There certainly exists a gap between morality and legality within the world of Justified, but it's perhaps not as clear as we would like it to be.
Unpacking the episode itself would be something of an unnecessary chore, as it involved actions both large (his assaults on Gary and Wyn) and small (the aforementioned bullet throwing) all coming together, as Quarles sets Raylan up on so many sides that it's almost unbelievable that he was able to come through the other side a free man. The brilliance here is how the show took moments that we found innocuous at the time, or plotlines that we assumed were wrapped up for good, and managed to bring them back in a new way that reflected poorly on Raylan. It's a testament to how far the show has come that it can managed to recall and implement it's own continuity with so little effort.
Yet while the episode's primary function was of course to give us an important reminder of Raylan's moral standing, it also did some legwork in moving the season-long plot along, as the show is wont to do. The big push here was the show continued to pull back the layers on Quarles, as we get a better picture of why he operates as he does. We already knew at this point that he was a self-hating gay man and that he was damaged from his role as an adoptive child, but the show managed to implement these facts almost as well as they did the various plot bits for Raylan's storyline. He is also apparently a former drug user who has no relapsed, no doubt to the pressure he's feeling after being let down his adopted family while also trying to keep up the facade for his own household.
Elsewhere, it seems as if Quarles has recognized that Raylan and Boyd represent equal threats to his plans, as he goes about implementing an equally brilliant (if not as complex) situation to lock Boyd up, and thus derail Shelby's campaign. The show has been implying the Raylan/Boyd parallels for quite some time while still keeping them on opposing sides, and it appears as if the show is finally getting the best chance to pull the trigger on the “enemies work together” storyline for real this time. This must have been a big temptation for the writers since day one, and it's somehow heartening to see those teaser ads for the show be brought to life.
That the episode begins and end with Limehouse and Quarles forming an alliance, and while I'm still a bit perturbed that the show still hasn't gotten around to flushing out Limehouse's characterization yet, this seems like a positive step in that direction. And even if it's not, it works like something of a flipside to the budding Raylan/Boyd alliance, while also furthering the complex world that Justified is building. There are a lot of moving parts here, and watching the show juggle them all so effortlessly is truly a beautiful thing to behold.
Quotes and Other Thoughts:
In the first season, we were introduced to Raylan as “the angriest man” Winona had ever met, and it seemed like something of a declaration, which was backed up by the rest of the season being about how Raylan was slowly trying to walk away from that persona, before he had to embrace it in the pilot. The second season once again say Raylan trying to be a better person, and actually succeeding in the season finale when he decided to let Dickie live for purely altruistic reasons. These are strong moments for the character, sure, but that's all they are: moments. So often the show gets caught up focusing on the other characters or (more often) keeping the story going at the right pace, that they just sort of leave him flapping in the wind unless they can find time to find some character work in a random episode.
It's surprising then that I still find Raylan dynamic and interesting, but I think that speaks to the way the show places story ahead of character, while still giving each one enough flavor that we buy them as distinctive identities. That's what makes an episode like “Watching the Detectives” kind of frustrating, because it plays so well off of the character that we know, while also reminding us that the show doesn't do this as often as it could/should.
Even if Raylan was originally presented to the audience in something of morally ambiguous terms, it often becomes difficult to think of him in such terms, both because he's often chasing down known criminals who are worse of a person than he is, and because the show often asks us to indulge in Raylan's main vice (his anger) as a way of reflecting that fault of the human condition back on us. But “Detectives” comes along and upends that perception beautifully, as we are asked to reflect back on Raylan's morally dubious actions so far this season, and even some from the past two as well.
The show recognizes how hard this maybe for some of us, by giving us an identification character in the cops investigating Raylan for Gary's death who are similarly won over by the badass nature of Raylan's throwing of a bullet at Wyn, and his lackadaisical telling of the same. Yet the show doesn't let us forget that this, as well as many other actions that Raylan has taken in the past are, if not morally wrong, then at least illegal, and it is Raylan's inability to control his anger that often lands him in trouble. And even if the trouble that Quarles is currently bringing down on him is more the consequence of Raylan sitcking to a moral code and not going dirty for Harlan's newest Oxy dealer, he still has to engage in no small amount of subterfuge in order to save his own ass from the trap set for him. There certainly exists a gap between morality and legality within the world of Justified, but it's perhaps not as clear as we would like it to be.
Unpacking the episode itself would be something of an unnecessary chore, as it involved actions both large (his assaults on Gary and Wyn) and small (the aforementioned bullet throwing) all coming together, as Quarles sets Raylan up on so many sides that it's almost unbelievable that he was able to come through the other side a free man. The brilliance here is how the show took moments that we found innocuous at the time, or plotlines that we assumed were wrapped up for good, and managed to bring them back in a new way that reflected poorly on Raylan. It's a testament to how far the show has come that it can managed to recall and implement it's own continuity with so little effort.
Yet while the episode's primary function was of course to give us an important reminder of Raylan's moral standing, it also did some legwork in moving the season-long plot along, as the show is wont to do. The big push here was the show continued to pull back the layers on Quarles, as we get a better picture of why he operates as he does. We already knew at this point that he was a self-hating gay man and that he was damaged from his role as an adoptive child, but the show managed to implement these facts almost as well as they did the various plot bits for Raylan's storyline. He is also apparently a former drug user who has no relapsed, no doubt to the pressure he's feeling after being let down his adopted family while also trying to keep up the facade for his own household.
Elsewhere, it seems as if Quarles has recognized that Raylan and Boyd represent equal threats to his plans, as he goes about implementing an equally brilliant (if not as complex) situation to lock Boyd up, and thus derail Shelby's campaign. The show has been implying the Raylan/Boyd parallels for quite some time while still keeping them on opposing sides, and it appears as if the show is finally getting the best chance to pull the trigger on the “enemies work together” storyline for real this time. This must have been a big temptation for the writers since day one, and it's somehow heartening to see those teaser ads for the show be brought to life.
That the episode begins and end with Limehouse and Quarles forming an alliance, and while I'm still a bit perturbed that the show still hasn't gotten around to flushing out Limehouse's characterization yet, this seems like a positive step in that direction. And even if it's not, it works like something of a flipside to the budding Raylan/Boyd alliance, while also furthering the complex world that Justified is building. There are a lot of moving parts here, and watching the show juggle them all so effortlessly is truly a beautiful thing to behold.
Quotes and Other Thoughts:
You know, we should also add Tim to that list of underdeveloped characters, especially considering that he hasn't even got a story on the level of Rachel on Art yet. That being said, I am enjoying this running thread of Raylan abusing Tim's FBI contacts for his own benefits, and at his colleague's possible detriment.
“Did you touch it?” “What am I, an asshole?”
“Don't play dumb with me, deputy.” “I'm not playing; I really am an idiot. You can ask anybody.”
“I believe they disproved that on Mythbusters.”
“Did you touch it?” “What am I, an asshole?”
“Don't play dumb with me, deputy.” “I'm not playing; I really am an idiot. You can ask anybody.”
“I believe they disproved that on Mythbusters.”
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