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Season 4 of Justified has been a textbook example of a crime drama done right -- there's a perfect mix of violence, sex, puns and plot twists in every single episode, to the point that we're constantly asking ourselves if that was the season finale. March 19's "Decoy" is no different, especially considering that it revolves around Raylan and the gang trying to get Drew Thompson out of Harlan alive. To pump up the episode and discuss his take on the series, Walton Goggins, Harlan's own Boyd Crowder, took a press call, where he was both ridiculously charming and dead-serious about his work. Sound familiar? Below are the highlights.
One of the most rewarding things about Justified is that this show knows how to do a kick-ass season finale. Season 1's "Bulletville" was all kinds of bloody, Season 2's "Bloody Harlan" was emotional and satisfying and Season 3's "Slaughterhouse" was all of the above. I think it's my favorite so far... but to be fair, I'm kind of emotional right now.
"Coalition" was clearly setting us up for next week's -- *tear* -- season finale... while kicking serious ass in in the process. Quarles has essentially become a comic book villain at this point (it's not Neal McDonough's first time at the rodeo, after all), but I'm fine with that since I don't recall Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan using a shotgun as a pipe to smoke Oxycontin with a couple of prostitutes while chained naked inside a trailer. I don't think so, anyways. At the episode's end, we have a recently burned Quarles and hallucinating Arlo missing in action, Dickie with a bullet in the gut, a presumably frustrated high-powered mobster floating around somewhere, Limehouse working with Raylan, Van Halen fan Loretta with Mag's multimillion dollar fortune and Boyd... wait, where's Boyd?
With only two episodes left in a highly entertaining season of Justified, I promise to stop talking about Breaking Bad. After reading your comments last week and feeling disappointed when the meth Quarles jacked wasn't blue, I realized that I have an issue about obsessing over that show. This is especially problematic when there's already a truly fantastic series right in front of me, which became increasingly clear in "Measures."
When we were first introduced to Quarles, did you ever imagine that an episode would end with him stripping down completely naked and then entering a bathroom where there's a young man tied up? Honestly, my answer is somewhere in the ballpark of: "Meh, makes sense."
I knew I was going to like "Loose Ends" the minute Delroy's coked-up gang of prostitutes leapt out of his van for their heist. What can I say, I actually really enjoyed Sugar & Spice back in the day. What's more, I love Ava, who gets the highly coveted "Shot of the Week" award for shooting woman-slaying Delroy, despite the fact that he paid Boyd to protect him. Didn't he learn that just because he's got muscle behind him, it doesn't give him free reign to be completely void of basic human decency? And that the thing revered most in the universe of Justified is breaking the law when you're ethically doing the right thing? If only anyone on this show could learn these simple lessons -- take Napier, for example. How awesome was it to see Boyd channel Mags Bennett and talk up the little people versus Harlan's corruption? Walton Goggins clearly has his Emmy reel ready to go.
There was only one gun fired in "Watching the Detectives," but the fact that it wins Shot of the Week by default doesn't mean it wasn't awesome. There's nothing I enjoy more than when a show takes an annoying dude from the past who once came close to royally ruining everything and gives him a unceremonious death. (Breaking Bad also provided a shining example of this.) While I obviously don't want Quarles to win in his planted-evidence scheme, watching it all unfold in front of Raylan sure does make for great TV -- even more so when our favorite marshal finally sneaks in the chance to be one tiny step ahead of Quarles. I'm obviously extremely excited about the recent Season 4 renewal, but this, to me, means that by this season's end, we'll see a no-doubt bloody downfall for Quarles with Raylan coming out on top. And maybe the writers will at least throw us a bone and kill Winona.
Hate Valetine's Day? If the first five minutes of "Thick as Mud" didn't get your mind off of anything other than how happy you were to not wake up in a pool of your own blood, (allegedly) without either of your kidneys, then you definitely have a stronger stomach than me. I actually had to push pause and go for a walk when we started to see life without vital organs from Dewey's perspective. And yes, I would qualify this as "getting weird."
FLASHBACK: I'm sitting in front of my TV, watching the scene in "The Devil You Know" where Dickie Bennett is a mere few seconds away from getting shot and killed by two armed idiots, and I find myself uncontrollably sobbing. My caretaker approaches me and asks what's wrong and why I'm crying, but all I can muster through my tears is: "I don't know."
While Justified always does an artful job of using of violence for the sake of story and character development, the real treat in last night's episode was not the "Shot of the Week," but rather a far less bloody element.
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