Justified - "Slaughterhouse"

Season 3, Episode 13

“He just saw a man in a hat.”

Last night’s Justified was the show as it’s best, delivering a top-notch hour filled with tension, intrigue, and most importantly pathos, the main ingredient that seems to have been lacking this season. But instead of waxing on once again about Raylan has been so marginalized in such a busy season filled with perhaps one too many antagonists, let’s instead just celebrate the finale for returning the show’s focus to its ostensible main character, and through doing so providing the show a clear foot forward.

I’m betting that many reading this post will want me to just go ahead and skip to discussing the end of the episode, such a bombshell did it drop, but to do so would be to undersell all the work that went into making this episode work so well for it’s entirety. When we last left the show, the only really hanging thread that seemed to be leading into the finale was Quarles’ supposed shooting of Tom, something that seemed to fly in the face of all the supposed complexity that the seasons had been attempting to build. Admittedly, I was wrong to give up on the show has quickly and easily on the show as I did, given that the show has proven in the past that it holds a strong ability to fold all of its ongoing plotlines together within the space of a single episode.

To wit, the way that all of the disparate elements came together in last’s night’s finale:

Quarles – Yes, it often felt as if the character of Quarles was needlessly aimless, a great character study whose spiral into ruin made for fascinating television without actually holding any impact on the overall narrative, which left his shooting of Tom feeling like a shoehorning in a connection between character and story. However, like I said last week, there’s nothing like a cornered mad man to really ratchet up the tension of a show, and Quarles desperation manifested itself in some fantastic ways here. Sure, taking a mother and her children hostage is sort of cheap shop when it comes to creating tense stories, but it’s one that worked well here thanks to Neal McDonough’s performance. It also helped that it wasn’t really about the kids, or even putting the screws to Raylan (thought no doubt that bit of revenge was fun for him). No, it was really about confronting Limehouse for the money that he needs to go home, and that allows the show to kill off one villain by placing that responsibility with another.

But really Quarles’ role was to help to tie the season together, and he did that perfectly as well. His phone calls home reminded us of his mob connections (while also providing a potential story arc for next or a later season in regards to Theo Tonin) while also serving as one finale and effective reminder of how and why Quarles is the broken man that he is. His confrontation of Limehouse helped to make the search for Dickie’s money become even more relevant than it was. It also make good used of Limehouse’s slaughterhouse, both in terms of all the pigs we saw lying about, and as a means to Quarles demise, which resulted in perhaps the darkest joke I have seen on television in quite a while.

Limehouse – It’s been widely speculated that Limehouse has been developing into a two-season villain, someone whose rise would be depicted this season and then would presumably fall in the next. However, that appears to maybe be a bit too specific given what took place in this episode. Limehouse has been for the majority of the season depicted as the sort of wheeler-dealer of Harlan, the man-behind-the-scenes who makes sure that things get done. As such, while Limehouse could become a two-season villain and I would not object, I think I’d be more interested in seeing him as more long-term than that, something on the level of Dewey or Ella May – a tertiary character, sure, but also part of the rich criminal backdrop of Harlan.

I guess I’m thinking about him in this way because it’s the way that makes the most sense in regards to this season. I couldn’t have been the only one wondering when Limehouse would play a larger role in things (and Mykalia Watkinson would get more screen time as a result), and in that regards, I found myself disappointed with every episode. Yet as a narrative tool, he was quite effective, quite possibly because I often expected him to serve a different function, and with more agency. There was something stealth-like in the character deployment, and the sense of interconnectedness that he brought to the season that kept the Raylan vs. All of Harlan feel that makes the former’s struggle so interesting and simultaneously futile.

Raylan – Boy was he pissed tonight, and boy did I enjoy it. Regardless of how strained it might have been, Tom’s shooting served as the emotional link between Raylan and the case that I’ve been hoping for all season, as it allows the overall story to take on greater dramatic weight. Also, because a pissed-off Raylan makes for more interesting scenes, and the early confrontation between him and Wyn as they played a round of Harlan Roulette proved.

A pissed-off Raylan unfortunately is also a stupid Raylan, as he allows himself to be almost shot by Limehouse men when trying to pump the latter for information and thus capture both Boyd and Quarles. That he is able to capture Boyd yet Quarles is the one that receives any actual justice is the sort of ironic trade-off that fits within the world of Justified (as well as being a way for the show to keep Boyd within an active role), a painful payoff that reminds Raylan and us that morality doesn’t always win right out.

Boyd and Ava – Some criticisms have been thrown the show’s way for how tangential the show has been treating Boyd this season, and though that was a main complaint that I had for the first half of the second season, I was never really bothered by his role as the season’s B-story, one which never really seemed to connecting all that well with the A. The main reason that I was okay with it was because watching Boyd, and to a lesser extent Ava, evolve into a higher class of criminal was inherently fascinating, especially because of the politics that they managed to work into the storyline.

It was this rise that the finale played off of, as Boyd was made to account for all the sins that he had to transgress in order to reach his new and apparently still precarious position – including his shooting of Johnny back in season one. Meanwhile, Ava tries to use all of the connections that they’ve made in order to save Boyd from jail, and as her confrontation with Ella May proves, just because you’re on top doesn’t mean that you can always see the bigger (or correct) picture. But really, Boyd’s capture is really only set up for the show to focus on…

Arlo – Remember when we first caught sight of Arlo’s senility early in the season? Some believed that he was faking it, while others were caught up in the sadness of it all. That sadness and/or suspicion slowly gave way to fear, as Arlo’s insanity grew to be much more scary and dangerous, thanks in large part to the reveal last week in regards to how pervasive his particular case of the crazies was. Much like holding a woman and her children at gunpoint, making an actual crazy person part of the fabric of your story, especially when said crazy person is dangerous to others, is the sort of tension-mounting move that could feel cheap and exploitative in lesser hands. However, the show balanced this with some true emotions that help to temper Arlo’s insanity and provide a new thematic direction for next season.

In many ways, I’m convinced that the show wants us to react like Raylan to the news that Arlo considers Boyd more of a son than his own blood, and would shoot Raylan to protect Boyd: to just shrug it off and move on. Yet it’s news that’s so devastating in how fucked up it is that it’s practically impossible to just move on from. Is Raylan actually able to shrug it off, or he just so in shock that it hasn’t set in yet? His visit to Winona at episode’s end would seem to suggest that he’s working through it in his own manner, and that it will take time to get through?

And will that time be next season? One can only hope. Much like how Mags represented a threat to a lot of Raylan’s childhood memories of Harlan, watching Raylan work through that next season while taking on whatever new criminal threat pops up would make for far more investing television than this season seemed capable of producing. The criminal world of Harlan really is thick as thieves, producing a bond even stronger than family, and seeing Raylan confronted with just how estranged he is from his own family could just possibly send him over the edge.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Direct TV presented the finale, perhaps as a form of mea culpa for all the times the channel provider has tried to FX over the years.

“I have a permit for that in my other pants.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look. Like the use of the word ‘cahoots’, though.”

“Marshall. And company.”

“Oh shit, it’s a piggy bank!”

“You know what they’re saying at the office? I dis-armed him.”