Justified: Harboring Hostility
Blowback
This is a story about fried chicken. Fried chicken is what Ava Crowder made for dinner the night that she blew her husband away with a rifle, and later Fried Chicken is what Ava served Boyd Crowder for dinner when Raylan came to visit. Things got ugly and Ava had to use her rifle again on another Crowder, Boyd.
Fried Chicken is what Raylan orders from a nearby restaurant to resolve a hostage crisis in the US Marshall's Office. Fried Chicken and Bourbon are what soothed the savage breast of the prison inmate who took two of his guards hostage in the US Marshall's Office Locker Room.
The inmate has HATE tattoo'd on the first finger joints of his left hand in homage to Robert Mitchum's character in Night of the Hunter (a very good classic movie). I don't know what the 2004 on his right hand stands for. W. Earl Brown from Deadwood plays the inmate. Deadwood began in 2004 and Mr. Olyphant starred in that show. So perhaps that is another homage.
Fried Chicken worked in the second situation, but not in the first.
In the second situation, Raylan talked the inmate out of the hostage crisis. In the first situation, Raylan couldn't talk Boyd out of taking revenge on his sister-in-law for his brother's killing and out of shooting Raylan down for interfering in a Crowder family matter. Ava must make some really bad Fried Chicken. Or, Fried Chicken and Crowders just don't mix.
A US Attorney named Vasquez is in the US Marshall's office when the hostage crisis takes place. Raylan and his boss think that the USA is there to investigate Raylan's shooting of the Drug Honcho in Miami and the shooting of Boyd Crowder but they are wrong. The USA is there to let Boyd Crowder out of jail and drop attempted murder charges against him because Boyd Crowder's defense attorney has pictures of Raylan and Ava's affair. When a witness can't identify Boyd and the only other two witnesses against him are lovers of whom it might be successfully inferred that they conspired against Boyd in his shooting and in their testimony, the USA doesn't have much of a case.
This time it is not Raylan's trigger finger that is working against him, it is another appendage of his. It is not Anger but Loneliness that is his downfall. Raylan doesn't love Ava, and I am not sure that Ava loves him. She wants someone to save her from her failures and her life, although she has proved herself to be perfectly capable of doing that all by herself. Two lonely people are just fooling around with each other.
Raylan wants someone to be close to him physically. I'm not sure that he is eager for any emotional closeness at this point in his life. He's back near his hometown with none of the old connections or friendships to bind him or any that he wants to take up with again. The exception is his ex-wife. Raylan wants Winona but she is not interested although there are a good indications----a threatening sales pitch for home security from a strange, creepy salesman---that her own second marriage might be unraveling due to her husband's problems. He is in deep hot water with some people for some thing. And the second husband is defensive and unwilling to share his problems with her.
And perhaps, it is loneliness that causes the convict to take hostages and talk to the shooter. The convict is going to maximum security solitary lockup. And this is his last hurrah before he disappears in his cell with no company and only himself. The only company that he will have then are the guards whom he despises.
Two angry men are fighting their loneliness. And neither one is faring very well.
Boyd Crowder is doing fine. He leaves his lonely prison cell shortly after his father has been sprung due to the local policeman who took Ava kidnapped Ava and took her hostage. Old Man Crowder is walking free because all of the arrested policeman's arrests and convictions are in doubt because of his own corruption and arrest. Ava is the Law's Fulcrum in this episode. Ava giveth freedom to the Crowders to pursue their felonious professions and she taketh away Raylan's integrity in his profession. Don't sell Ava short.
Raylan sees Boyd outside the prison gates to the warm embrace of his Daddy.
Boyd to Raylan: "My ministry has gone as far as it can behind these prison walls. As much as it pains me to say this, there are men's souls in there that are simply beyond my power to save."
May I remind you, Boyd. Jesus saves not you. Boyd, you are full of yourself.
Raylan to Boyd: "I unleashed you. I will cage you again."
Raylan is not just talking about Boyd here. He is talking about his own bad impulses (Ava). Boyd and Raylan's bad impulses are very intimately connected.
Hatless
It seems that I always like the second of two episodes that I watch best.
This was a story about a man's identity and how he defines himself in his own eyes. For Raylan, it is his 10 gallon hat. He wears the hat and he honors his code of conduct. For T Bone, it is his Superbowl Ring. Few men in his sport have gone that distance and won. And for Gary, Winona's second husband, it was the land upon which he was going to build a shopping mall and make his fortune in the world.
All three men lose the outward symbol of their identity through bad choices and decisions. All three regain what they lost, but with a better and bitter appreciation of what it takes to hold on to what is theirs. And perhaps, a better understanding of what they are and what they thought that they were.
Gary is a realtor who thought that he would hit it big with the purchase of some very expensive land that he would develop into a mall.
Raylan and Gary discuss this mall later in the episode.
Raylan: "It was going to be a Mall?"
Gary (offended by the term "mall"): "A Shopping Destination!"
Gary borrowed a lot of money from a loan shark and with the down turn in the Real Estate Market, he couldn't make his payments. The collectors came collecting. One of the collectors was the creepy alarm system salesman who broke into Winona and Gary's home and spooked Winona. So Gary went to his friend T Bone who still had his football heft and build along with a bad knee. T Bone was menacing on the football field and he offered to be menacing to Gary's loan collectors to buy Gary some more time to pay his debts.
The collectors are not menaced by T Bone and retaliate by invading his home and beating him to a pulp and then further humiliating him by taking his ring from him. T Bone thought that because he could dominate on the football field that it would carry over into his retirement. He found out that he couldn't. He was good at sports but not good at threatening money collectors. And then there was the fact that T Bone was injured and sitting on the bench in civilian clothes when he won that Super Bowl Ring. T Bone is going to have to find something else to be good at or stop dwelling on his glory days.
After the T Bone Threat has been defused by the collectors, Gary has to find some other way out of his troubles. And those troubles have now extended to threatening Winona and that is where Raylan steps in to help him. Gary can't raise the money, so Raylan and Gary go to the collectors with the deed to the land that Gary planned to build his Shopping Destination on. The Head Loan Shark is there and accepts the land instead of the money. The Head Loan Shark has decided to develop and improve himself as a legitimate business man with Gary's parcel of land.
Gary gives up his dream of wild mall success and fortune and goes back to his middle class life and his wife. I don't know if he understands that he is fortunate that his wife would take him back after all the estate escapades.
And Raylan is waiting in a bar for Winona and drinking too much, when he takes offense at two drunks who discussing their wives and girlfriends in a very derogatory manner. It makes you wonder how these two jerks got wives and girlfriends in the first place. They must have jobs and money because they have nothing else to recommend them.
Raylan is a hero and a defender of the weak and meek. He is also fierce defender of women and most of all, he is still his ex-wife's champion. He calls out the two jerks for their un chivalrous remarks and ends up being beaten up and losing his hat of honor to the jack asses. In Medieval Times, a knight wore his lady's scarf or handkerchief to duel and battle for her honor. I don't know if Winona had anything to do with buying or picking out Raylan's hat; but that hat and her honor and his honor are equivalents for him.
I've said before that I thought that Raylan's fight against crime was more a personal choice than one of morality or code, but here I am proved wrong to a degree. There is a code of conduct, a knightly code of honor to avenge and defend the weak and powerless against their oppressors that Raylan believes in. And his hat carries his honor of that code.
Raylan has been unofficially suspended from the Federal Marshall's office for his unethical behavior of sleeping with Ava and that and the loss of his hat has rocked Raylan's belief in himself and his ability to serve his code and defend his honor. Raylan must go on his Quest, to slay the Collector Dragon and to rescue the fair damsel in distress, Winona, and to find and retrieve the holy grail of his hat before he can be re-established as the Good Knight.
And Raylan fulfills his Quest. He saves Winona and her husband and gives up the fair damsel to her husband because no matter how much he loves and wants his damsel he cannot dishonor her or her vows. And then Raylan humbles himself before his opponents (with drinks and an apology) to gain back his hat. It is part of the Knights Code to be Humble in his Power and Might and always to do the Right Thing.
Raylan still has his quest to restore himself to the round table of the US Marshals, but he is on his way to triumph over his most personal adversary, himself.
The episode ends with someone singing the Tammy Wynette classic, Stand by Your Man. "Sometimes it's hard to be a Woman..." but that is an ironic comment on the three men's quests. Sometimes it's hard to be a man, when you are not the man that you thought that you were or hoped to be.
Everything must be earned in this episode and not for the first time either. If a man hasn't earned it; then he hasn't learned who he is.
And now, let us listen to Miss Wynette and watch her Christmas Trees sparkle:
Click to viewWinona on the emotional burden that Raylan's Anger put on her in their marriage: "Your grind was exhausting. I don't know how you shoulder it. I sure couldn't. I needed a little hope in my life"
Screen Caps by Me