“Does it change you, having a child?” Boyd Crowder asks Raylan Givens in a scene from “Cash Game,” last night’s episode of Justified.
“Guess we’ll see. Won’t we?” Raylan responds.
Whether fatherhood has changed Raylan or not, one thing is clear: his interactions with Boyd certainly have changed, as evidenced by their first encounter in this final season, one that has much of the same Raylan/Boyd charm of old (just look at Boyd’s long inquiry into what “Fancy seeing you here” means, and Raylan’s retort of “Jesus, Boyd, I was just saying hello”). However, their meeting at Calhoun’s also has a new veracity, a type of new edge to it as well. These men aren’t playing around anymore; Boyd is a criminal and Raylan is a lawman, and they both know that one of them will be going down sooner or later.
But this charge isn’t just present between Raylan and Boyd; it’s also there between Boyd and Ava and Raylan and Ava, as she attempts to play both sides without getting burned. As Raylan suggested in last week’s premiere, Ava can be a fantastic actress when she needs to be, and she’s never better than she is with Boyd in two of the best scenes from last night’s episode, the first when she finds Boyd waiting for her on her porch, wondering where the ledger and deeds are, and the second when she seeks him out at his bar to reveal that one of the deeds belonged to an old pizza place in Harlan, news that makes Boyd perk right up and promise to get them a bottle of the “good bourbon.”
However, it’s unclear if that final scene is truly Ava, or if she’s just playing the part of Boyd’s fiancé, performing the necessary actions to get closer to him, to discover what he’s doing. Ava, much like Raylan, is caught between two parts she has to play. Is she Boyd’s loving fiancé, or is she Raylan’s turncoat informant? Or is there, somehow perhaps, a middle ground where there two roles meet and bleed into one another?
Raylan is in a very similar place to Ava, caught between being a Marshal and a father. It’s no coincidence that his daughter, whether through videos on his computer or in conversations with others, continues to come up throughout the episode. He wants to be able to be both lawman and father, but will his desire to fill both roles ultimately prove to cost him his life? As we’ve seen with Ava, walking the very thin line between who you want to be and who you have to be can be incredibly dangerous.
The two people in Justified who don’t appear to be putting on any sort of performance are newcomers: Garret Dillahunt’s Ty Walker and Sam Elliott’s Avery. Sure, Walker tries to act the part of the salesman to an older couple in this episode (just as he tried to do with Raylan last week), but he cannot maintain the façade. His real face is exposed beneath the disguise, and as we see in one of the last scenes in “Cash Game,” as Walker, along with one of his henchman (Sea Bass, not the amazing Choo Choo, unfortunately) get ready to most likely kill the old couple who wouldn’t sell, he no longer feels the need to wear a mask–he knows full well who he is.
Similarly, in the short time we get with Elliott’s Avery, who, in his Justified debut, is seen in bed, smoking weed with Katherine Hale (Mary Steenberg), we come to understand that this is a powerful man who does not need to be anything but himself. His own personality and his own methods, as he explains to Katherine when she wonders how she should deal with Boyd in the future, are enough to achieve what he desires.
It will be interesting to see, as Justified‘s final season continues, what challenges those who know already who they are, like Walker and Avery, will pose to those who remain unsure. Or maybe Raylan and Ava’s unpredictability will prove to be the deciding factor in what allows them to leave Harlan alive.
Other thoughts:
– It’s so weird to see Sam Elliott without a mustache.
– I always forget and am so happy to be reminded that Jere Burns is a series regular on Justified. Lots of Wynn Duffy in this final season, please.
– Good to see Brad Leland (Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights) showing up in another one of my favorite shows. He did solid work in his guest appearance on The Leftovers this summer and was great here as the crooked realtor Calhoun.
– Raylan and Boyd’s first scene of the season made me realize just how much I’m going to miss watching Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins acting off each other once Justified ends. It’s seriously a treat to watch these two performers share the screen together every week.
– But as much as I love Olyphant and Goggins, Joelle Carter has been the standout of this season so far. Her work in all of Ava’s scenes with Boyd was the best acting she has done on the show, and I’m so happy her role has been expanded for these final episodes.
– So Avery is definitely going to end up being Walker’s boss, right? Or am I the only one thinking that?
– There has to be some sort of significance to Raylan’s final line of the episode, regarding the pizza place: “I haven’t been in this building since I was kid. It used to be a bank.”
– Choo Choo is one of those quintessential Justified characters, and his scenes with both Raylan and Tim were a highlight of the episode.
– And speaking of Raylan and Tim, I’m loving how much we’re getting of my favorite Justified duo this season. I could watch them “flapjack,” “shortbus,” and “special attention” criminals all day.
What did everyone else think of last night’s episode of Justified?
[Photo via FX]
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