#ep 3.6

[captainbluey]

im going to cry for the next 47297924791 years

*

[seaofdew]

So there is an episode in “Justified”, season 3, where one of the main characters, Boyd Crowder, goes to a “holler” settled back in the day by escaped slaves. 

Boyd has an extremely rocky sort of character arc that starts with being a swastika-tattooed Neo-Nazi firebombing a black church, continues on through a religious and moral awakening, and comes right back around to Criminal-Empire-Builder (but without the Neo-Nazi thing, except for the tattoos, which are difficult to get rid of). It is disturbing for many reasons that this is one of my favorite characters in the show.  (He earns it).

This show is set in Kentucky (and it’s giving me a TERRIBLE image of Kentucky, by the way.  My mental image is now pretty much exclusively meth and desperate and desperately-poor people.) and the cast is mostly white. 

Our boy Main Character (Raylan Givens) is a good old-fashioned lawman.  He starts off as a US Marshal in Miami, but then he kills a dude (who, to be fair, totally deserved it) in the course of business and gets sent home to Kentucky as punishment.

Once home in Kentucky, Raylan carries on 1) being a US Marshal and 2) shooting a whole lot more people than is in any way realistic.  (Don’t worry, all the shootings and killings are “justified” – self-defense or defense of others – hence the name.)

So anyway the cast is generally EXTREMELY white, with the exception of fellow Deputy Marshall Rachel, who is awesome.  But the arc in season three seems to be hinging at least partly on the criminal boss in the “holler” settled by escaped slaves, which means there’s suddenly a whole population of Black characters in the story.  

Just now, Boyd Crowder, ex-Neo-Nazi and current enterprising criminal, has gone with his ladyfriend to talk to the boss of the Black community in this “holler”, Mr. Limehouse.  Boyd wonders aloud how it is that Mr. Limehouse seems to know so much about Boyd, while Boyd knows so little about Mr. Limehouse.  

Mr. Limehouse looks around his diner (which is where they’re meeting) (because criminals need legit businesses too), and starts pointing out people in the diner, naming them and giving short bios, demonstrating that he knows his community.  Then he points out a man at the lunch counter, and asks him if he knows who Boyd is.  The man, whom Boyd does not recognize, recites Boyd’s family tree and key details about both Boyd and his immediate family without missing a beat. 

Mr. Limehouse looks at Boyd and says, “It’s always been our business to know you.  Us knowing is the business of this holler.  Now why you don’t know us is a question you are welcome to ponder.”  

Everyone in that holler knows everything there is to know about their white neighbors – they’ve had to; it was (and continues to be) a matter of survival.  

This show can be pretty raw, but that was one of the best illustrations of this particular facet of race relations in America I’ve ever seen.