[new header image thanx to Josh Hollis, who can usually be found at the CBS Archives watching episodes of NCIS or at www.joshhollis.com.]
It was inevitable. Sometime during Ava Crowder’s unenviable situation of cohabitating with Boyd while informing on his wheelings at dealings to the Marshals service, she was going to say “fuck it” to both sides and get as far away from Harlan County as possible. Frankly, I’m impressed she had the wherewithal to wait until the fifth episode of the season. “Sounding” brings with it more returns from memorable characters, all in Ava’s storyline. Justified, and Elmore Leonard’s writing in general, is a rich universe that means incidental characters aren’t necessary to recur – there have been some wonderful one episode wonders like Eric Roberts’ character or Quinn from Dexter‘s Icepick Nix – but damn is it nice when they pop up. It’s never forced. So this time we get the returns of Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson, Free Willy and possibly the Superman villain Mr. Mxyzptlk) and Constable Bob (Patton Oswalt, King of Queens and getting into disputes with “Helen Lovejoy as a website” Salon.com). Their returns keep the sense that Justified is a continuous universe and these people continue to exist, even if they’re not in episodes, and they only show up when they have relevance to what’s going on. It seems like a weird compliment without knowing I got a bit tired of the five minute “hey, let’s see how Juice really isn’t taking to prison” in the last season of Sons of Anarchy.
If they play Chutes & Ladders next week I’m gonna die.
You know, FX ought to replace Justified with Wynn Duffy Reacts To Things. Just 45 minutes of Wynn finding himself in absurd or improbable situations, and the camera just rests on Jere Burns’ face. That might be a limited scope for an hour of scripted dramatic television, but the sight of Wynn Duffy walking in, unbeknownst to him, to a room with children suggests there’s much to be mined from that avenue of storytelling. So is following that with him saying to the kids “hey guys, whatcha doin’?” to no response. That would be my favorite Wynn Duffy moment of the episode were there not him and Mikey (Jonathan Kowalsky, American Sniper… I think he played the terrifying robot baby) playing Scrabble and arguing over the cromulence of “aplex”. Duffy’s inner life is ridiculous and always good for a laugh, from his obsession with women’s tennis to his tanning bed proclivities. Wynners Don’t Quit would be my third most preferred Justified spinoff, behind Tim Gutterson: Deadpan Driving Instructor and the Timothy Olyphant Sliders reboot (haven’t decided whether it should be an “as himself” affair or if he should reprise Raylan Givens).
Based on when Patton Oswalt’s agent called him about the episode.
As for things actually relevant to the episode’s plot and the season’s story arc, Ava’s attempt to run goes about as well as expected. I like how Limehouse’s role in “Sounding” is basically telling her what a terrible, shortsighted idea it is to escape without, you know, new identification, a long term plan, anything beyond going to him and asking for some help. Frankly, I’m surprised Limehouse bit on Ava’s offer of hidden money. But I suppose if there’s one thing to break through his pragmatism, it’s the promise of sweet cashola. He’s such a pragmatist that he apparently forgave Errol (Demetrius Grosse, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) for betraying him in Season 3, yet in his position I’d find a right hand man who was tased by Patton Fucking Oswalt too much of an indignity to let continue. Speaking of which… Raylan calling upon Constable Bob to help him track down Ava is simultaneously smart and baffling. Smart because he’s the law enforcement agent Raylan knows who isn’t connected to his job (and Bob showed he’s more competent than he might appear during Season 4) and baffling because it’s a man who compares his balls to Death Stars. Of course we’ve all done it, but you don’t say it out loud, Bob! He really likes the idea of finding old classmate Ava Randolph: “that girl could make a dog break its chain”. Do you think he goes on reddit? I hate to see of his thoughts on the Paul Feig female Ghostbusters movie…
“Well, I don’t know if it’s worth it for just a free bit of liquor, Boyd.”
Jeff Fahey of Body Parts and Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back fame joins the cast in another case of “really, he hasn’t been on Justified already?”. I’ll admit it took me a few seconds to recognize him on account of his character Zachariah looks like a hobo who recently attended a dirt festival and stopped at a scum diner on the way home. Boyd now seeks to tunnel down and get through to the bank vault that way. Zachariah doesn’t care for Crowders, for obvious reasons, but Boyd figures liquor as a peace offering and promise of money is enough to entice him. It works. This is a little known fact: the Kentucky barter system is based entirely upon liquor. A bottle of liquor earns a mining operation. Two bottles of liquor will allow you to stay at that person’s abode. Three bottles of liquor, you can do whatever you want with their firstborn. Marry, kill, eat, whatever. It’s all very fascinating; Thomas D. Clark wrote a book about it, I think. Fahey isn’t given a whole lot to do in “Sounding” besides look kinda feral, but I have no indication the role won’t grow in subsequent episodes. There’s no way Justified will squander those piercing baby blues of his.
Rachel watches the weirdest porn.
Katherine Hale gets a good line this week that encapsulates the duality of her character: “I like Ava, it’d be a shame to have to kill her”. She can sound so sweet while articulating a vicious sentiment. The more successful Justified criminals have an appearance and a manner that belies their propensity for direct or indirect violence. Boyd can use all the flowery words he wants, he still killed Dewey Crowe in the premiere and about a dozen others prior to that. Hale plays classy but sends Wynn Duffy off to torture a guy for information. Wynn Duffy doesn’t get his hands dirty, having Mikey deliver volts via a cattle prod to the wonderfully pathetic Albert Fekus (Danny Strong, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The Thirteenth). The man still lives with his mother and father. Certainly even Bob lives in a shithole apartment of his own. The most surprising thing about “Sounding” is Fekus didn’t break immediately. By my count he’s shocked at least three times. Tim, being Tim, gets a “Uncle Sam thanks you for your service” as he and Rachel leave Fekus in his hotel room. There’s only so many variations of “will Ava be found out?” you can do, so hopefully Hale and Duffy’s suspicions are allayed now.
Raylan’s been in the right this whole season and then he goes and fucks it up by kissing Ava. Here we see another callback to Season 1 – Ava is a witness helping to bring down Boyd Crowder and Raylan’s relationship with her is inappropriate. Barring Winona, there’s no sexual relationship Givens has that ends well. Remember when he was screwing that bartender and then got all his shit stolen? It does make sense to bring up the Raylan/Ava relationship one more time, because it feels like forever ago that her and Boyd were not an inseparable item. The kiss also takes the edge off a pretty brutal verbal beatdown Raylan gives. It switches things up so it’s not just scene after scene of Raylan taking Ava to task for being a confidential informant (which she is, but we get that).
Errol should wear Adebisi’s tiny tilted hat, it’s much more stylish.
“Sounding” (so named after a thankfully cut scene in which Bob tells Raylan about the wonders of urethral sounding) is the weakest installment so far, in spite of some fun guest appearances. (My lowest rating ever: seven thumbs up.) Everything serves to nudge the larger plot along, leaving scenes not as satisfying as before. It’s a necessary evil and resolves a number of plot threads, clearing the way to increase the focus on what’s really important: Choo-Choo’s sense of honor. The waitress was skimming money and he does not stand for that. I appreciated the subtlety with which he asked for skim milk. The man is a modern day Kuwabataka Sanjuro, a wandering killer with a code of honor and ethics opaque to everyone but himself. Isn’t Mulberry Field, Thirty Years Old just as ridiculous a name as “Choo-Choo”? There’s wisdom in what he tells Seabass after the latter freaks out about Calhoun’s death. “You want him slapped like a little girl, you do it. All right, you ask me, he gets Amtraked.” Choo-Choo Precept #45: A man named after a train will behave in manners reminiscent of a train.
Gardockustified Player of the Game goes to Seabass, for this exchange with Choo-Choo.“Maybe the bartender is the one interfering with us buying those properties!” “You think?” “No!”
I hope Constable Bob returns if it’s appropriate, as the character’s been integral in growing my appreciation for Patton Oswalt. The man I once called “a transsexual Kim Jong-Il lookalike” has become a fun, reliable actor in comedy and drama in tandem with his stand-up comedy skills. So what if he looks like a melted version of ex-KMFDM member Guenter Schulz? It’s not about how you look, it’s about how your testicles proportionally measure to fake spaceships in a universe created by a turkey necked revisionist.
How many people did Raylan shoot/kill?: 0, 0 for the season How many people did Boyd shoot/kill?: 0, 1 for the season
Gardockustified 6×05, “Sounding”
It was inevitable. Sometime during Ava Crowder’s unenviable situation of cohabitating with Boyd while informing on his wheelings at dealings to the Marshals service, she was going to say “fuck it” to both sides and get as far away from Harlan County as possible. Frankly, I’m impressed she had the wherewithal to wait until the fifth episode of the season. “Sounding” brings with it more returns from memorable characters, all in Ava’s storyline. Justified, and Elmore Leonard’s writing in general, is a rich universe that means incidental characters aren’t necessary to recur – there have been some wonderful one episode wonders like Eric Roberts’ character or Quinn from Dexter‘s Icepick Nix – but damn is it nice when they pop up. It’s never forced. So this time we get the returns of Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson, Free Willy and possibly the Superman villain Mr. Mxyzptlk) and Constable Bob (Patton Oswalt, King of Queens and getting into disputes with “Helen Lovejoy as a website” Salon.com). Their returns keep the sense that Justified is a continuous universe and these people continue to exist, even if they’re not in episodes, and they only show up when they have relevance to what’s going on. It seems like a weird compliment without knowing I got a bit tired of the five minute “hey, let’s see how Juice really isn’t taking to prison” in the last season of Sons of Anarchy.
If they play Chutes & Ladders next week I’m gonna die.
You know, FX ought to replace Justified with Wynn Duffy Reacts To Things. Just 45 minutes of Wynn finding himself in absurd or improbable situations, and the camera just rests on Jere Burns’ face. That might be a limited scope for an hour of scripted dramatic television, but the sight of Wynn Duffy walking in, unbeknownst to him, to a room with children suggests there’s much to be mined from that avenue of storytelling. So is following that with him saying to the kids “hey guys, whatcha doin’?” to no response. That would be my favorite Wynn Duffy moment of the episode were there not him and Mikey (Jonathan Kowalsky, American Sniper… I think he played the terrifying robot baby) playing Scrabble and arguing over the cromulence of “aplex”. Duffy’s inner life is ridiculous and always good for a laugh, from his obsession with women’s tennis to his tanning bed proclivities. Wynners Don’t Quit would be my third most preferred Justified spinoff, behind Tim Gutterson: Deadpan Driving Instructor and the Timothy Olyphant Sliders reboot (haven’t decided whether it should be an “as himself” affair or if he should reprise Raylan Givens).
Based on when Patton Oswalt’s agent called him about the episode.
As for things actually relevant to the episode’s plot and the season’s story arc, Ava’s attempt to run goes about as well as expected. I like how Limehouse’s role in “Sounding” is basically telling her what a terrible, shortsighted idea it is to escape without, you know, new identification, a long term plan, anything beyond going to him and asking for some help. Frankly, I’m surprised Limehouse bit on Ava’s offer of hidden money. But I suppose if there’s one thing to break through his pragmatism, it’s the promise of sweet cashola. He’s such a pragmatist that he apparently forgave Errol (Demetrius Grosse, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior) for betraying him in Season 3, yet in his position I’d find a right hand man who was tased by Patton Fucking Oswalt too much of an indignity to let continue. Speaking of which… Raylan calling upon Constable Bob to help him track down Ava is simultaneously smart and baffling. Smart because he’s the law enforcement agent Raylan knows who isn’t connected to his job (and Bob showed he’s more competent than he might appear during Season 4) and baffling because it’s a man who compares his balls to Death Stars. Of course we’ve all done it, but you don’t say it out loud, Bob! He really likes the idea of finding old classmate Ava Randolph: “that girl could make a dog break its chain”. Do you think he goes on reddit? I hate to see of his thoughts on the Paul Feig female Ghostbusters movie…
“Well, I don’t know if it’s worth it for just a free bit of liquor, Boyd.”
Jeff Fahey of Body Parts and Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back fame joins the cast in another case of “really, he hasn’t been on Justified already?”. I’ll admit it took me a few seconds to recognize him on account of his character Zachariah looks like a hobo who recently attended a dirt festival and stopped at a scum diner on the way home. Boyd now seeks to tunnel down and get through to the bank vault that way. Zachariah doesn’t care for Crowders, for obvious reasons, but Boyd figures liquor as a peace offering and promise of money is enough to entice him. It works. This is a little known fact: the Kentucky barter system is based entirely upon liquor. A bottle of liquor earns a mining operation. Two bottles of liquor will allow you to stay at that person’s abode. Three bottles of liquor, you can do whatever you want with their firstborn. Marry, kill, eat, whatever. It’s all very fascinating; Thomas D. Clark wrote a book about it, I think. Fahey isn’t given a whole lot to do in “Sounding” besides look kinda feral, but I have no indication the role won’t grow in subsequent episodes. There’s no way Justified will squander those piercing baby blues of his.
Rachel watches the weirdest porn.
Katherine Hale gets a good line this week that encapsulates the duality of her character: “I like Ava, it’d be a shame to have to kill her”. She can sound so sweet while articulating a vicious sentiment. The more successful Justified criminals have an appearance and a manner that belies their propensity for direct or indirect violence. Boyd can use all the flowery words he wants, he still killed Dewey Crowe in the premiere and about a dozen others prior to that. Hale plays classy but sends Wynn Duffy off to torture a guy for information. Wynn Duffy doesn’t get his hands dirty, having Mikey deliver volts via a cattle prod to the wonderfully pathetic Albert Fekus (Danny Strong, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The Thirteenth). The man still lives with his mother and father. Certainly even Bob lives in a shithole apartment of his own. The most surprising thing about “Sounding” is Fekus didn’t break immediately. By my count he’s shocked at least three times. Tim, being Tim, gets a “Uncle Sam thanks you for your service” as he and Rachel leave Fekus in his hotel room. There’s only so many variations of “will Ava be found out?” you can do, so hopefully Hale and Duffy’s suspicions are allayed now.
Raylan’s been in the right this whole season and then he goes and fucks it up by kissing Ava. Here we see another callback to Season 1 – Ava is a witness helping to bring down Boyd Crowder and Raylan’s relationship with her is inappropriate. Barring Winona, there’s no sexual relationship Givens has that ends well. Remember when he was screwing that bartender and then got all his shit stolen? It does make sense to bring up the Raylan/Ava relationship one more time, because it feels like forever ago that her and Boyd were not an inseparable item. The kiss also takes the edge off a pretty brutal verbal beatdown Raylan gives. It switches things up so it’s not just scene after scene of Raylan taking Ava to task for being a confidential informant (which she is, but we get that).
Errol should wear Adebisi’s tiny tilted hat, it’s much more stylish.
“Sounding” (so named after a thankfully cut scene in which Bob tells Raylan about the wonders of urethral sounding) is the weakest installment so far, in spite of some fun guest appearances. (My lowest rating ever: seven thumbs up.) Everything serves to nudge the larger plot along, leaving scenes not as satisfying as before. It’s a necessary evil and resolves a number of plot threads, clearing the way to increase the focus on what’s really important: Choo-Choo’s sense of honor. The waitress was skimming money and he does not stand for that. I appreciated the subtlety with which he asked for skim milk. The man is a modern day Kuwabataka Sanjuro, a wandering killer with a code of honor and ethics opaque to everyone but himself. Isn’t Mulberry Field, Thirty Years Old just as ridiculous a name as “Choo-Choo”? There’s wisdom in what he tells Seabass after the latter freaks out about Calhoun’s death. “You want him slapped like a little girl, you do it. All right, you ask me, he gets Amtraked.” Choo-Choo Precept #45: A man named after a train will behave in manners reminiscent of a train.
Gardockustified Player of the Game goes to Seabass, for this exchange with Choo-Choo.“Maybe the bartender is the one interfering with us buying those properties!” “You think?” “No!”
I hope Constable Bob returns if it’s appropriate, as the character’s been integral in growing my appreciation for Patton Oswalt. The man I once called “a transsexual Kim Jong-Il lookalike” has become a fun, reliable actor in comedy and drama in tandem with his stand-up comedy skills. So what if he looks like a melted version of ex-KMFDM member Guenter Schulz? It’s not about how you look, it’s about how your testicles proportionally measure to fake spaceships in a universe created by a turkey necked revisionist.
How many people did Raylan shoot/kill?: 0, 0 for the season
How many people did Boyd shoot/kill?: 0, 1 for the season
Ronnie Gardocki
Next ArticleInadvisable Bingewatch: The Neighbors