[mandibierly]

Yahooies: Your 2015 Winners of Our Inaugural Reader-Voted Awards

We came up with the categories; you chose the winners. Check out who — and what — took home the titles in the inaugural Yahooies, Yahoo TV’s reader-voted awards honoring the best of the 2014-‘15 TV season including summer shows.

With 46 percent of the vote, Jamie (Sam Heughan) waking up Claire (Caitriona Balfe) at the start of the episode “By the Pricking of My Thumbs” topped Oliver and Felicity finally doing the deed on 'Arrow.’ 2. The First Time, 'Arrow’ (32%) 3. The F–ktage, 'Sons of Anarchy’ (13%) 4. The Orgy, 'Sense8’ (6%) 5. The Political Pillow Talk, 'Game of Thrones’ (2%) 6. The Information Act, 'How to Get Away With Murder’ (1%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

With a margin of just 31 votes, 'Justified’ (34%) bested its FX mate 'Sons of Anarchy’ — meaning this race ran as close as that bullet that forced Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) to get a new hat. 2. 'Sons of Anarchy’ (33%) 3. 'Parenthood’ (15%) 4. 'Parks and Recreation’ (11%) 5. 'Mad Men’ (7%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

It was a decisive victory for Season 2 of BBC America’s 'Broadchurch’ (44%), which gave us two mysteries: Could a man we all saw confess to killing 11-year-old Danny Latimer at the end of Season 1 actually get off? And who killed Pippa and Lisa, the cousins at the center of the Sandbrook case, which had originally given DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) his heart condition? 2. 'Mr. Robot’ (14%) 3. 'Pretty Little Liars’ (14%) 4. 'Bloodline’ (3%) 5. 'The Fall’ (12%) 6. 'The Jinx’ (71 votes, 3%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

'Outlander’ fans wanted to see Tobias Menzies rewarded for his layered work with an Emmy nomination. With 47 percent of the vote, they were at least able to score him a Yahooie. 2. Gemma Teller, 'Sons of Anarchy’ (20%) 3. Thomas Barrow, 'Downton Abbey’ (11%) 4. Lucious Lyon, 'Empire’ (8%) 5. Dr. Wells/Eobard Thawne, 'The Flash’ (8%) 6. Kai, 'The Vampire Diaries’ (5%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Thirty-eight percent of voters are still laughing at the trailer for a live-action 'Bambi’ starring Dwayne Johnson, and rightfully so. 2. Bud Light Commercial, 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ (18%) 3. “Football Town Nights,” 'Inside Amy Schumer’ (17%) 4. “Family Matters,” 'Key & Peele’ (17%) 5. “Too Many Cooks,” Adult Swim (10%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

His ability to make celebrities comfortable enough to do things with him that they wouldn’t do anywhere else nabbed Fallon 35 percent of the vote. 2. Jon Stewart, 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart’ (19%) 3. Jimmy Kimmel, 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ (17%) 4. David Letterman, 'Late Show with David Letterman’ (15%) 5. John Oliver, 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ (14%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Well, for at least 53 percent of voters, this poetic 'Hannibal’ moment won’t be a spoiler. 2. The rising, 'Game of Thrones’ (11%) 3. Stepford Carol, 'The Walking Dead’ (9%) 4. Peggy’s walk, 'Mad Men’ (9%) 5. Ron’s happy ending, 'Parks and Recreation’ (7%) 6. Cookie’s anatomy lesson, 'Empire’ (7%) 7. The group hug, 'The Daily Show’ (5%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

The dialogue in the final scene between Boyd (Walton Goggins) and Raylan — which earned 24 percent of the vote — is one of the reasons the show won that Most Satisfying Series Finale Yahooie as well. 2. “You have achieved nothing, apart from one thing: The fact that you are a woman means we will have no more women presidents because we tried one and she f–king sucked,” 'Veep’ (19%) 3. “The dwarf lives until we find a c–k merchant,” 'Game of Thrones’ (17%) 4. “Game time, bitches,” 'Empire’ (16%) 5. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” 'The Jinx’ (12%) 6. “I broke my boy!,” 'Better Call Saul’ (12%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

It was a landslide with 60 percent of the vote. 2. The final question round, Miss USA Pageant (22%) 3. Home invasion by a stealth bear, 'Zoo’ (11%) 4. Aria and Spencer might freeze to death, 'Pretty Little Liars’ (4%) 5. Juliette hits rock bottom, with a snow globe, 'Nashville’ (3%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Correction: THIS was a landslide, with 72 percent of the vote. 2. 'Blue Bloods’ (15%) 3. 'The Astronaut Wives Club’ (7%) 4. 'Downton Abbey’ (4%) 5. 'Bachelor in Paradise’ (1%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Proving that Americans can laugh at ourselves (and how bad we are at geography), the 'Last Week Tonight’ map switcheroo took 36 percent of the vote. 2. The fancy ice, 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ (25%) 3. The ever-growing wine glass, 'Inside Amy Schumer’ (23%) 4. The adult entertainment conference nameplates, 'Silicon Valley’ (11%) 5. The worker bees, 'BoJack Horseman’ (6%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Thirty-four percent of voters never expected to say goodbye to McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey). 2. Jon Snow’s death, 'Game of Thrones’ (30%) 3. Noah gets eaten by walkers… and a revolving door, 'The Walking Dead’ (19%) 4. The family reunion, 'The Vampire Diaries’ (9%) 5. Another Red Wedding, 'The Vampire Diaries’ (5%) 6. Male Stacey passes out during sex, and Abbi finishes, 'Broad City’ (2%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Remember, 'Scandal’ fans (29%), we described this category as honoring the show that you had every intention of watching despite the fact that it would frustate you — or maybe because of it. 2. 'True Detective’ Season 2 (23%) 3. 'Zoo’ (15%) 4. 'Nashville’ (15%) 5. 'The Slap’ (12%) 6. 'The Newsroom’ (6%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) may have slipped, but 'Elementary’ (35%) was in fine form. 2. 'Tyrant’ (28%) 3. 'Homeland’ (13%) 4. 'Episodes’ (13%) 5. 'Halt and Catch Fire’ (11%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

Matthew Gray Gubler’s eccentric supergenius received the most votes of any nominee in any category (and 51 percent of them in this one), so consider this case solved. 2. Abby Sciuto, 'NCIS’ (17%) 3. Temperance Brennan, 'Bones’ (12%) 4. Olivia Benson, 'Law and Order: SVU’ (10%) 5. Richard Castle, 'Castle’ (9%) 6. Trudy Platt, 'Chicago, P.D.’ (2%)

Source: Yahoo Magazines PYC

[mandibierly]

'Justified' Showrunner Explains the Fates that Earned the Show Most Satisfying Series Finale

In a TV season that saw some of our favorite shows come to an end, including Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Mad Men, and Sons of Anarchy, it’s the deserving Justified that earned the title of Most Satisfying Series Finale in our inaugural reader-voted Yahooies.

Related: Your 2015 Yahoo Winners

Walton Goggins has already described the significance of the final exchange between his Boyd Crowder and Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens while accepting the award for Most Memorable Line on behalf of the show. Read his words here, and remember that the line, “We dug coal together,” is pulled from both the pilot and the Elmore Leonard short story upon which it was based. You should also know that Leonard’s story, “Fire in the Hole,” ended with Boyd dead, as the pilot was originally supposed to, but that the author so enjoyed Goggins’ performance on the FX drama that he later resurrected the character in his 2012 novel Raylan. 

Below, showrunner Graham Yost, who did weekly postmortems with Yahoo TV throughout the FX drama’s final season, takes us inside the writers room one last time to explain how they decided the fates of Raylan, Boyd, and Ava (Joelle Carter) as they built toward that winning finale.

Right from the end of Season 5, we knew our final season would return us to where we began, focused down on Raylan, Boyd and Ava. The big question then was which of them, if any, would get out of Harlan alive. There were various times in the writers room when they each had a day marked for death. In the end we came back to the question that had guided us from the beginning: what would Elmore do? Would he kill Raylan? Nah. His heroes always end up among the living. Ava? Nope — his women are usually still breathing at the end, sometimes in the wind with the money, too. So, then Boyd. Would Elmore have had him bite it? Well, as his researcher and dear friend for 30 years Gregg Sutter put it, “Elmore already tried that and it didn’t stick.” Besides, if Raylan killed Boyd, what would that say about our hero of six years? So that was the call — they would all live. We like to think Elmore would’ve gotten a kick out of that. And we are all so very grateful that you fans got a kick out of it, too.  

Take it easy, 

Graham Yost

[ninetyfivepercentdantomasik]

Another long-running Justified criminal, Dewey Crowe has been iconic of the series since the very first episode.

What do you picture when you imagine a “dangerous criminal”? Chances are, you picture someone like Dewey. A scruffy backwoods thug with a short temper, an itchy trigger finger, and “Heil Hitler” tattooed on his neck. He’s none too intelligent, runs with a bad crowd, and is prone to settling his grievances with violence. Dewey Crowe is everything you’d expect in a “dangerous criminal”, which is what makes Raylan’s dismissive treatment of him such an defining aspect of the show.

Raylan and Dewey have crossed paths many times over the show’s six seasons. Their very first encounter is pictured above, where Dewey didn’t appreciate being disregarded by Raylan, grabbed his shotgun, and pointed it at the Marshall. Gun barrel two feet from his face, Raylan talked Dewey down, and Dewey ended up driving away with a broken nose. None of their subsequent encounters have provided Raylan with a need to draw his weapon in order to handle the situation. Most have ended with a bloody nose for Dewey. For all his bluster, Dewey Crowe is a minor threat to Raylan Givens.

Raylan does not pull his gun unless he intends to use it. When he does, he shoots to kill. A body count of 20 dead criminals betrays the amount of times Raylan has kept his gun holstered and let things go. "The Angriest Man in Kentucky” will go half a season without shooting anyone, or put down 2-3 people in an episode, or in a minute. Most of the people who come gunning for Raylan won’t see him draw. Most of the people who have seen him draw were dead before they hit the ground. The perpetual goal for the show is to see how far Raylan can be pushed without reacting and, by extension, killing. That’s also the aspect that can make it such a challenging series to get into. Audiences are so used to the “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality that they’ve come to expect that’s what every conflict is going to lead to. If characters have guns, they are going to use them. Justified is the antithesis of such thinking. Raylan does not draw his weapon to be dramatic, he draws it to kill someone. No last breaths, no final remarks before departing into the afterlife, they’re just dead.

On Justified, having a gun does not make you dangerous. Tattoos do not make you dangerous. Being a white supremacist does not make you dangerous. A tendency towards violence does not make you dangerous. Even desperation doesn’t make you dangerous. What makes someone dangerous can’t be accurately described, only felt. Quarles was dangerous. Boyd was dangerous. Avery Markham was dangerous personified. If you had to narrow down what made these characters so dangerous to just one thing, it’d have to be the smile. A smile can tell you a lot about a person. Not those big toothy grins that people put on to meet expectations of some sort, but the grins that come about spontaneously. It’s a lighthearted reaction, a natural response to something that pleases you a little bit. We smile at small jokes, funny stories, a witty turn of phrase, or a tidbit of good news. These are the things that make us smile. Laughter is just an extension of that response. Not the full-bodied laughter that accompanies stand-up comedians, but the little chuckles that come without even thinking about them. The kind of people who smile when they think about bloodshed, those are the people you want to be afraid of.

Enough of the analysis, let’s talk about Dewey. Dewey Crowe is the ultimate representation of how much Raylan is willing to dismiss. Even at his most desperate, life-or-death, nothing to lose state of mind, Dewey Crowe is still only a minor threat in Raylan’s eyes. Dewey is one of the most entertaining characters in the show for the simple fact that he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he is. Dewey blames the failure of all his schemes on bad luck, when luck is the only reason the boy’s still alive. Dewey Crowe has not made his own destiny, he has just survived it. Drawing upon the amount of swagger and charisma thrown around by this cast, Dewey has come to believe he’s blessed with it himself. He’s in the same place, same business, same interactions, he must be on the same level with them. He is not. Dewey Crowe is about as dumb as a bag of rocks. That he has gotten into so much and survived is a miracle that can only be attributed to God’s sense of humor. If the boy had any intelligence at all, he would stop trying to throw his weight around with the biggest gangster he can find. But he never does. You have to admire his persistence, no matter how much shit he gets into, he never learns from it. His is a pure soul. A pure, stupid soul.

It’s clear that all those involved with the show have a great fondness for Damon Herriman and love his portrayal of Dewey. You can’t deny the appeal; Dewey Crowe is on a constant search to find his next ass-kicking. He’ll survive everything by sheer luck, and he’ll squander anything that actually does go right for him. It’s like watching someone try to walk in a locked door. And every time he does it, he’ll curse, he’ll yell, he’ll threaten the door with violence, and then he’ll walk into it again. And you can spell it out to him as many times as you want, but he’ll never figure it out. No matter what may happen, you can always rely on Dewey to be stupid. And it’ll brighten your day every time. God bless that poor stupid boy.

We’re all still a little upset he’s dead.

[kentuckertv]

'Justified' Series Finale: Showdown and Shoot-'Em-Up

Justified wraps up after six seasons this week, with the biggest question looming: Who’s going to remain standing in the inevitable showdown between Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder?

Or maybe that’s not the biggest question. Maybe it’s: Will Raylan walk away, join up with his long-time love Winona, and ride into the Florida sunset? Or: Will Raylan stay in Kentucky and just keep on doin’ what a man’s gotta do (i.e. huntin’ fugitives and wearin’ a big hat)? 

This is an element of Justified’s excellence: Its insistence upon being open-ended, open to all sorts of possibilities, rarely taking the expected way out. In this and other ways, it has remained true to the spirit of the show’s creating inspiration, the late novelist Elmore Leonard, who never met an ambiguity he didn’t like. 

Justified unified Leonard’s bisected career: He started out writing Westerns before settling into the contemporary thrillers that got him his reputation. And as we close in on the final episode, I would say that Justified has sustained itself as the finest modern-day Western of the past two decades. Now, I know that’s technically not much of a compliment, because, well, how many Westerns of any sort have there been recently? Obviously Deadwood, the 2004-06 David Milch-created HBO series that also featured Timothy Olyphant. It was often very fine, but I prefer Justfied for the same reason I prefer director Budd Boetticher’s lean, mean 1950s Westerns starring Randolph Scott over John Ford’s Westerns starring John Wayne — I prize concision and dry humor over spectacle and self-serious heroics. 

Related: ‘Justified’ Cast and Creator Reminisce at Paley Panel

The only other competition would be Carlton Cuse’s 1993-94 The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a fun Western parody. No, you have to reach all the way back to 1989 and Lonesome Dove — a miniseries, not a weekly series — to locate a Western greater than Justified. 

Of course, Justified was never only a Western — it just used that archetype for Raylan’s slow drawl and quick-draw shooting. Justified as conceived by producer Graham Yost was also a cop show — a super one, with superb supporting characters, like mule-headed chief marshal Art Mullen, sensible deputy Rachel Brooks, and sharpshooter deputy Tim Gutterson. 

And Justified was something else, and this is what lifts it into a realm of TV wonderfulness: It was the television version of a social-realist novel about class warfare set in rural America. That’s why Boyd Crowder was a great — an all-time great — villain. Because he wasn’t just a villain: He was, like Raylan, a poor boy who grew up digging coal in Kentucky, and where Raylan chose the law as a potential escape from his awful upbringing at the hands of his father Arlo and a dirt-poor economy, Boyd chose the outlaw life as a potential escape from his own version of that hell. 

This is why, although Justified was often one of the funniest, jauntiest, most surprising shows on television during its run, it was, at bottom, a roiling tragedy-in-the-making, with numerous examples of how stunted, gnarled lives in backwoods Kentucky were so dangerously painful. Whether it was the moonshine-and-weed empress Mags Bennett, or the black-community fixer Ellstin Limehouse, anyone who aspired to raise him- or herself above a lowly status had to do it through devious, sometimes deadly, means. 

Related: ‘Justified’: The 30 Funniest Moments

Justified’s artistic achievement was to bring to television the Elmore Leonard style — which was to efface style, to keep you off-balance, unsure of where your sympathy is supposed to fall, and to prevent you from figuring out not only where the story is going, but who the real hero, in any given scene, may be. The violence in Leonard’s books is quick, quiet, and brutal; it’s the kind that strikes you as being true and realistic even though the actions are utterly beyond your experience. Yost and company got that about Leonard’s tone and execution, and translated it to the screen — of the many movies made from Leonard’s books, only Out of Sight and Jackie Brown equaled what Justified did with Leonard’s essence. 

In the final season, Justified took chances, filling the screen with villains like Avery Markham and Katherine Hale and Ty Walker and Boon. This was risky, because the producers must have known that what we as fans were focused on most intently was the trio that steadily became the show’s central dynamic: Raylan, Boyd, and Ava. 

How will Justified resolve itself? We’ll see. But no matter what happens after guns are drawn and shots fired, we’ll always have the sight and sound of Raylan Givens, with his wily smile, his good-ol’-boy sarcasm, and his screwed-up notions of fidelity and family, to carry around in our memories. 

The series finale of Justified airs Tuesday, April 14 at 10 p.m. on FX.

[kentuckertv]

'Justified' Season Premiere Review: Say Goodbye to a Bad Guy

There was a point during the fifth season of Justified when I believed the best way to revitalize the show in its sixth and final season would be to ship Timothy Olyphant’s U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens down to Florida, where we’d first seen him in the pilot episode and where the mother of his infant child (Natalie Zea) has been far-too-patiently awaiting his arrival. My solution to the final season had the added benefit of bringing the series back to a location Justified’s ultimate creator, the late novelist Elmore Leonard, had set many of his novels. (After Detroit, Miami was Leonard’s most frequent go-to geographic area for crazy crime.)

Well, the sixth season premiere on Tuesday night found Zea’s Winona continuing to be alluringly languid on the phone from Florida, even as Raylan, that silly fool, was resisting her siren calls in order to stay in Kentucky, setting up an ultimate showdown with Justified’s most effective villain: Walton Goggins’s Boyd Crowder. For a series that has always excelled at creating vivid villains (one example: Margo Martindale’s Mags Bennett, an Emmy-winning role), it’s really an achievement that Boyd remains the series’ most complex and consistently engaging foe. Two things ensure this.

First, Boyd — an intelligent man prone to explosions of violence — is the kind of man Raylan might have become had he not chosen law enforcement, which makes them mirror-image antagonists, an always compelling dramatic set-up. Second, Boyd is, despite their similarities, also everything Raylan dislikes: Boyd is a loquacious braggart where Raylan is hardboiled-laconic; Boyd maintains a hold over women (especially Joelle Carter’s Ava, with whom Raylan had a relationship early on, as we were reminded in the premiere) that is both charismatic and manipulative; and Boyd is an immoral man who is fully aware of the spiritual consequences of rejecting morality.

Related: ‘Justified’ Postmortem: Inside That Premiere Shocker

There have been moments over the course of Justified when Boyd embraced a Christian faith he knew he would finally betray. Music question: Have you ever heard the recording of Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1957 debate with producer Sam Phillips about the morality of rock and roll, in which the Killer comes to the conclusion that he’s going to go to hell, literally, for performing this music, but that he just can’t help himself? That’s Boyd Crowder’s dilemma, in essence.

So the end-game for Justified that commenced on Tuesday night is a Raylan-Boyd showdown. For the moment, Raylan is being a good boy, obeying the rules, using Ava as a confidential informant to set up a RICO case to imprison Boyd, just the way his superiors want him to do. But we know Raylan can’t remain a good boy for very long. Indeed, we count upon his random acts of violent justice, just as we are made eager for Boyd’s random acts of violent retribution, to give the show its juice.

And here I arrive at a big spoiler if you haven’t seen Tuesday’s season premiere.

The shooting of one of Justified’s best, most beloved characters — dopey screw-up criminal Dewey Crowe, played by Damon Herriman, was both shocking and inevitable. But it was made more shocking for the way the show’s producers opted to have the inevitable occur in the season premiere. In reintroducing Dewey into Justified’s criminal slipstream, we were expecting him to carouse for a while longer, helping or hurting Boyd’s criminal enterprises as he has done so entertainingly before. A scrawny no-account who deserves the epithet of “hillbilly thug” as much as anyone on Justified, Dewey was also a lovable dunce, ruled by greed, his libido, and a nostalgia for a youthful comradeship with Boyd that long ago dried up. He’s come close to death many times, so his comeuppance was perhaps overdue, but his death scene also served to emphasize the extent of Boyd’s renewed ruthlessness. “I think I couldn’t trust him anymore,” Boyd said heartlessly, after blasting Dewey’s brains against a wall. Not for nothing did Boyd say just a few minutes before that: “It’s all coming to an end.” Indeed it bloody well is.

Related: 'Justified’: The 30 Funniest Moments

There are other potent villains popping up this season, including Mary Steenburgen’s Katherine Hale, who makes coldbloodedness enticingly cheerful, Olyphant’s former Deadwood co-star Garret Dillahunt as a chatty thug, and, just on the horizon, Sam Elliott, shorn of his moustache but bristling with menace as a deceptively polite meanie. I look forward to seeing more of them all, but we both know that Raylan vs. Boyd is the main event in the final rounds of Justified’s heavyweight bout.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

[mandibierly]

'Justified' Postmortem: Inside the Surprise Return of Familiar Faces in 'The Trash and the Snake'

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched the Feb. 10 episode of Justified — ”The Trash and the Snake,” written by Chris Provenzano and Ingrid Escajeda and directed by Adam Arkin — stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes Yahoo TV inside the writers’ room to discuss the twists and turns and tease where we’re headed.

We have to start with the return of Dickie Bennett (Emmy winner Jeremy Davies), which was a great surprise. How did you decide to bring him back? Well, we knew that we wanted someone else who appears in the episode, our lovely Loretta McCready [played by Kaitlyn Dever]. She came out of the weed business; the Bennetts were in the weed business. We all felt it was part and parcel of what Markham is in town to do, and so we liked the idea of Loretta putting down stakes and saying she’s taking the money that she got from Mags and she’s going to get in that business. The primo land would be the Bennett land — we just liked the idea of her snaking that land out from under Dickie and what his reaction would be. The whole thing is just for him to howl in pain, “Loretta!”

I had to rewind his entrance, when he rolled in and said, “What up, pimps?” to Raylan and Gutterson. As a viewer, you can’t wait to see what Jeremy’s going to do with a monologue: where he’ll take his pauses, the sounds that he’ll make, the hand gestures. Is it the same for the cast and crew? All that stuff, yeah. Other actors just have to wait till he stops talking before they can say their line. He has inhabited this Dickieness that is so insane, that is entirely hard to predict what you’re going to get, but you know it will be spontaneous and interesting and absolutely can’t take your eyes off him.

Related: Graham Yost Talks ‘Noblesse Oblige,’ Avery’s Warning, and Wynn’s Tanning Bed

It was great to have Gutterson there to witness the Dickie show, and Raylan’s “Archangel” bit, which also made it feel different than Raylan’s last visit to see Dickie. It’s just great to have Raylan and Gutterson together at any time because they’re on the same side, but they’re also giving each other s—t. Jacob is such a simply comic actor that it’s great to have him react, then pan to the crazy shenanigans. Just the notion of Dickie going off on this thing of visions and then Raylan just playing into it.

Who’s responsible for that Gutterson line in an earlier scene about him preferring to die by having Sigourney Weaver choke him out with her thighs? Absolutely Jacob [Pitts], and wonderful, because back in the day, when I lived in New York, I knew Sigourney through friends. People will think I put that in there, but that was just Jacob.

Another surprise people will definitely be talking about is Wiz (guest star Jake Busey) blowing up. What was the inspiration for that moment, which, like Picker’s death last season, was hilarious? I’ll take some credit. I just said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if Duffy and Boyd go on a test mission to see how to get into a vault like that?” Duffy, having come up through the security business, would know people who knew how to break into safes. So then Ingrid came up with the character of the Wiz, and the whole notion of him calling himself the Wiz. And then we got Jake Busey, which sort of added a whole level to it — just this guy who is so cocky and self-important and grandiose. We just liked the idea of him blowing up. I mean, it was as simple as that. There’s nothing any grander than that.

When they were shooting this sort of mortar full of fake guts and blood at Walton [Goggins] and Jere [Burns], Adam Arkin asked them to keep their eyes open. Some got in Jere’s eye, but he’s a pro, and he just really struggled to keep his eyes open even though this stuff was flying at their faces. I think at the end of the series, we could put together a little reel of Wynn Duffy reacting to horrible, horrible violence. [Laughs.] He has blood sprayed on him in Season 4 when he’s sitting in his motor coach and Nicky Augustine shoots the corrupt FBI guy. That’s just part of Wynn’s burden.

The one thing that got cut out is, we had a follow-on scene where Boyd and Duffy go back to the Wiz’s house to clean up, because they got the guts on them, and in comes Bridget [the girl with the snake], who was named in honor of Bridget Fonda, who was in Jackie Brown. She realizes the Wiz is dead, and she’s furious, and Duffy gives her $10,000 to shut up, and he says, “And I mean, shut up. I mean you don’t talk to anyone, and you stop talking now.” And she says, “Well, this is the start,” and he shoots her in the head. “I told you to stop talking.”

One of the things that was going to come out in the scene was that it was her who had called the Wiz and rang his cell phone, which set off the explosives. We liked the idea of the Wiz being truly hoisted on his own petard — which, by the way, a petard was a grenade of some sort way back when. So he blows up on his own. We shot it, and we just felt that with the propulsion of the episode, it just wasn’t necessary. Part of it was, we wanted to re-establish Duffy’s badassery, but you know, you’ve had Jere Burns, you don’t need to re-establish that.

Related: Graham Yost Talks ‘Cash Game,’ Sam Elliott, and a Twist Straight Out of Harlan

Getting back to Raylan, he and Avery finally came face-to-face at Loretta’s, after it’s clear to viewers that Walker and the rest of Markham’s men are willing to kill to get the best land for their weed business and Loretta has no intention of selling. Tim Olyphant likes to joke that he’s been doing Sam Elliott for years, just not as cool. How much excitement was there around that scene? Tim came out of that scene and was just eyes wide and grinning — and I could tell that by talking to him on the phone. He just said, “More Sam Elliott.” He just wanted scenes with him, and that’s basically what everyone said from Episode 3, where Joelle [Carter] got to play a long scene with him and then Walton did. Everyone just gets a real kick out of playing opposite him. He was born to do an Elmore Leonard bad guy.

Having Raylan and Avery meet was a specific target for the episode. We knew we wanted Raylan to get there to kind of be saving Loretta, because Loretta is sort of the client of our series after Season 2, in a way. We’re always rooting for her. We also wanted to show her having some grit on her own and that she is sort of unflappable at this point. So those were the goals, and then you just add Gutterson in there to be funny and have him stand on his gun. That’s the fun of doing this show: You know you’re going to get those characters all together. Don’t screw it up, you got a shot at a good scene.

Will we see Loretta again this season? You know, listen, Loretta is embarking on being a player in the weed business hoping it goes legal, and Markham wants the same thing. That’s all I’ll say.

How did you land on this legal weed business storyline for the final season? We researched it. There’s two things: One is, like every state in the union, there’s obviously someone pushing a bill for medical. That hasn’t gotten a lot of traction there, but we’ll see within the next five years what happens nationally. It could slide back and Colorado could repeal, and Washington could, too, but more and more, the public sentiment is in favor. It’s just, “Oh, come on, what are we doing? Why are we spending all this money trying to stop something that’s a hell of a lot less dangerous than alcohol, in terms of lives lost and stuff?” So we just sort of feel that’s where the nation is headed. However, the other thing about Kentucky is, it was the number one hemp growing region in the world at one point, and then when hemp got lumped in with marijuana, that all fell by the wayside. So there is this Kentucky tradition of hemp and, to a certain degree, cannabis.

This episode really tightened the screws on Ava. Her meeting Raylan in the stairwell of the hotel was almost more nerve-wracking than Raylan, Boyd, and Picker’s stairway conversation in “Decoy.” And that stairwell was actually in the power plant where they blew up the Wiz. That’s just the nature of the game. It’s like, “Oh, we need a stairwell somewhere.” “Oh, this one will do. We can put that with that day. Somebody just puts some signs on the wall and have an extra as a maid.” We wanted the danger of it, of them actually meeting in the place where all these bad guys are.

Ava asks Raylan if holding someone’s fate in his hand is a burden or what gets him out of bed in the morning. That’s a question we’ll return to a lot this season? Well, you know, the last scene of Season 5 was Ava saying, “I’m scared,” and Raylan saying, “You’re going to be fine.” So he does hold her fate in his hands. He can play pretty casual about her, turn it around and say, “You’ve got nothing to worry about” but Raylan’s a hero. We never lose sight of that.

Related: Graham Yost Talks Premiere Shocker

Katherine Hale (Mary Steenburgen) decided to spend the day with Ava. You get the feeling Katherine is waiting for Ava to screw up, and yet, in the car ride after their heist of the tennis bracelet, it’s Katherine who looks momentarily uncomfortable after sharing that the jewelry store owner now locks the door on her when he used to meet her at it with champagne. What did you want to accomplish with that scene? We didn’t want it to reveal too much, but just a glimpse into what life post-Grady has been like for Katherine. That she’s done OK, but she has certainly descended from the heights of where they had been and it is not something that she is happy about. There’s actually one little bit where she just says, “S—t,” and it was actually the tail end of a take where something happened in the traffic or something, and that was just Mary saying, “S—t.” But we liked it so much that we put it into the show.

One thing about the jewelry store scene: the jeweler, Winston, you recognize him? That is David Brisbin, and he played Mr. Ernst, who owned and operated the Bar None Ranch on Hey Dude [the Nickelodeon show where Yost started his career]. And Dave and I have remained close friends since 1989, and I always try to get him in [my shows] somewhere. He’s just a great actor, very funny. He had a big part in Boomtown. And I will say one other thing, the stolen tennis bracelet that [Katherine] swapped out plays a role in the rest of the season.

Now I’m already thinking… is she going to frame Ava? No. Nothing like that. You’ll see.

We found out two other things about Katherine this episode: that she believes Avery ratted on her husband, and that’s why she’s determined to steal from him, and that she knows about Albert (Danny Strong), the guard whose change of heart Ava needs everyone to believe resulted in her release. They tried to cross the T’s and dot the I’s on the story of how Ava got released, but Albert is the weak link in the story and that’s a big part of the next episode.

So we’ll see Danny Strong again? Yes, and it was hard to get him because he was directing an episode of [Fox’s] Empire, which is his show. But we managed to get him, so we were very lucky, and it was fun to hang with him.

The episode ends with Ava wanting desperately to leave, and Boyd telling her, “No, we’re going to steal Markham’s money and his idea and be the weed kings of Harlan.” So first, you’re like, poor Ava. But then you’re thinking how both Raylan and Boyd want to bring down Markham. A lot of fans will hope they’ll find themselves on the same side again, at some point. We have a strange dynamic in this show in that we’ve got a hero and a villain, Raylan and Boyd, but in order to have story, we also have to bring in someone else, and you need that other person to have conflict with both Raylan and Boyd. So you can start to think that Raylan and Boyd can be on the same side, but they’re not on the same side. So that poses challenges for us writing the show, but it’s also where a lot of our meat comes because they’re not in alignment. And yeah, that was a big goal for this episode, the idea that from the first episode of this season, Boyd has been saying, “Let’s go.” So finally, when Ava says, “Let’s go,” Boyd says, “You have to hold on a second; I want to stay.” The ramifications of that are what the next episode is about.

Raylan also paid Art (Nick Searcy) another visit this episode. Most people think of Raylan as invincible, but Art seems to always be there to remind us that Raylan can get bit in the ass, too. Was that the goal of that scene? It was a couple of things. Raylan says, “I just want to get Boyd and go,” and then along comes Avery Markham, and he says the story about his mother and the trash and the snake, which became the title of the episode: You see a snake, you don’t just come back and say you saw a snake; you take care of it. So he’s a lawman, and he feels he needs to take care of Avery Markham and look into this. And our [technical] advisor says, “Yeah, anyone you come across, you’re interested, and you’re asking around. You’re trying to find out how do they play? Can this case be even bigger than we thought?”

But the other side of that is, does Raylan really want to leave? Because if you keep on finding excuses to do other stuff, and you take your eyes off your main goal, doesn’t that sort of say that — at some level, maybe even on a primarily unconscious level — maybe you don’t want to leave? So, now we’ve got Boyd saying at the end of the episode, “I want to stay,” Ava saying she wants to leave, and Raylan both saying he wants to leave and acting like he wants to stay. That’s sort of, in many ways, the point of the episode.

There’s one other thing in that scene with Art, when they bring up the whole idea of who ratted out Grady Hale? Who killed Vasquez’s boss? Who killed Grady in prison? All these questions of 14 years ago, and Art is a bored man recooperating on medical leave and he says, basically, “If I get too bored, maybe I’ll sniff around.” That also becomes part of the next few episodes.

You’re shooting the series finale this week. How are you feeling about it? We feel pretty good about it. It’s not going to satisfy everyone, but I think it will satisfy a lot of people, and again, our primary goal, in absentia, posthumously, we’re trying to please Elmore. What would he have done? At the end of the day, if he went, “Yeah, that was the right way to end it” — that’s been our goal.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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'Justified' Postmortem: Graham Yost Talks 'Noblesse Oblige,' Avery's Warning, and Wynn's Tanning Bed

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t watched the Feb. 3 episode of Justified, “Noblesse Oblige” — written by Taylor Elmore and Benjamin Cavell and directed by Peter Weller — stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes us inside the writers’ room.

Peter Weller, who was a friend and fan of Elmore Leonard, was so happy to come direct Justified after he helmed two of Sons of Anarchy’s heaviest Season 7 episodes (“What a Piece of Work Is Man” and “Suits of Woe”). What kind of conversations did you have with him, and what did he bring to this episode? He brought a lot to it. It’s hard for someone to come in this late in the game and really just fit in, and he fit in perfectly. He’d been interested in doing the show for a while, and [executive producer/director] Michael Dinner had been suggesting him. You know, we all hate actors who become really good directors — but not as much as I hate actors who become really good writers, like Dan Futterman and Danny Strong. Peter’s a very smart guy, and he had great stories to tell of his wild times and people he’s known. So he was really engaged and emailing me, “Hey, how about if I start this scene here with Boyd and Ava lying on the bar, because one time I found myself at three in the morning at a closed bar in New York and I was lying on the bar with a woman.” And we said, “OK, let’s do that.”

How great were those dailies to watch of Walton Goggins and Joelle Carter pretending to be drunk? The interesting thing is, that whole scene was something Tim [Olyphant] actually suggested. He was working backwards: It would be fun if, when Raylan called Ava in for her come-to-Jesus scene with Vasquez and Rachel, she be hung over. I think in the original formulation, we were going to have Ava and Boyd start to make out at the end of [Episode] 2, when she says Pizza Portal, and so we backed off from that and decided to put that at the end of Episode [3], where it would have more impact. So we just liked the idea of them drinking all night, getting s—t-faced, telling stories, and just the details in that scene: When it looks like Ava’s going to lose it, and Boyd says, “Are you going to pop?” — it’s just a term I hadn’t heard before for vomiting. They had a lot of fun doing it, I’ll tell you that.

Another great scene in the bar was when Boyd and Walker came face-to-face. Was there a lot of discussion about that meeting? There was. We love to get to things like that where Boyd is self-aware enough to know that he talks a lot and will use 40 words when four will do. But in the first drafts of that scene, Boyd wasn’t eating a hamburger and there was more back and forth, and Walton’s idea was to have Boyd eating hangover food. So he’s trying to get a big fatty thing in his gut to soak up the alcohol and combat the hangover, and so Boyd doesn’t have to say much. It was a different way to go and something that, much to the chagrin of the writer sometimes, we look at and go, “Yeah, that was the right way.”

Related: ‘Justified’ Postmortem: Graham Yost Talks Premiere Shocker

Since Walker would recognize Boyd and his crew, they sent Ava to the Pizza Portal to do recon. Choo-Choo seemed quite taken with her. Will that come back into play? That I’ll just sort of de-spoiler. That doesn’t really come back around. It was just Ava using her Ava-ness. We’ve tried to stay pretty true to the notion that Ava is a spectacularly beautiful woman in this town, and that we’re not just sort of doing the TV thing where we’ve got a beautiful cast and no one remarks on it. So she has that power and she uses it… I mean, in person, Joelle is hideous, but onscreen, she somehow comes alive.

Next thing Ava knows, Avery Markham (Sam Elliott) shows up at her door. What we wanted to accomplish is pretty straightforward, which is sort of this disarming menace. Sam just personifies that in our show this season. The way Peter shot it was great — just with Sam kind of tilting his head over and looking in, seeming very charming, but you know what it means.

I loved the conversation at Ava’s table, down to the shot of Walker lurking in the background in the dark. Peter’s decision was to start back, so the camera’s in another room. You see Markham, and then the camera slowly moves and reveals Ava, and then reveals Walker standing in the shadows. So you get these three pieces of information. I think that actually Walker is in a position where you could be seeing him first, but your eye doesn’t go there because the light takes you to Ava, and then you realize that he’s in the background. That was just very simple, elegant filmmaking.

I found myself wanting to rewind the close-ups of Sam talking as Avery told Ava that to survive in this line of work, women have to be harder than the men and do things that men wouldn’t. It’s so interesting, because he has no idea that he’s sitting at a table where Ava shot her husband dead, and we, the audience, have no idea if Ava is really going to do something men wouldn’t — rat on Boyd — or stay an outlaw with him. We landed on that notion [of women needing to be harder] in the room, but that’s one of the joys of this thing, when you have writers like Taylor and Ben working on a script. They wrote a pilot last year for CBS that unfortunately didn’t go, so we thought it would be fun for them to write an episode together. We’ll break it out in the room, so we know the moves, and then an outline will tell us more detail, but you don’t know what you’re going to get until you get the script. It’s always fun to read their stuff.

Avery is a man who gives warnings, which makes you want to like him. But then he takes that jab at Boyd, saying he’s grown but still just playing pretend. Did Boyd have any intention of abandoning his plan to rip Avery off before Avery said that, or was Boyd always going to, as he later tells Katherine and Wynn, want to rob him and put a bullet in his head? I think that it added a little anger to the wanting to put a bullet in his head, but I think that Boyd was always going to rob him.

Whose idea was Wynn’s tanning bed? Brilliant. It started from, “Let’s find Duffy in an odd place.” So Jere Burns is an avid surfer, and he’s more than competent — like he spent Christmas vacation in Fiji at this surfing resort in the middle of nowhere with his family and other friends. So he is a great surfer, which means he has this surfer’s tan. So we thought, “Why don’t we explain why Duffy, living in Kentucky, has this perennial tan?” “OK, tanning bed.”

So we had the idea that he would be at a tanning salon and Mike would come in with his news, and then we said, “Well, that’s too expensive. We don’t want to go to a tanning salon.” “Well, could he have a tanning bed in the suite?” I thought that was ridiculous, and then, you know, thanks to Google, Ben Cavell comes up and says, “Here they are. Portable tanning beds.” So we said, “Let’s do it,” and then it’s Jere’s willingness to do the whole thing in his Speedo, with peepers on his eyes, and just go for it.

Related: 'Justified’ Postmortem: Graham Yost Talks 'Cash Game,’ Sam Elliott, and a Twist Out of Harlan

Boyd hears Katherine admit that she’s sleeping with Avery to get information, and then Boyd goes back into his hotel room with Ava. What did you love about ending it with Boyd coming into her bed? We knew we wanted them to get back in the sack together at some point, and we thought, “Well, when is the best time?” We thought at this juncture, with her getting this new sense of peril — and this was the best way to disarm him. But then there’s the other side, which is you can’t be sure what she’s playing: Does she just genuinely feel passion for Boyd? So that’s been the real fun of writing Ava this season.

Also fun this episode was the Luther storyline. There’s that casual way we learn more about Raylan’s days as a coal miner as the old friends reminisce while Raylan checks Luther’s books to see if Boyd’s been getting his explosives from the mine. This is our last run, so we can dip into the shared history pool a few last times. If the show was going 10 seasons, it’d be straining: “Why didn’t we see that guy in the third season, because he appears to know Raylan really well?” Six years is just the limit for that, I think.

We find out that Luther’s son, Tyler, has been taking from the mine for Boyd’s guy Earl. The way Earl grabbed Tyler’s face when he said, “You don’t like it when I hurt you,” made me wonder if there’s something romantic going on there? Intentional? Not intended, but happy for the ambiguity.

Raylan and Rachel confront them at Tyler’s apartment, then are waiting at the mine when the guys come dressed in masks looking to rough up Luther and steal from him. I think what Justified does so well is those scenes where you’re set up for a shootout and then no bullets actually fly. I just love the way Peter staged it: the two guys going up the hillside, being covered by Raylan and Rachel. You know that it could go horribly, horribly wrong. It had a great geography to it.

And in the end, Luther decided to take the fall for Tyler, which brought us back to one of the themes of the season. Yeah. It’s an episode about fatherhood for Raylan, and the extent you’ll go for your child.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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'Justified' Postmortem: Graham Yost Talks Premiere Shocker

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched Justified’s sixth and final season premiere, “Fate’s Right Hand” — written by director Michael Dinner, Fred Golan, and Chris Provenzano — stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes Yahoo TV inside the writers’ room.

We have to start with Dewey Crowe’s death at the hand of Boyd. When did you all decide that he was going to die? Fairly early on, sometime in the summer. I think it was Michael Dinner’s idea, one of the writers of the first episode. Tim [Olyphant] really latched onto it as well. It was harder for the rest of us because we just love Dewey so much. It’s such a fun character to write, and then Damon Herriman has just been such a dream to work with. But we recognized that there’s, in a way, no better way to show what the stakes are for Ava than to have Boyd kill a beloved, kind of hapless character that only maybe is a threat of betrayal. It sets up the what if Boyd finds out that Ava is snitching on him?

In your mind, when did Boyd decide he had to do it? It’s in the final scene. It was just Dewey saying he had to talk to Boyd about Mexico. That was it. That was Dewey’s mistake.

Boyd having Dewey look at the photo of coal miners in his office was great: At first, you think he did it to be nice, so Dewey doesn’t see death coming. But once it’s done, Boyd is so cold, you think, no, it was just to be cruel. Which was it? I think both apply. I think Boyd is ruthless, but I also think he didn’t want Dewey to see it coming.

I remember reading an interview with Jere Burns, who said Wynn Duffy was supposed to die at least twice by now. Did it almost happen to Dewey before and someone saved him? Yes. Yes. Yessss. Back in Season 1, when Dewey gets out of jail and joins Boyd’s Church of the Last Chance Salvation out in the woods — before we just had Boyd expel Dewey, Dewey had done some transgression and Boyd was gonna kill him for it. I remember getting the notes back from the network, and the studio, and frankly, [executive producer] Sarah Timberman: [Voice goes up an octave.] “No! You can’t kill Dewey!” So I said, “OK. OK. We won’t.” And Dewey lived to survive another five seasons.

You told me last season that you had that classic Wade Messer line, “Hey, Raylan… Can I get you a blowjob or somethin’?” written on James LeGros’s goodbye cake. What did Damon’s say? I’m trying to remember… I think we used a line from last year, which was one of Damon’s favorite lines, which was, “The anus is on you.” I can’t remember if we got into trouble or couldn’t do that — it’s all kind of blurry. We also got a coffee truck for him. We did a few things. It was really hard saying goodbye to Damon and that character.

There’s that fun scene in this episode when Dewey, while talking to police about how they can’t touch him, screws up words again. Oh, “nelgigence and malfiessence.” I don’t think that was written. I think that was Damon. [Laughs.] All the confidence. He’s got no self-doubt that he’s maybe not pronouncing the words correctly; Dewey just goes for it.

In the rough cut I saw, Dewey was rocking out to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” in the tow truck. When Michael Dinner does his cuts of the episodes he directs, he always throws in impossibly expensive music. We did blow a huge chunk of change at the top of Season 4 with, I think, “Back in Black” or another AC/DC song.

Last question on Dewey: Was $6 really the rate for a blowjob at Audrey’s? I think Dewey got the owner’s discount.

Related: ‘Justified’ star Damon Herriman on That Ending (and Turtle-Dog’s Origin Story)

Now let’s back up to the start of the episode: Winona in Miami with the baby. How often will we see Winona this season? It’s funny: I am watching an episode now — and I’m not going to tell you what number — where we see Winona again. We had certain contractual limitations because Natalie [Zea] did a Sarah Timberman pilot for ABC that really looked like it might go, and so they were limiting us to a number of episodes. Sadly for all of them, it didn’t go, so more availability has opened up. I will say this, Winona is a presence in the season.

There were some gorgeous shots in this episode, beginning with Raylan driving that Federale, whose car he crashed into, to the U.S side of the border. The dust was so cool. Wasn’t that awesome — the big wide shot where Raylan breaks the car hard and the whole cloud of dust just rolls past the car. We were just trying to figure out, what’s Raylan gonna do if he’s tryin’ to bring down Boyd and he doesn’t just want to back him into a corner and shoot him? How’s he gonna do it? He’s got a pretty good idea that Boyd killed Johnny Crowder. How could he get him for that? So that became our line, and then that led into the Dewey of it all.

Another beauty was when Raylan met Ty Walker (Garret Dillahunt) for the first time in the field by Arlo’s house, which Ty wants to buy — that perfectly-framed faraway shot from back at Arlo’s grave. That’s a Michael Dinner set-up. My only concern with it is that [that location] can look very California — dry fields, dusty brown hills. But, you know, we’ve sort of gained the audience’s trust, and I think they kind of blow by that.

We’ll learn more about Ty next week. How did the casting of Garret, another Deadwood alum, come about? It started with just the knowledge that Garret, after talking to Tim, was open to the idea of being on the show. So then we started thinking about who was gonna be part of the team of bad guys this year, the fresh blood. We liked the idea of ex-military. So we came up with this character, Ty Walker. Once Garret got a look at that, he said, “I’m in.”

Some of the show’s writers made another research trip to Harlan before the season began. What was the purpose of that trek? Just to get more stories and more flavor. One of the things that they picked up on was this sort of shrinkage of Harlan, with all the mines that have shut down over the years, and just the sense of time passing. That was a big thing, and that fit in well with what we were thinking of for the final season. And there were a few other things that I can’t really tell you yet. There were a couple details, certain things that popped up. When we’re talking about episode 2, I can tell you.

It’s interesting: We hear Boyd tell Ava that Harlan is dying and he wants to leave — which begs the question: Can he leave Harlan alive? Boyd also says he wants to go someplace with white sand and blue water, and Raylan’s trying to get to Miami. And then Art suggests to Raylan that he may be going after Boyd patiently instead of guns blazing because he knows he could end up in jail himself or with a bullet in him this time. Writers often do some poetic bookending in their final season, and you gave yourselves plenty of options. Have you decided how it will end for Raylan? Yes and no. We try to follow Elmore [Leonard]’s example and be flexible. So if a better idea comes up, and we decide to go left instead of right, then we’ll do that. But obviously, we’ve been thinking about the end for a couple of seasons.

It was nice to see Raylan and Art have a tension-free conversation again. Art is the person who can call Raylan on his stuff. The only other person is Winona — and actually, Ava and Boyd can to a degree, too, but he always resists them. That was the purpose of that scene. And also we just, in a very tiny way, set in motion something that Art’s gonna follow up on.

We see Ava drinking in the morning, which also sets an uneasy tone. She says it to Raylan: She’s terrified that she’s gonna say the wrong thing and Boyd’s gonna put a bullet in her head. You know that we play with that. It’s a big question: We would assume that there’s been a little voice in the back of his head questioning [Ava’s release from jail and her loyalty], but he doesn’t want to engage with that too much. The fear from the other direction is, well, if you don’t deliver [intel to Raylan], you’re going back to jail. So, it’s a really simple dilemma for her, but it’s pretty rough.

I loved that scene with Raylan reminding Ava of what she did to warrant their reunion in the pilot — luring Bowman to the dinner table, where she shot him dead. What does that conversation say about their relationship now? It always seems like he does have affection for her, but then he cuts her off. Exactly that. That he does have affection, but he’s also very hard. That was pretty much a Chris Provenzano scene. We hadn’t discussed the notion of Raylan referring to how she was around Bowman before she shot him, how she was able to sell that, and how she can use that now. I remember when I read that version of the scene, I went, “Oh my lord, Chris. That’s great.”

Related: 'Justified’ Producers Still Not Sure How Series Will End

We’ll learn more next episode about the ledger Boyd scored robbing that safety deposit box. It wasn’t what he was looking for, which is money to fund his great escape. Why return Boyd to his bank-robbing roots? The great thing about bank robbery is it’s simple: It’s about money. It’s not about being in a business. It’s not about drugs. It’s not about this or that. It’s just money. And that just seemed right.

Boyd has two new men in his crew. What can you tease about them? Earl, the wispy beared guy, is Carl’s brother, and then the Pig, aka Mr. Handsome, he’s just a friend of theirs. He’s got a little bit of knowledge that will become useful in subsequent episodes.

What would you say is the theme of the season as we look ahead? It’s that old thing that you hear in bank robbery movies: I just want to do one last job, and then I’m gone. That usually doesn’t turn out well. [Laughs.] And similarly, Raylan wants to catch one last bad guy before he goes, and often that doesn’t turn out well. So it’s the combination of that. And then the other big thing is trust and loyalty: Given Ava’s situation, that seems to be an ever-present theme.

Is this the juiciest season for Joelle Carter playing Ava? Yes, it is. And I said to her at one point, when I went out to set and I’d just seen episodes, “God, you’re doing great work this year,” and I realized it’s one of those things, like, “Well, what do you mean? I haven’t been doing great work before this?!” That’s not what I meant at all. What I meant was that we’ve really been giving her big stuff to play and she’s just seized it and danced with it.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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'Justified' Director Jon Avnet Shares His Detailed Shot List for That Winnebago Battle

Spoiler alert! In this week’s Justified episode “Fugitive Number One,” director Jon Avnet staged an epic brawl between Katherine (Mary Steenburgen) and Mikey (Jonathan Kowalsky), who’d decided he didn’t want her to kill his rat boss Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns) after all because he’d be forced to avenge him. Knowing he had to film the entire confrontation in the confines of Wynn’s Winnebago — with Duffy handcuffed to a table as Katherine started firing at Mikey and Mikey fought back — Avnet choreographed a sequence that was violent, hilarious, and in the end, touching. In short, it’s one of the series’ best.

To show us how he did it, Avnet took screengrabs and plugged them into his detailed, code-filled, extended shot list, which begins with some general notes on tone and effects prep. 

Related: ‘Justified’ Postmortem: Graham Yost Breaks Down that Epic Brawl in 'Fugitive Number One’

Courtesy Jon Avnet:

New Scene  24  14 – INT Duffy’s Motor Coach – Night (4 1/8 pgs) 1/27/15  1/17/15, 1/16/15 day 4

NB1: This scene will be shot pretty much as scripted. Set it up like a Western and use the confines and limits of the trailer to make each movement closer, very carefully delineated. Don’t let Katherine get too close to Duffy when she prepares to shoot him. Not just so Mikey can get in there, but to keep some visual dynamic tension. She can slowly move forward, but never quite impinge on his space.

NB2: As discussed today, we will want:

     a. two effex windows (corner bay)

     b. two effex mirrors and balsa that breakaway and can send powder flying in the air

     c. two effex cabinet doors (over the sink)

     d. two effex ceiling pieces for squibbing and blood dripping

     e. two effex tables, for squibs and holes (on the underside as well top)

     f. squibs on mike on the back side for hits, to be discussed????

     g. Make sure that Duffy has length of handcuff chain for mobility

     h. We will use non guns for all principal action

     i. We will do inserts with real gun w half loads, w no principals at all

     j. Safety meeting before each stunt or effect. Mandatory!!!

     k. Angle up rig for Katherine, so we shoot up at her, Rich Key Grip

     l. Angle down rig, to shoot down on Mikey, Rich Key Grip

     m. Key narrative element is Duffy’s reactions and attempts to squirm out of the way of the flying bullets, and tonally to break up the drama with some humor, some.

     n. Shoot out the big front window, so we can make artificial day, if we run out of time (very ambitious day, but, we should be well prepared).

     o. Extend chain on Duffy’s handcuff in scene 610 if possible, so he has some limited ability to move.

Shots:

1) Wide shot shooting towards the driver’s window of whole scene till shooting starts

2) Steadicam tight on Katherine as she comes in. Camera track back as she talks to Mike, takes his gun and then walks past Mike and stands over Duffy.

3) Same thing hand held tight.

4) Cover Mike cu hand held watching Katherine and Duffy chat. Move with him as he interposes his body, becomes an os on Katherine. 

5) Os from Katherine on to Mike then on to Duffy (angle down on Duffy) steadicam.

6) Cu on Duffy high angle down hand held.

7)  Cu angle up on Katherine for the chit chat (get Katherine’s intensity when she explains Duffy’s violation of the code and therefore why he must die).

8) Possible second camera profile shots of Duffy (down low) and Katherine just a side angle. Hand held, maybe swinging pans between them as well.

9) Tight on Katherine’s gun as she pulls it to shoot (we’ll do an insert of real gun separately when if fires once or twice, not on the set, ever)

10)  Gun fight sequence page 32:

a. Katherine shoots Mikey.

i. Cu Katherine hand held

ii. Cu Mikey hand held

iii. Cu Duffy hand held (blood splatter, light)

iv. Corner window shatters and has blood splatter

v. Wide shot facing broken window after it’s shattered HH

b. Katherine shoots Mikey second time (he charges)

i. Os Katherine tight

ii. Os mikey tight

iii. Ms mirror as it shatters and baking powder flies all over the place.

iv. Cu Duffy as baking soda lands on him.

v. Wide after this action??? (could this be a fixed camera, small with full hd quality?

vi. Insert gun going off second unit

c. Mikey lifts Katherine up and smashes her against ceiling. 

i. Angle down on mikey

ii. Angle up on Katherine

d. Same cu on duffy looking up with more powder landing on him.

e. Katherine shoots him third time while up in the air, shooting down, nearly hitting Duffy (goes through the table)

f. i. Same angles as “c” for principals

 ii. Angle down on table as it is squibbed and blood all over it.

 iii. Angle up on Duffy, pan up to hole in table and blood dripping down.

 iv. Very tight insert on trigger finger firing (insert second unit)

g. Mikey smashes Katherine on table, she fires a fourth and fifth time.

i. Angle down on stunt girl Katherine hitting table

ii.  Angle up on Mikey throwing stunt Katherine to table.

iii. Cu angle up on Mikey as another bullet goes through him

iv. Angle up on roof as it is hit with major blood.

v. Angle down on Duffy as blood drips down from table, a lot this time.

vi. Tight on trigger finger pulling gun. (twice) and three times when no bullet’s come out. Slower and slower

vii. Tight on barrel firing (with fake body, dummy near it).

h. Mikey puts his arm across Katherine’s throat.

i. Angle down on real Katherine for throat

ii. Side angle of throat crush w stunt Katherine

iii.  Angle up on Mikey.

i. Katherine pistol whips Mikey.

i. Same angle up on Mikey as pistol hits him.

ii. Side angle as stunt Katherine pistol whips Mikey.

iii. Cu Duffy hiding

j. Mikey breaks Katherine’s larynx, gun falls (next to duffy, he should pick it up and realize there are no bullets in it).

i. Cu real Katherine very tight and then even tighter

ii. Side angle stunt Katherine

iii. Angle up Mikey killing her two sizes.

iv. Angle as Duffy looks out from the table.

v. Angle as Duffy hides again.

k. Katherine falls off table, with her head facing Duffy (he’s under table) and actually dies as she faces him (fun, huh?)

i. Side angle stunt Katherine falls

ii. Tight on real Katherine for death beat

iii. Tight on Duffy for reaction to death beat.

m. Get two wide shots w stunt puppies for geography. Shoot at 45 degree shutter and 90 degree shutter for staccato effect when the window blows and balsa wood chips fly, etc. Don’t let them get to stunty. Follow my blocking carefully and limit the flailing. More of a death lock, where neither can really move too much and are concentrating on either breathing, or stopping Katherine from breathing.

n. Mike pulls out keys and drops them

i. Insert of keys being pulled out

ii. Insert very tight on Mikey for the effort to find keys

iii. Tight on Mikey’s hands in front of Duffy’s face.

iv. Tight on Duffy as he takes the keys

v. Insert of Duffy unlocking cuffs.

o. Duffy picks up the keys and unlatches his cuffs.

i. See above

p. Duffy gets up and addresses Mikey, who is barely alive.

i. WS of pandemonium that’s been created by the fun fight.

ii. Tight on Duffy hand held

iii. Tight on Mikey hand held.

iv. Duffy’s pov of ring on hand.

b. complimentary cu’s on Duffy and Mikey for his death. Trim back dialogue if possible and let it play very simply and hopefully with real and surprising power

c. Slight move in on one take when Duffy is in shock and talking on the phone, very slight, crawl, Steph. May need dolly to control speed and to make it silky. 

Related: ‘Justified’ Postmortem: Mary Steenburgen Talks About That RV Scene and the Katherine/Avery Love Story

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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'Justified' Postmortem: Graham Yost on the Kiss and the Cattle Prod in 'Sounding'

Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Justified — “Sounding,” written by Dave Andron and Leonard Chang and directed by Jon Avnet — stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes Yahoo TV inside the writers’ room to break down the big moments and tease what’s to come.

You’ve joked many times about how much you resent actors who go on to become successful writers. So how much did you enjoy Wynn and Mikey using a cattle prod on Albert (Danny Strong) to see if he’d break and tell them Ava got released from jail because she cut a deal? I’ll say it again for the record. Danny was a successful actor who decided, “Ooh, I’m gonna write.” So then he writes Recount, Game Change, The Butler… Now he’s got a hit show [Empire] on Fox. Well, of course we used a cattle prod. He loved it. He got to have a scene with Jere [Burns] and Jonathan [Kowalsky] and scream and wail. And then he had Erica [Tazel] and Jacob [Pitts] come in. It was a fun day. I was there for a bit of it, just to see him tortured.

We’ll talk about the return of Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson) and Constable Bob (Patton Oswalt), but let’s skip right to the kiss Ava and Raylan shared at the end. What was going through Raylan’s mind: Does he suspect that Ava (whose plan to leave Harlan was foiled) is playing him and he’s playing along? Or is he a lonely man and she’s a beautiful woman with whom he has history? I think, honestly, all of the above. He’s a human being and she’s a beautiful woman, and they have this history. He has great affection for her, and he plays such a hard line with her, but how does he really feel about her being with Boyd these past few years? He knows he’s responsible for her going back to Harlan ‘cause he hooked up with his ex-wife. So it’s all very conflicted. But I think he does know that she could be playing him, and he would understand that, not have any great acrimony about it, because he knows that she’s in an awful position and she’s just trying to stay alive. But he can also be the hard-line Raylan and sort of think, “Well you put yourself in this position, so don’t come crying to me about it.”

Related: ‘Justified’ Postmortem: Inside 'The Trash and the Snake’

Does he stick around? The next episode picks up not long after where [Episode 5] ends.

You’ve said this final season wouldn’t be a “greatest hits,” and yet you keep finding organic ways to bring back characters. Constable Bob’s return made sense because Raylan wouldn’t want his colleagues to know Ava was trying to run. We knew we wanted to get Bob into the season, but when we hit on this situation — Raylan doesn’t want the whole thing to be blown by this, he wants to handle it — Bob became a good choice.

And I loved Bob’s line to Raylan, “Hell yeah, I got a badge and a set of balls like Death Stars.” Listen, we know that Patton loves Star Wars. I don’t know if you’ve seen the full version of his Parks and Rec [filibuster], which is just unbelievable. We feel that we can take that license with Bob.

The sheet of paper Bob was holding in the hardware store — is there a story there? This is a little inside baseball story: We didn’t shoot that on the day. We had to pick up the insert of whatever he was looking at. We went through three different versions, different sizes, and how long does he hold it — there was a lot of debate. We had one that was just a shopping list, and it also had him doing a drawing of a beautiful woman. I think this one felt like it was something Bob might have just reached down and grabbed from his car.

Is Bob’s new car a Lincoln Town Car like Raylan’s? I think it’s a Crown Vic. Ford makes a Crown Vic. They’re essentially the same car, although obviously the Lincoln’s a little better. So Bob is just one step down.

Related: Graham Yost Talks ‘Noblesse Oblige,’ Avery’s Warning, and Wynn’s Tanning Bed

Raylan asked for Bob’s help because Ava went to Limehouse looking to leave Harlan. What did you like about bringing Limehouse back? The big thing is, we wanted Ava to run this episode. We wanted her to say, “To hell with it, I’m getting out of here.” We loved that he’s obviously got very mixed feelings about Ava. He’s helped her out in the past, and then here she is coming to him again. She came to him at the end of Season 4, when he made them choose between getting Shelby or taking Ellen May, and that came back to haunt them. Getting Errol [played by Demetrius Grosse] back, it’s the rule of Justified: Unless you see somebody actually zipped into a body bag and you see their grave… It was fun to have this thing where Ava is playing them: She’s gonna say the money is over here, and then he turns the tables.

We saw Limehouse warn Ava not to screw him over, which she essentially did when she left Errol in that hardware store with Bob and took off with Raylan. That begs the question: Will we see Limehouse again? You’ll pay to find that out. [UPDATE: The promo for the next episode showed Limehouse making a call to offer Boyd “information.”]

We also met Ava’s uncle Zachariah (played by Lost’s Jeff Fahey), who’s going to help Boyd’s crew use an abandoned mine to get close to Markham’s Pizza Portal vault. What can you tell us about him? The only thing I will tease is that we had one sort of ending in mind for him, and that changed because Jeff was doing such great work. It was just a huge get, getting Jeff Fahey to be in the show. You’ll see a scene in the next episode between Ava and Zachariah that is really tremendous.

I wanted to touch on the scene where Wynn met Katherine’s grandchildren. His facial expression was amazing, as usual, but the moment also made me really curious about Wynn’s private life. Will you have time to explore that at all this season? You’re gonna find out a lot more about Wynn Duffy.

Wynn and Mikey playing Scrabble was a nice touch. The only thing that gave me a little bit of a pause was that in The Americans this season, there’s Scrabble played by Gabriel and Philip. But we said, “Eh.”

Choo-Choo killed Calhoun (when he was just supposed to rough him up to confirm who’s getting information from him). But we’ve yet to see Markham really lose his cool. His scene with Walker reminded me of Patrick Swayze’s line in Road House: “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice.” It feels like Markham is reaching that point. Yeah. It’s what happens to a lot of people: They come to Harlan thinking they can handle things, and it becomes a little harder than they thought.

Related: Inside ‘Cash Game’ and a Twist Straight Out of Harlan

Last question: Did you want us to be nervous when Ava made Boyd breakfast? We know it’s too early in the season for her to point a gun at him, but just for a second, we’re thinking of Bowman. No. But I will say that the whole cooking thing is something that plays a part in the next episode. When you consider where we started in the pilot, Raylan going over to Ava’s for fried chicken knowing that Boyd was there… we’re kind of quoting that.

Justified airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX.

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The lovely Joelle Carter is featured in the latest issue of Variety. She talks about Justified, what she thinks the show’s legacy will be and more!

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Incase anyone was wondering, I’m trying not to post a lot of articles on any one day because of the fact I don’t put them under a read more and they do stretch the tags quite a bit.

If any of you want to skip past one of my articles on either your dashboard or in the tags, on the desktop you can by pressing your ‘J’ key to advance past the post and your ‘K’ key to reverse.

[justifiedarticles]

Justified: Graham Yost talks 'very propulsive, very exciting' series finale

Will Robinson || 14 April 2015

Four of Justified’s five season finales (so far) ended with the song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” a reflexive statement about the show’s home county. But executive producer Graham Yost has always viewed it instead as a question: Who will leave Harlan alive?

Yost promises we’ll learn just that in Tuesday night’s kinetic conclusion, which finds Raylan, Boyd, and Ava on a three-way collision course—with jail time, kingpin Avery Markham’s $10 million, and their lives at stake. EW chatted with Yost ahead of the finale, previewing what’s to come and looking back at the series’ great six-season run. (Spoiler alert: Sadly, while Wynn Duffy will appear, the Winnebago is no more.)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Raylan is a prideful, strong-headed guy. To what degree will hubris doom him in the finale? GRAHAM YOST: There’s a line that Raylan says when Boyd asks him in the pilot, what kind of gun does Raylan have now? And Raylan says, “You’ll pay to find that out.” So, you will pay to find that out. That’s obviously the question that we’re raising: What is Raylan going to do after all these long years? What is he going to do?

Episode 12 was the first time Raylan openly expressed his desire to move to Florida to be with Winona and his daughter. That doesn’t seem to bode well for happy endings. How big of a body count can we expect? Thousands. No. The last episode is, I think, very propulsive, very exciting. There will be things that people will be very surprised at. It’s a finale of a season and of a series. There is a body count. Beyond that, I’m not going to say.

On to some of the other characters. Rachel was Raylan’s interim boss while Art was out recovering. She knows his antics and trusts him to run Ava as a confidential informant. But she kind of gets screwed. She did get screwed. But in the recap going into 11, there is that moment earlier where she’s talking to Art—he’s still got his beard in his recuperation phase. And he advises her to do one thing, which is to pull Raylan off. She says, “Yeah, but what would you do?” There is that feeling of, yeah, she’s thrown her lot in with Raylan, and there is a cost. But [she] probably would do the same thing again; she trusts him. There are ramifications, but you’ll see.

The Loretta and Markham alliance was surprising. What made him want to team up with her? I think that there is also an aspect to Loretta which we really brought to the fore in the ninth episode, where she gives her big speech in the Pizza Portal. You see a glimpse, and Markham says this much to her in 12: “I saw some of Mags in you, and some of Catherine in you.” There’s aspects of that [that] are key to Loretta’s character. She is in that Elmore [Leonard] world, is a very cool character, doesn’t freak out. She understands what she’s chosen to live in, and she is going to do what she can and what she needs to do in order to survive.

How long is the finale? It’s maybe five minutes over, something like that. Not super long.

Not Kurt Sutter-esque. No. We got into trouble with that last season. We were noticing that Sons [of Anarchy] was going way long in their episodes, so we said to FX, “Is it okay if we go long?” And they said, “Yeah, sure. We don’t really care anymore, because the secondary market is Netflix”—Amazon Prime, in our case. The trouble we got into is we were shooting longer scripts, and just took longer production lines, whereas Sons, they would have a shootable script, and they would shoot in the days allowed; the material would play out longer. We tried to be cognizant of that, this last season. Where some episodes were a little longer, there were a couple that were a little shorter. We didn’t set out to go long—it’s just the way it played.

How do you think fans will react? That’s a big question, and I would say this: We made some big, bold choices. We stand behind them. We’re very proud of the final episode, yet we have no control over how people will react. I think some people will love it, and others might not as much. But I have no idea. The other thing I would say is that people have really embraced this season. The final episode is not different from the rest of the season…and we told the story that we set out to do. I’m hoping that they’ll love it.

How definitive is the finale? I would say that we come to a conclusion in all our stories, but without trying to wrap everything up neatly.

Let’s talk about the series as a whole. Were there any storylines you wish you had more time for, or any ideas that you couldn’t get around to? To be honest, right now, we’re focused on just finishing this up. We’re ending the series the way we wanted, the way we decided pretty much back in September. There are characters [who] if we’d had more episodes per season, or if we were a different type of show, yeah, we’d want to spend more time with each and every one of them—especially Art and Rachel and Tim. They got more play this season, in different ways, but there could always be more. But I think it’s really a question that I won’t be able to answer for some time, when I really look back at the whole series and say: “Okay, now what could have we done differently?” I’ve certainly felt that way with other projects, like, “Boy, would have been great to spend another episode on this or that.”

What’s the thing you’re most proud of? There’s a bunch of things, so it’s hard to narrow it down. Again, one of the things that always attracted [me] the most were moments we saw Raylan’s vulnerability and emotion came out. That has happened here and there throughout the series. I think in the first season, the episode “Hatless,” when he endeavors to save Winona’s new husband from himself and delivers him back alive to her—that’s a quintessential hero moment. I think all of Raylan’s stuff about his father, there have been just great scenes. Like when he founds out Arlo has died—when the previous season, Arlo shot a man, a law enforcement officer in a hat, in trying to save Boyd. He didn’t know if it was Raylan or not. That sense of betrayal was pretty extreme. So there’s those moments, and believe me, there is stuff in the finale that I hope has that level of emotion.

But then there are the crazy  Elmore Leonard scenes of wild violence and mayhem that were exciting and horrifying and amusing—oddly amusing. I think the end of season 3, in the slaughterhouse, when Limehouse chops off Quarles’ arm, and he reaches it for the arm, and Raylan pulls it away…

I’ll go back to the Winnebago scene in this season’s 11th episode. I took Joelle [Carter] to watch that; we were pretty excited by that scene. When Fred Golan and I watched it the first time, we were just kind of awestruck, a mix of emotions—excitement, terror, astonishment, and emotion. The last moments between Duffy and Mikey were pretty strong.

You may still be too close to the show, but could you pick out any regrets? It’s pretty hard right now. Here’s the thing: When you’re involved with the day-to-day workings of the show and breakings of the stories and everything, there can be things you think of—”boy, wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” And we come up with a great idea for an action sequence or a great turn for a character. And when we get into the actual mechanics of making the story work, we find that it doesn’t work with what we’re trying to do in that episode, or it doesn’t entirely track with a character as we understand them. So we abandon it.

I worked on a show years ago called Full House, and one of the jokes in the room was [that] there was an Island of Lost Pitches—sort of like in Rudolph, the Island of Misfit Toys. And on the Island of Lost Pitches were all these cool moments. Recently, I’ve had to review the scenes that will be on the [Justified] season 6 DVD package, and we have deleted scenes. I watched them, and almost [every] scene that I found, I went, “Wow, man, did we a mistake in not putting that scene in? Because that was a pretty cool scene between Art and Rachel,” or, “That was a pretty cool scene between Art and Raylan.” There was a wonderful scene in the fourth episode after the Wiz was blown up where we actually went back to the Wiz’s house, and they have a confrontation with the Wiz’s girlfriend that ended very violently. We just took it out because we felt it was slowing the story down; we need the other stories to be rolling along.

Those are the regrets—either stuff we imagined [that] just didn’t ultimately work out, or stuff we actually shot that didn’t ultimately fit the episodes. [We] took ‘em out, but they’re still good work.

How has your relationship with Timothy Olyphant evolved through the years? He’s essentially been a producer since the very first episode. He’s had a lot of input. It’s his name above the title, his face on the poster. The only times of contention [were] where our opinions diverged, but we figured out a way to work that out. It wasn’t always easy. But at the end of the day, I think that Justified is some of the best, if not the best, work that either one of us has done. We’re both incredibly proud of the show and incredibly grateful to have been a part of it. We got to do six years of this and end it in the fashion we wanted to end it. We didn’t outstay our welcome. So that’s ultimately a pretty good feeling.

What’s next for you? Are you exhausted? Listen: The reality of doing this show for basic cable, and in particular for FX, is they gave us a lot of freedom. We only had to do 13 episodes a year, so we always had downtime at the end of every season: basically, three or four months off for the writers, six or seven months off for the actors. So it’s not a bad life. It’s not as though that I’m carrying with me now the exhaustion of six years; I’m really just carrying the partial exhaustion of doing another 13 episodes. But even then, we wrapped shooting over a month ago now. The work just kind of slowly trickles off. And it’s onto other things—some relaxation, some just sitting around. I’m not encouraged to jump right into another show, I’ll tell you that. I was tired when we wrapped, but I’ve gotten sleep back since then.

Any other general thoughts from the last six years? The thing about the modern era of television is the ability to run your course and go out the way you want to go out. We end up with shorter runs, and that’s kind of a gift, too. We were not contractually obligated to keep going for 10 years, because I think we would have just killed the show: We would have run out of story. I think even going an extra-long season and dividing it into two would have hurt us. So we got to go out the way we wanted.

But also, part of that thing is we didn’t have a lot of cast rollover. We had new people each season, but that core cast remained the same from the first season. Similarly, the writers’ room didn’t have huge amount of turnover. Some people left, we got some new writers along the way, but there was a core group that was there, basically. That’s going to be the hard part: not getting back together, and the actors not re-gathering in September. That will be strange. That’s the way it goes. Better to go out feeling proud of what we’ve done then to have a show that ends with people saying, “Wait, was that still on the air?”

Justified’s series finale air[ed] Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.

(SOURCE)

[justifiedresource]

Emmy Contender Chat: Joelle Carter says goodbye to 'Justified'

By Glenn Whipp || 21 April 2015

Justified’s Joelle Carter stopped by The Times recently to talk about the fantastic journey she and her indomitable character, Ava Crowder, went on during the show’s celebrated six-year run. The shootings, the prison stint, the passionate and often dangerous relationship between Ava and Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder … and yet, somehow, Ava made it out of Harlan alive, an escape that she, in a nod to the writer behind the show’s source material, calls a true “Elmore Leonard female ending.”

“I knew how it was going to end, although we didn’t know how we were going to get there and the way we shoot on ‘Justified,’ you’re never quite sure,“ Carter says. "So I was holding my breath.”

Justifiably so (sorry), given the way that Boyd pretty much murdered everyone else close to him in the season’s final 13 episodes. We talked about the shocking manner Ava decided to go her own way, Boyd’s reaction and how pretty much every other actor on the show wanted their characters to die – but not Carter. (And probably not Jere Burns, who played Dixie Mafia member Wynn Duffy, a "cockroach” character that Carter says was meant to die at least half a dozen times throughout the show’s run.)

We also discussed the show’s finale screening in Harlan (Carter’s first visit to Kentucky), the rivers of tears cried when shooting the last episode (it sounds like show creator Graham Yost bought out Kleenex supplies within a 100-mile radius) and what items she took as souvenirs from the set.

If you’re feeling the loss of the show, listen in. Like a good Kentucky bourbon, it might help ease the pain.

(SOURCE)

[justifiedarticles]

The Justified Cast on Raylan Givens, Son of a Bitch

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justifiedarticles:

The stars of the show pay homage to its prickly protagonist, and tell us how he got away with it

14 April 2015  BY KENNY HERZOG

As imagined by the late Elmore Leonard and brought to televised life by Justified executive producer Graham Yost and star Timothy Olyphant, Raylan Givens is many things: reforming redneck, peerless U.S. Marshal, lover of ladies and Stetson hats, and, more than anything, a bit of an asshole. Or maybe a lot of an asshole, depending on which of his colleagues and adversaries you talk to. So we decided to speak with several of the actors who play Raylan’s onscreen pals and enemies over past five years and asked them to recall their fondest memories of Raylan being, well, Raylan—and to uncover just why Marshal Givens got away with being such a dick.

WALTON GOGGINS  (BOYD CROWDER)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “How about tying me to a tree and leaving me there in the hills in season four? That was a dick move. How about after I’m shot in episode 10 and tying me to a bumper? Pretty dickish.”

How Boyd Handled Dickish Raylan: “Whenever Raylan would invariably be the dick that he is, Boyd would level the playing field by being a dick back. They have a certain intellectual sparring that’s one of the greatest gifts to me on this show.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “Because he was number-one on the call sheet. Because you don’t have Justified without the character Raylan Givens, and that character is given permission to act in ways that other people are not.”

NATALIE ZEA (WINONA HAWKINS)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “The first one that comes to mind is this last episode [season six’s ”The Hunt“] we did together where we had this screaming, crying baby, and he did a lot of staring slack-jawed at Winona without an answer. Especially concering the question, ‘Do you want to share custody with this demon child?’”

How Winona Handled Dickish Raylan: “Saying, 'Goddamnit Raylan’ is a good go-to. And it’s my favorite thing to say of hers, because the viewers get outraged with her and send hate mail.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “Have you seen him? I think the answer’s pretty obvious. Even with men. You can’t resist that.”

JOELLE CARTER (AVA CROWDER)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “When we’re walking through the field when he’s caught me after I ran away from Limehouse [in season six’s ’The Sounding’], the scene from his car to my car, when he’s just grilling me like a little girl because he’s not happy with my actions. He really likes to spank her hand with a ruler.”

How Ava Handled Dickish Raylan: “I think she throws it back at him. I think she’s one of the few people who can. Boyd does it also, but they have their own macho, who’s-gonna-win-the-chess-game thing going. Raylan and Ava, I think, underneath their chemistry and their history, have a sexual tension where they can say things to each other that really gets under their skin.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “Because that’s the way Elmore Leonard wrote it, and we’ve stayed true to the man who knew the plan.”

JACOB PITTS (TIM GUTTERSON)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “At the end of season two, I’ve been assigned to look over him. We’re monitoring Winona for some kind of threat, and he said he was gonna try and duck out on me, and he did. I think that was Tim Gutterson’s peak of liking Raylan at that point. He told me he was gonna screw me over, but he stuck to his word and accomplished his task, so respect. But then he did it again and, oh, I hated that so much. Your priorities are never gonna be his priorities.”

How Tim Handled Dickish Raylan: “Passive aggression.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “'Cause they stuck a handsome man under a hat and they made him smile a lot, the dickhead.”

JERE BURNS (WYNN DUFFY)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “It would have to be the Russian roulette scene in the trailer [in season three finale ’Slaughterhouse’]. He was basically playing Russian roulette with his gun and my head. His head wasn’t involved. [He’d] put a bullet in there, spin it, go to shoot me, click, go to shoot me, click. I think he finally called it off after like three empty chambers.”

How Wynn Handled Dickish Raylan: “I just tried to ignore him. We live in such different worlds. His brand of square-jawed, slick lawman thing didn’t resonate with me at all. I was like, 'What a tool.’ For Duffy, he was like the dickish quarterback in high school who was gonna probably be selling horrible insurance 12 years down the road.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “I can’t separate my opinion from Duffy’s opinion. I don’t think ultimately he does get away with it. That’s A. And B, the only reason I think Raylan gets away with being a dick is because of the conventions of the genre that he finds himself in. He had to keep getting away with it so the story goes on.”

NICK SEARCY (ART MULLEN)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: “There’s a great line from the first season after he shot somebody in the first episode and then I think he shot somebody in the second episode, and I tell him, 'If you were a first grader, and you bit somebody the first week and then you bit somebody else the second week, pretty soon they’d probably start to call you a biter.’ I think he squinted at me and smirked.”

How Art Handled Dickish Raylan: “A great thing about Art is he’s able to assess people in terms of how they can be useful. Even though Raylan has done some terrible things, Art has found a way to focus him and get him to do the right thing, use his weaknesses as his assets.”

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: “Because he’s smart and he’s good at what he does. He bends the rules, but he bends them in a way that he doesn’t get necessarily caught, and he ultimately bends them in a way that ultimately justice gets done.”

(SOURCE)

[justifiedarticles]

The Justified Cast on Raylan Givens, Son of a Bitch

The stars of the show pay homage to its prickly protagonist, and tell us how he got away with it

14 April 2015  BY KENNY HERZOG

As imagined by the late Elmore Leonard and brought to televised life by Justified executive producer Graham Yost and star Timothy Olyphant, Raylan Givens is many things: reforming redneck, peerless U.S. Marshal, lover of ladies and Stetson hats, and, more than anything, a bit of an asshole. Or maybe a lot of an asshole, depending on which of his colleagues and adversaries you talk to. So we decided to speak with several of the actors who play Raylan's onscreen pals and enemies over past five years and asked them to recall their fondest memories of Raylan being, well, Raylan—and to uncover just why Marshal Givens got away with being such a dick.

WALTON GOGGINS  (BOYD CROWDER)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "How about tying me to a tree and leaving me there in the hills in season four? That was a dick move. How about after I'm shot in episode 10 and tying me to a bumper? Pretty dickish."

How Boyd Handled Dickish Raylan: "Whenever Raylan would invariably be the dick that he is, Boyd would level the playing field by being a dick back. They have a certain intellectual sparring that's one of the greatest gifts to me on this show."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "Because he was number-one on the call sheet. Because you don't have Justified without the character Raylan Givens, and that character is given permission to act in ways that other people are not."

NATALIE ZEA (WINONA HAWKINS)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "The first one that comes to mind is this last episode [season six's "The Hunt"] we did together where we had this screaming, crying baby, and he did a lot of staring slack-jawed at Winona without an answer. Especially concering the question, 'Do you want to share custody with this demon child?'"

How Winona Handled Dickish Raylan: "Saying, 'Goddamnit Raylan' is a good go-to. And it's my favorite thing to say of hers, because the viewers get outraged with her and send hate mail."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "Have you seen him? I think the answer's pretty obvious. Even with men. You can't resist that."

JOELLE CARTER (AVA CROWDER)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "When we're walking through the field when he's caught me after I ran away from Limehouse [in season six's 'The Sounding'], the scene from his car to my car, when he's just grilling me like a little girl because he's not happy with my actions. He really likes to spank her hand with a ruler."

How Ava Handled Dickish Raylan: "I think she throws it back at him. I think she's one of the few people who can. Boyd does it also, but they have their own macho, who's-gonna-win-the-chess-game thing going. Raylan and Ava, I think, underneath their chemistry and their history, have a sexual tension where they can say things to each other that really gets under their skin."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "Because that's the way Elmore Leonard wrote it, and we've stayed true to the man who knew the plan."

JACOB PITTS (TIM GUTTERSON)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "At the end of season two, I've been assigned to look over him. We're monitoring Winona for some kind of threat, and he said he was gonna try and duck out on me, and he did. I think that was Tim Gutterson's peak of liking Raylan at that point. He told me he was gonna screw me over, but he stuck to his word and accomplished his task, so respect. But then he did it again and, oh, I hated that so much. Your priorities are never gonna be his priorities."

How Tim Handled Dickish Raylan: "Passive aggression."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "'Cause they stuck a handsome man under a hat and they made him smile a lot, the dickhead."

JERE BURNS (WYNN DUFFY)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "It would have to be the Russian roulette scene in the trailer [in season three finale 'Slaughterhouse']. He was basically playing Russian roulette with his gun and my head. His head wasn't involved. [He'd] put a bullet in there, spin it, go to shoot me, click, go to shoot me, click. I think he finally called it off after like three empty chambers."

How Wynn Handled Dickish Raylan: "I just tried to ignore him. We live in such different worlds. His brand of square-jawed, slick lawman thing didn't resonate with me at all. I was like, 'What a tool.' For Duffy, he was like the dickish quarterback in high school who was gonna probably be selling horrible insurance 12 years down the road."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "I can't separate my opinion from Duffy's opinion. I don't think ultimately he does get away with it. That's A. And B, the only reason I think Raylan gets away with being a dick is because of the conventions of the genre that he finds himself in. He had to keep getting away with it so the story goes on."

NICK SEARCY (ART MULLEN)

Biggest Raylan-Being-a-Dick Moment: "There's a great line from the first season after he shot somebody in the first episode and then I think he shot somebody in the second episode, and I tell him, 'If you were a first grader, and you bit somebody the first week and then you bit somebody else the second week, pretty soon they'd probably start to call you a biter.' I think he squinted at me and smirked."

How Art Handled Dickish Raylan: "A great thing about Art is he's able to assess people in terms of how they can be useful. Even though Raylan has done some terrible things, Art has found a way to focus him and get him to do the right thing, use his weaknesses as his assets."

Why Raylan Got Away with Being an SOB: "Because he's smart and he's good at what he does. He bends the rules, but he bends them in a way that he doesn't get necessarily caught, and he ultimately bends them in a way that ultimately justice gets done."

(SOURCE)

[jonnyzro]

A Love Letter to Harlan County

The best tv show of the 2010s, so far, did not take place in 1960s New York City, or in Albuquerque, or even in the fictional kingdom of Westeros. It took place in…you guessed it, Harlan County, Kentucky. I don’t mean to get all sappy here, but damn I’m gonna miss this show.  

Justified, created by Graham Yost, adapted from Elmore Leonard novels (particularly Fire in the Hole) premiered in March 2010, and I am proud to say that I have watched every episode since then ‘til it’s series finale tonight. Every episode. Every Tuesday night. As it aired. This is rare in the DVR, quality TV-drenched era that we live in, but that’s the kind of show this was to me. It was one I had to make sure I tuned into live for the experience. 

Poetic, violent, a victim of sometimes subpar marketing (the commercials made it look like nothing more than explosions and witty lines, though it had plenty of the latter), Justified was a show to be reckoned with, on both a visceral and psychological level. This show never got much love from the Emmys, outside of its second season nominations for Timothy Elephant, and the surprise win for Margo Martindale’s Mags Bennett (R.I.P. Mags). Pretty much everything worked: the sharp writing, perfect casting, the opening titles (where fore art thou, Gangstagrass?). I’d better be seeing every cast member, especially Walton “Why Doesn’t He Have a Few Emmys Already?” Goggins, in other projects soon. Want badass male characters? Got it. Want equally badass female characters, with enough depth to match their male counterparts? You’ve got that too. 

Consistency is a virtue, for every Justified there’s a Dexter that shows what can happen when the wheels fall off a once-great show. So please, let’s appreciate the rare-breed of quality TV shows that STAY great throughout their respective runs. Seasons 3 and 4 will always be this show’s high point, in my opinion. Those seasons had more memorable scenes, and moments, than most other shows could ever dream of being able to create. And, not to forget, this is a show that never cast judgment on its mostly-rural subjects. Whereas other shows would make them into caricatures, this show displayed them as people, good or bad, that were perpetually shaped by their environment and the opportunities (or lack thereof) it provided for them. Call it a love letter to Harlan County. 

All in all, Justified was taut, intelligent, and badass…most importantly, it’s ‘always’ been like that. it has never wavered.  I don’t know what will happen on tonight’s finale, but either way, like its two gunslinging main characters, it damn sure won’t miss its mark. This is a show that has always been on target.