I've been watching Justified, but not consecutively. I saw the first two episodes when the show premiered and then picked it up last week at Episode 6: Collection and Episode 7:Blind Spot.
I fear that I missed the introduction of Raylan's father and I'll have to find the intervening episodes and watch them because Raylan's father has a hovering presence in this show like a very Bad Guardian Angel of the SPN variety. The great desire to be nothing like his father has inspired Raylan to become a US Federal Marshall. And Raylan's childhood of watching and taking his father's abuse and seeing that the proper authorities, state and church, did nothing to curb the old man, has made Raylan a man willing to deliver the righteous hand of Justice on recidivists before the state can deliver its own impartial and delayed and tortuous Justice.
Years of Anger at the abuse of the Meek and defenseless by the bullies of this world and the prolonging or absence of any redress on the victim's part has made Raylan a very Angry man. And Raylan's Anger is as quick at the draw as Raylan's gun; indeed, the two go gun in hand.
Collection
I found this to be a weak episode. Except for the Horse Lady and the Art Dealer with his own Daddy Issues, there was nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that I didn't see coming except for the burning of the children's paintings.
Although in real life, some crime depends upon the gullibility of not only the victim but the perpetrator, in Raylan's world, both the victim and the criminal can be very clever and very guillible, in fact, so clever that it becomes stupidity. Those news articles and blogs about
Crimes of the Stupid are not enjoyed for nothing. I just realized that this might sound as if I am blaming the victim for crime, but I am not, especially in real life. But in this show and in Elmore Leonard's books, the victims and the criminals conspire to out do each other in their cupidity and stupidity. The criminal becomes the victim when he runs afoul of his cohorts. And even in Real Life, some of financial crime, take for instance, Madoff's Fake Pyramid of Investments and Goldman Sachs' fake mortgage hedges, the criminals are running a con that depends on the victim's misplaced trust.
The Horse Lady was a woman who fulfilled her ambitions and escaped her working class life by using her looks and her sexual favors to marry into money and beautiful horses. As huge and spacious and empty as her mansion was, her horses were well bred and beautiful. That was what mattered to her. The Horse Lady's husband was one of those Financial Ponzi schemers who are just clever enough to depend upon the stupidity of their victims. But the Ponzi Husband was too stupid to use his money and power to authenticate his Hitler paintings properly and too stupid to see his wife's betrayal and his murder coming when his money was confiscated by the Feds when his Financial Pyramid collapsed.
But there was a chain of cupidity and betrayal. Because the Horse Lady was clever, but not clever enough to predict or evade her own betrayal by her lover who had been skittishly amenable up to the point where Raylan had a man to man talk with him about women.
Raylan's ex-wife had been the one to leave him, and he never saw it coming. Or, maybe Raylan did see it, but ignored it because he didn't want to deal with it. And I get the feeling that in that marriage, Raylan let the wife handle the Emotional chores and contract. Because of his own childhood, Raylan wanted someone else (his wife) to be responsible and deal with the emotional investment that a good marriage requires. And the way that Raylan saw it, he trusted her and she was just building a Ponzi Marriage that she let crash and ruin him when she couldn't keep the fake basis for their marriage real enough for either of them to believe in.
Those Hitler paintings---the Ponzi Husband collected them instead of guns or real paintings. Hitler was another Ponzi schemer of Empire and Racial Animosity. As long as he could get the gullible and the angry to follow him, he had his Fake Pyramid of Power and Purity. And he crashed when it became evident through a nasty war that there was nothing there.
Raylan is not an unaware hero. He knows, that what another character (Boyd Crowder) says of him, that when raised with the example of male entitlement and arrogance before him, a boy child either joins the bad boy club or goes to the extreme and fights it, is true of him. The Art Dealer spots a fellow crusader and wants to show Raylan his collection. The Art Dealer was just iffy enough that I, like Raylan, was convinced that no one wanted to see "his etchings". But in the end, when we see the "etchings", we see that crusading against the Evil of this Man's World can also be as destructive as the thing itself. The Art Dealer had a Nazi father and to defy and denigrate that father, the Art Dealer collected authentic Hitler paintings and burned them. He kept the ashes in jars and those were his prized collection.
Raylan was uncomfortable with this special viewing and with his own hatred and anger toward his father. We finally saw what could make Raylan step back from the fatal draw against criminals.
I'm not sure that Raylan is against Crime on an Ethical Basis as much as he is against the Criminals who commit crimes. I think that Raylan saw this at the end of this episode, too.
Blind Spot
This was a much better episode.
Although I found the filming of the prison visits and conversations between Boyd Crowder, Raylan's nemesis and avatar of all he despises, and Raylan distracting. The camera was hand held and constantly moving even in the closeups. The camera would scan Boyd's or Raylan's face and then hold a mouth and tooth shot and then drift back into the whole face front on and then slide to the side. I realize from the dialogue and the knowledge that I have of both characters that they are playing cat and mouse psyche out games with each other, but I don't think that I needed that sort of camera work to emphasize it. Both of the characters are so well defined by now and the dialog is written well enough that a single still shot or two shot would have served very well and not distracted me. Both Mr. Olyphant and Mr. Goggins are good actors, let them do the work.
This episode was a call back to the pilot, where Raylan faced down a Drug Cartel Honcho, poolside in Miami, and shot him dead. After some power plays and purges, the Drug Cartel decided that although they were glad that Raylan killed the guy, just think of the promotions and demotions and dead bodies after that guy fell in the Cartel, that they couldn't let him get away with it. Just think, anyone might start thinking that they could beat the Drug Cartel. So for the sake of their reputation and the business, and what is business but trust in their delivery, Raylan had to die.
The hit was contracted to a wanna-be-bestseller-memoirist hit man from Texas who was too busy talking to his agent and ghost writer about the 10 most important things for a successful assassination to be effective. Raylan who is slumming and shagging with Ava Crowder is caught by the spotter for the hitman in bed with Ava. The spotter decides to take advantage of the drop and starts shooting at both of them. Even naked, Raylan over comes him (haha) but the spotter gets away.
And the game of deceptions begins.
Raylan and the local police are convinced that Ava was the target. Ava does have the murder of one of the Crowders, her husband, to her credit and Raylan and the police think that the Crowders are behind it. Raylan goes to prison to visit and pump Boyd Crowder (like a shotgun only!) for information.
It's a shame that Boyd Crowder chose to join the Bad Boys Club, because from his conversations with Raylan, the man should have gone straight and to college and become a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Boyd can Mind Fuck like nobody's business. Or, Boyd should have become a fake psychic or Mind Reader, I am thinking of Tyrone Powers' character in
Nightmare Alley (a very good old movie). Boyd is wasted in Harlan County. Boyd should be out in the world making his own grand Ponzi Pyramids.
Raylan comes in the prison visiting chamber---the free man, the law man with the upper hand---and Boyd undermines him beautifully. Even when Boyd finally solves Raylan's puzzle about the hit (it wasn't about Ava), Boyd lets Raylan know that he has been pants'd just as the local policeman pants'd a local criminal nuisance earlier in the episode.
Boyd dwells on Raylan's relationship with his bad father and Boyd's intimate knowledge (they grew up together) of Raylan's family. The same has been said of Boyd, that he and his brothers were raised by an abusive, toxic father to be the criminal family that they are. We finally meet Boyd's father at the end of the episode when Boyd is attacked by the other inmates for snitching to Raylan. Boyd has been maintaining the personal fiction that he has found Jesus and that he is testifying with his Bible and his counsel (much like Raylan is justifying with his gun and his badge) to the good and moral life and conduct code. We find just how false that commitment to Jesus is.
The attack on Boyd in prison is broken up by his father who is also in prison and who is protecting him. Boyd's father seems almost reasonable in his behavior until we remember the stories told about his bad behavior by other characters. Boyd had told Raylan earlier that his father had never lied to him. Boyd omits comment on the rest of his father's conduct. And there is the moment in the attack when Boyd's Bible is knocked out of his hands and falls to the floor. In the scuffle, Boyd appears to be as concerned about the Bible as his is with his own safety. After the fight, Boyd immediately goes for the Bible before he confronts his old man. So, as false as I believe Boyd's relationship with Jesus is, I do wonder about that Bible. Just what is in it?
I think Ava is feckless and contrary, but I must admire her behavior in this episode. She is threatened in a hardware store by a Crowder associate (the one who is later pants'd) with bodily harm, but refuses to back down. The hardware store owner's wife is the one who stands up for her and pulls a shotgun on the bully and orders him to leave. Girl Power!
Later Ava is kidnapped by the Raylan wanna-be assassins and she manages to free herself and bring the whole kidnap/murder business to an end. Good on her. The women in this TV show are either brave or smart or both at the same time. These women might not always be discerning in their love lives (and that is not unusual) but they are forces to be reckoned with.
In the hardware store, the bully threatens Ava by ordering rope, duct tape, and a plastic sheet for a supposed hunting expedition of Old Man Crowder when he is released from prison. What the old man is hunting---deer or Ava for killing his son---is a threat unstated. That rope, duct tape, and plastic sheet are used later in the episode for Ava when she is kidnapped and the same things are used in the showdown between the hired hit man and his local associates. Ava is the one who can't be bound or controlled by those objects. The hit man and his associates do not fare as well as she.
I'll be catching up on the episodes that I missed.