didn't watch this one quite as back to back to back as the previous ones because i was watching a bunch of mike's videos of beavers with my gf instead & probably forgot things. highly recommend beaver footage. okay moving on
the timeline on this show continues to confuse me but i also kind of respect how impressionistic they've made it. like sure okay everything is happening within like six months of raylan's arrival in kentucky, but also timothy olyphant's hair changed. sure why not
raylan spends this whole season coming unglued. he's coming UNGLUED and one of the ways we can tell is that boyd is coming unglued, and they have a lot of really classic fun times mirroring going on that pays incredible dividends in that finale
jackie nevada was so fun. why wasn't there immediately more jackie nevada. jackie nevada forever. because we get so little time with her unfortunately the most interesting things about her are what she does for raylan's character, but like. really fun! we get to see him do his little lady routine & then back off a litle bit, and it's really, really fun for me that they introduced a character who reflects one of raylan's core skills back to him (reading people; he relies on this more than the quick draw) who is a woman. yay
personally i did not enjoy the lindsey & her husband plot very much at all but it did go somewhere. like it landed. it arrived. i didn't realize quite how much it arrived until the end of the season, which is good shit imo. but i was annoyed the whole time it was happening
really funny that they were like we have to use this plot to express the essential fact about raylan, ie that man goes down. good to know i guess lol
ellen may! ellen MAY. she's so hapless & sincere; she messes ava UP so badly; the conversation she has with limehouse ('i'll just sit here') was really good. really, really good. abby miller's warmth is really essential to making that character work, shoutout to abby miller. i really love ellen may shooting that client & explaining to ava that she's afraid all the time. i love ava's face about it. really fun stuff
incredible spectacular amazing boyd & ava content this season obviously. them looking at houses together & finding that they have the same general aspiration (he's more ambitious than she is, i think) rocked. what does money mean? & then that proposal was INSANE dude what do you mean you're taking her for a mystery drive & handing her a box of cash & you've literally as far as we can see NEVER talked about how you're in love with the woman who shot your brother?? instead we get boyd being nervous & putting the ring on the wrong hand. really stunning moment: rare boyd sincerity
TIM season also. lots of tim stuff. jacob pitts doing impassive & checked out lands really sad & a little creepy. good for you mr. pitts. i have mixed feelings still about this show's take on the veteran experience / the bonds it creates. but the way he plays off of colton rhodes is so compelling. they should make him talk to boyd, the other member of the main cast who was in the army, some more. as a present for me
my favorite tim shot is that they film raylan finding out that arlo died from tim's perspective. only time i remember the show having a really decided visual perspective. mostly tim is a blurry background cryptid. this time we become a blurry background cryptid: raylan is having this experience without us, we're just looking. but we're looking with TIM! why tim. much to consider
raylan pressing on his eye after the arlo news and telling everyone he's fine and then by the end of the season he's completely deranged. they did a really good job setting the stakes on the drew thompson plot, because raylan really clearly views capturing jim beaver as his quickest & surest way to get the fuck out of harlan, which he is increasingly desperate to do. yay
boyd ava SEX PARTY! plot of all TIME! there's so much good shit there. ava going in strong to get an invite / being offered one easily. boyd nervously looking for his pocketwatch before they go because he is committed to his current aesthetic (cosplaying as smilin' sid). them wandering around looking for information & boyd realizing that he's not here as a fellow player he's here as the help. ava realizing that everybody is going to think of her as a whore or a madame forever, or i suppose we could say running again into the extremely circumscribed contours on women's agency in this place. yay
speaking of the question of ava & sex work, which did resolve this season in my opinion, her scene with nicky augustine where he sexually harasses her and she threatens to light his face on fire ruled. ava forever. queen of doing what she's gotta do
okay right that was a cheap segue but the scene in the CHURCH. ava and ellen may vs tim and colton. the weird specter of religion, which ellen may is being sincere about. tim, who is really struggling between his desire to avenge his friend & his responsibility as an officer of the peace (lmao). colton, who notices what's going on there and decides what he's going to do. tim, talking to cassie afterward. ava calling boyd. really taut, fun television
the ridiculous bodyswap heist was supposed to remind us of the evidence locker money reverse heist, right? because they play off of each other really well but where raylan & winona's heist attempt felt like wacky hijinks, boyd & ava are stuck doing something that is clearly desperate & likely to fail. boyd is squirming like a snake in a trap. ava is just trying to make it through the day.
boyd fails in his main objective of keeping ava safe, which is why it's so great that wynn duffy comes to him afterward & offers him exactly what he asked for, not least because raylan made that situation possible
i hated patton oswalt's character & i wish he wasn't there but this season really picks up that line from earlier where art tells raylan that he's a terrible marshal but a good lawman & pokes at it. what's law enforcement? we've got crooked cops, we've got a crooked cop who's trying to go straight & was surprise! a fugitive this whole time, we've got crooked federal agents, we've got a dangerous larper, we've got whatever the hell raylan thinks he's doing. what does raylan think he's doing? what, for that matter, does boyd think he's doing, and how different are those projects?
not actually proposing that justified is like "THE STATE MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE IS ILLEGITIMATE!" or something but it does kind of raise more questions than i strictly expected it to raise. but then perhaps i am watching it wrong. anyway it was interesting
okay the real good shit this season is the end, because those things fold into each other, all of that class anxiety & legitimacy & the unresolved question about what violence does or doesn't do & when it is justified, which the show usually brushes past in favor of having a nice time making a cable police procedural. because ava intervened to help ellen may when had no real other avenue for help (crooked cops, remember), and then spends the whole season at risk because of it, and boyd is willing to do nearly anything to protect her; he sacrifices their dreams of buying a house. he works with a lot of very dangerous men. he goes to a sex party. and he can't do it. he's still a two-bit thug to the people with power. he can't protect her and he couldn't give her better options
after ava gets arrested when he's clinging to the WINDOW talking to her and she's like don't tell me that you're going to get me out, we both know that's not going to happen. and then he just punches a guy about it. totally useless, he's just upset & falling back on harlan habits, scrapping in the dirt, being called white trash by a rich man.
when he's drinking at the bar afterward and they make sure to get his awful knuckle tattoos in shot i was like YES! YES! YES! because that's the point, right, boyd was (if the past tense is even appropriate) a loud white supremacist in part because he's just viciously pissed off about being powerless in his own life & grabbing at anything that will make him strong. and it's pathetic. not saying that this is actually grappling with white supremacy exactly i just thought it was a concise & effective visual referendum, perhaps just me
augustine threatens raylan's wife and he kills three people about it, but it's fine he's a cop and they were bad guys stand your ground; he kills augustine about it, indirectly but clearly deliberately; he involves himself in the internecine succession battle of an organized crime syndicate; he does police brutality like, literally all the time; he saves boyd and condemns ava, mostly by mistake, because he uses the threat of the law (or that's how i read that scene; i know boyd says that's not why he's helping & raylan says it's because they're friends, but i think that's a graceful wrapper around an ugly truth). raylan gets to do whatever he wants.
he gets to decide the outcome: he tells ellen may that when he first meets her, tell me how you want this to go and i'll do my best to make it happen. which is gentlemanly sure but is also, you know. he has a lot of latitude: he has real power, and it's not because he's charismatic or a quick draw. he has a badge
the obvious place for this to go is for raylan to seem genuinely at risk of losing his badge, right. like that's my guess for s5. that and boyd managing to be a new flavor of nuts. and i'm going to have a nice time
RACHEL moments this season i was going to try to fit this in towards the end because their whole visit to limehouse is really fun. erica tazel is great. the contrast between how limehouse talks to rachel & how he talks to ava or ellen may is really. it's really something. but actually my favorite rachel moment is the little smirk she has when raylan has her come with him & they leave tim in noble's holler
she's the stable & by the book one but she's also, you know. the cowboy thing works on her. it's like the really fun moment from s1 where she tries on the hat while raylan's sleeping. i love rachel. they should give us more rachel moments. as always i merely suggest that she could try lesbianism <3
winona didn't really get to do anything this season. are we only allowed to have one really great woman plot per season. like the ava stuff was SO good but surely we could let winona cook a little more. just my opinion. just my OPINION.
also sweater update i think i have fixed most of the issues but these words may come back to bite me. why is this here? because justified is my knitting show <3
