It sucks to be a minor character on Justified, right? Especially if you’re of the criminal persuasion. The only show I can think of that has a similarly high body count is Oz, and that had the virtue/explanation of being set in a prison. More often than not, when a character on the wrong side of the law is introduced on Justified, it’s a matter of when they’re going to die, not if. So ends Ty Walker’s existence in the Justified universe. I consider him in the upper tier of rogues; he’s not a main villain, but his henchman status belied a vicious and canny streak. It makes you wonder what he was like “in the sandbox”, as he calls it, and if there was any chance he’d turn out differently. Is he a victim of circumstance? Does the beard control his actions like the Spider-Man symbiote that became Venom? (There’s a lousy Venom as soldier reinvigoration of the concept to which Garrett Dillahunt would lend prestige.) I try not to let behind the scenes information impact my conception of the show’s events, but I am curious how Walker’s arc would differ had Dillahunt not have to exit after eight episodes. Justified does better than most in killing characters in a fashion that’s not gratuitous. It’s not that death isn’t frequent; it’s that it’s earned. With Walker this episode, it’s earned. His character arc receives an endpoint that is worth the character and the actor who put the work in. I don’t want to keep ragging on Sons of Anarchy, because I loved that show, but it offed characters long before they had a chance to become compelling in their own right. Remember Donal Logue? Yeah.
“Dark As A Dungeon” begins with a situation we’ve all been in before: drinking hard liquor and cleaning the house. Getting pissed while doing housework is almost as good as getting high while doing housework. Raylan’s goal is to divest himself of all his father’s belongings. Of course he has to look through the items, because there’s a chance Arlo had some pizza coupons or old MAD Magazine issues in his footlocker. Never one to do things inconspicuously, Raylan drags the footlocker outside, gives it a little drink and set it ablaze. I’ve found that imbibing alcohol increases one’s desire to see fires and cause them. Near the end of a long running drama, it’s customary to look back at the breadth of everything, go back to the starting point, and “Dark As A Dungeon” does so with Raylan’s origin.
I’m pretty sure this scene was the majority of that Jason Reitman movie Labor Day.
In a way, Arlo was the perfect father to Raylan insofar as his parenting and his life pushed Raylan into a law abiding citizen that trades the chaos of crime for the order of law enforcement. See, not only was Arlo a terrible person and a moral blank, he also wasn’t especially good at being a criminal. Had Arlo still been a dick and a shit father but also a successful crook, little Raylan might have learned the lesson that crime pays off instead a lifetime of crime is pathetic and pointless. Raylan’s image of Arlo reaches a conclusion of sorts in the end, when Raylan goes to Arlo’s shed, which he was forbidden from entering. That created a mystery of what he could’ve hidden in there and it turns out…nothing, really. Maybe once it was a repository of empty liquor bottles Arlo could then turn around for some of that sweet deposit cash. Raylan can’t move forward until he confronts his past and makes his peace with it, and the boring truth of the shed helps him do that. A bourbon hallucination of Arlo helps too!
This is the second time someone on the program has seen and interacted with a ghost and both are Givens. Arlo had severe bipolar disorder and Raylan was probably drunk, but what if the bloodline had a heretofore unexplored ability to see ghosts? Here’s another spinoff for Justified: US Marshal Ghost Whisperer. You might say that transfer and reclamation of fugitives and ghost talkin’ are jobs that don’t overlap, and I would respond that being able to interrogate ghosts for information would help Raylan find escapees immeasurably. Billions of people have died in human history, so there has to be hundreds of ghost witnesses when a human goes anywhere. Plus, it’s the perfect opportunity to bring back fan favorites like Dewey Crowe, Mags Bennett, Abraham Lincoln, the guy who hosted GUTS, Gary Hawkins, and so on as helpers or hindrances. (The Bennett brothers are basically those annoying ghost uncles Casper has.) Nothing is ever allowed to end, without a revival, a reboot, a sequel, a squeakuel, so might as well get to brainstorming on how to drag Justified out as long as possible.
Look at the contrast between the two. It’s amazing they’re the same species.
Of course, the main action is the end of the Ty Walker manhunt. Justified has featured enough fugitives that finding a unique means of reaching the outcome of capture or (because Raylan) death becomes more difficult as the show matures. You don’t want to repeat yourself, after all. “Dark As A Dungeon” finds a novel approach with Raylan teaming with Markham to find Walker. They haven’t had all that much screentime, and Olyphant and Elliott play off each other well. Why the fuck was Sam Elliott never on Deadwood? He found the time to do a voice in Barnyard. The scheme of putting a bounty on Walker’s head via Markham appearing on a real radio show is brilliant, because of the things Walker has, anyone who won’t turn on him for $100,000 is not one of them. The uneasy working relationship between Raylan and Markham yields some comedy gold. For example: Raylan encroaching on Markham’s place of business and blowing off all the requests to leave. I could watch him being a dick to criminals forever.
Plot twist: Avery Markham wrote that Indiana law.
Their interactions makes up for the Walker holed up at Ava’s storyline, which wasn’t bad but reminiscent of many other hostage situations over the years. There’s no danger that Garrett Dillahunt’s going to cap Boyd or Ava, so at best the scenes are an excuse for the characters to interact one last time. That’s not a bad thing! Boyd vs. Walker results in numerous eloquent turns of phrase, like Boyd’s “I gave up guessing why people do what they do a long time ago”. The episode does coast on well-written conversations delivered by capable performers, with not that much plot development. For instance: Katherine Hale’s scenes don’t reveal who the mole was, and no one gets closer to who the mole was. We find out some more details, but that’s it. However, without these scenes we wouldn’t have Mikey exclaiming “he loves guac!” in reference to Wynn Duffy. If Duffy does die in the rest of the series, that better be on his tombstone. Mikey also suggests Hale and her sister-in-law play doubles against him and Wynn. Mikey, Gardockustified Player of the Game. The withering gaze of Mary Steenburgen is a sight to behold. Justified is such a show about dialogue and language and how minute differ that it can be enjoyable even when it’s relative filler.
In this week’s “how fucked is Ava” update, she is very fucked. Boyd doesn’t fully trust her, holding her phone for her, while Raylan makes the grim pronouncement to Rachel that Ava’s compromised as a CI. To make matters worse, Markham giving them $100,000 as reward for their aid in Walker’s end just encourages Boyd to rob him more. The man recreated the contents of Markham’s bank vault for fuck’s sake. Ava’s right; for Boyd there never is an “enough”. $10 million is better than $100,000, $100 million is better than $10 million, etc. Just like his former co-worker Vic Mackey, Crowder doesn’t know when the fuck to walk away. 100 grand won’t set you for life, but it’s quite a nice supplemental that will make any life cozier. This is in part why I don’t like the character as a person. He has numerous opportunities to exit, ones he doesn’t necessarily deserve cause he’s killed over a dozen people, and never takes ‘em. For all of Boyd’s smarts, he’s dumb.
Dying must suck, but dying while Raylan delivers a one-liner must be the worst.
Speaking of dumb, Ty Walker receives a fate befitting his character. He’s a strong henchman, but that’s all he was: a henchman. The plan to rob Pizza Portal was a last ditch gambit that never would’ve worked, and holding a gun on Ava ensured through some way or another he’d end up dead. I try not to let behind the scenes information color my opinion too much, but finding out Dillahunt could only appear in 8 episodes makes the exit and the character’s arc trajectory make more sense. I’m not disappointed per se, but I imagine if Dillahunt could commit to the full season he could’ve been utilized to better effect. Walker was a dangerous man who became more and more pathetic as he unraveled, so for him to get shot in the back twice by Raylan sounds about right. I like that he died before he could say how all his actions weren’t about the money. He may’ve had motives that were sympathetic or understandable, but no one will ever know them. (Although to be fair, Raylan would dismiss them anyway…)
I love Mikey. He’s so positive when he says stupid shit.
Slowly but surely, Raylan Givens is evolving beyond the person he was in the pilot. He used to stay out of Kentucky as spite, spite for his father and spite for his past. Giving up on moving his parents’ remains and committing to Winona and the baby in last episode makes me actually believe that Raylan Givens is ready to put Kentucky behind him. When he can resolve all his business there, he can truly move on to the next step of his life. Otherwise he’ll always be in reaction to his upbringing. Boyd is his one blind spot, and given the homoerotic conversation they have in this episode about the whereabouts of the latter’s balls, it’s clearly established. I don’t think Raylan’s going to die, but if he does, it’ll undoubtedly be a result of him deciding to finish one last case before moving on from the Lexington office. I hope his death will be followed by a translucent Timothy Olyphant escaping the body, complete with halo and harp, grimacing at the audience while “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”.
How many people did Raylan shoot/kill?: 1, 3 for the season How many people did Boyd shoot/kill?: 0, 1 for the season
Gardockustified 6×08, “Dark As A Dungeon”
It sucks to be a minor character on Justified, right? Especially if you’re of the criminal persuasion. The only show I can think of that has a similarly high body count is Oz, and that had the virtue/explanation of being set in a prison. More often than not, when a character on the wrong side of the law is introduced on Justified, it’s a matter of when they’re going to die, not if. So ends Ty Walker’s existence in the Justified universe. I consider him in the upper tier of rogues; he’s not a main villain, but his henchman status belied a vicious and canny streak. It makes you wonder what he was like “in the sandbox”, as he calls it, and if there was any chance he’d turn out differently. Is he a victim of circumstance? Does the beard control his actions like the Spider-Man symbiote that became Venom? (There’s a lousy Venom as soldier reinvigoration of the concept to which Garrett Dillahunt would lend prestige.) I try not to let behind the scenes information impact my conception of the show’s events, but I am curious how Walker’s arc would differ had Dillahunt not have to exit after eight episodes. Justified does better than most in killing characters in a fashion that’s not gratuitous. It’s not that death isn’t frequent; it’s that it’s earned. With Walker this episode, it’s earned. His character arc receives an endpoint that is worth the character and the actor who put the work in. I don’t want to keep ragging on Sons of Anarchy, because I loved that show, but it offed characters long before they had a chance to become compelling in their own right. Remember Donal Logue? Yeah.
“Dark As A Dungeon” begins with a situation we’ve all been in before: drinking hard liquor and cleaning the house. Getting pissed while doing housework is almost as good as getting high while doing housework. Raylan’s goal is to divest himself of all his father’s belongings. Of course he has to look through the items, because there’s a chance Arlo had some pizza coupons or old MAD Magazine issues in his footlocker. Never one to do things inconspicuously, Raylan drags the footlocker outside, gives it a little drink and set it ablaze. I’ve found that imbibing alcohol increases one’s desire to see fires and cause them. Near the end of a long running drama, it’s customary to look back at the breadth of everything, go back to the starting point, and “Dark As A Dungeon” does so with Raylan’s origin.
I’m pretty sure this scene was the majority of that Jason Reitman movie Labor Day.
In a way, Arlo was the perfect father to Raylan insofar as his parenting and his life pushed Raylan into a law abiding citizen that trades the chaos of crime for the order of law enforcement. See, not only was Arlo a terrible person and a moral blank, he also wasn’t especially good at being a criminal. Had Arlo still been a dick and a shit father but also a successful crook, little Raylan might have learned the lesson that crime pays off instead a lifetime of crime is pathetic and pointless. Raylan’s image of Arlo reaches a conclusion of sorts in the end, when Raylan goes to Arlo’s shed, which he was forbidden from entering. That created a mystery of what he could’ve hidden in there and it turns out…nothing, really. Maybe once it was a repository of empty liquor bottles Arlo could then turn around for some of that sweet deposit cash. Raylan can’t move forward until he confronts his past and makes his peace with it, and the boring truth of the shed helps him do that. A bourbon hallucination of Arlo helps too!
This is the second time someone on the program has seen and interacted with a ghost and both are Givens. Arlo had severe bipolar disorder and Raylan was probably drunk, but what if the bloodline had a heretofore unexplored ability to see ghosts? Here’s another spinoff for Justified: US Marshal Ghost Whisperer. You might say that transfer and reclamation of fugitives and ghost talkin’ are jobs that don’t overlap, and I would respond that being able to interrogate ghosts for information would help Raylan find escapees immeasurably. Billions of people have died in human history, so there has to be hundreds of ghost witnesses when a human goes anywhere. Plus, it’s the perfect opportunity to bring back fan favorites like Dewey Crowe, Mags Bennett, Abraham Lincoln, the guy who hosted GUTS, Gary Hawkins, and so on as helpers or hindrances. (The Bennett brothers are basically those annoying ghost uncles Casper has.) Nothing is ever allowed to end, without a revival, a reboot, a sequel, a squeakuel, so might as well get to brainstorming on how to drag Justified out as long as possible.
Look at the contrast between the two. It’s amazing they’re the same species.
Of course, the main action is the end of the Ty Walker manhunt. Justified has featured enough fugitives that finding a unique means of reaching the outcome of capture or (because Raylan) death becomes more difficult as the show matures. You don’t want to repeat yourself, after all. “Dark As A Dungeon” finds a novel approach with Raylan teaming with Markham to find Walker. They haven’t had all that much screentime, and Olyphant and Elliott play off each other well. Why the fuck was Sam Elliott never on Deadwood? He found the time to do a voice in Barnyard. The scheme of putting a bounty on Walker’s head via Markham appearing on a real radio show is brilliant, because of the things Walker has, anyone who won’t turn on him for $100,000 is not one of them. The uneasy working relationship between Raylan and Markham yields some comedy gold. For example: Raylan encroaching on Markham’s place of business and blowing off all the requests to leave. I could watch him being a dick to criminals forever.
Plot twist: Avery Markham wrote that Indiana law.
Their interactions makes up for the Walker holed up at Ava’s storyline, which wasn’t bad but reminiscent of many other hostage situations over the years. There’s no danger that Garrett Dillahunt’s going to cap Boyd or Ava, so at best the scenes are an excuse for the characters to interact one last time. That’s not a bad thing! Boyd vs. Walker results in numerous eloquent turns of phrase, like Boyd’s “I gave up guessing why people do what they do a long time ago”. The episode does coast on well-written conversations delivered by capable performers, with not that much plot development. For instance: Katherine Hale’s scenes don’t reveal who the mole was, and no one gets closer to who the mole was. We find out some more details, but that’s it. However, without these scenes we wouldn’t have Mikey exclaiming “he loves guac!” in reference to Wynn Duffy. If Duffy does die in the rest of the series, that better be on his tombstone. Mikey also suggests Hale and her sister-in-law play doubles against him and Wynn. Mikey, Gardockustified Player of the Game. The withering gaze of Mary Steenburgen is a sight to behold. Justified is such a show about dialogue and language and how minute differ that it can be enjoyable even when it’s relative filler.
In this week’s “how fucked is Ava” update, she is very fucked. Boyd doesn’t fully trust her, holding her phone for her, while Raylan makes the grim pronouncement to Rachel that Ava’s compromised as a CI. To make matters worse, Markham giving them $100,000 as reward for their aid in Walker’s end just encourages Boyd to rob him more. The man recreated the contents of Markham’s bank vault for fuck’s sake. Ava’s right; for Boyd there never is an “enough”. $10 million is better than $100,000, $100 million is better than $10 million, etc. Just like his former co-worker Vic Mackey, Crowder doesn’t know when the fuck to walk away. 100 grand won’t set you for life, but it’s quite a nice supplemental that will make any life cozier. This is in part why I don’t like the character as a person. He has numerous opportunities to exit, ones he doesn’t necessarily deserve cause he’s killed over a dozen people, and never takes ‘em. For all of Boyd’s smarts, he’s dumb.
Dying must suck, but dying while Raylan delivers a one-liner must be the worst.
Speaking of dumb, Ty Walker receives a fate befitting his character. He’s a strong henchman, but that’s all he was: a henchman. The plan to rob Pizza Portal was a last ditch gambit that never would’ve worked, and holding a gun on Ava ensured through some way or another he’d end up dead. I try not to let behind the scenes information color my opinion too much, but finding out Dillahunt could only appear in 8 episodes makes the exit and the character’s arc trajectory make more sense. I’m not disappointed per se, but I imagine if Dillahunt could commit to the full season he could’ve been utilized to better effect. Walker was a dangerous man who became more and more pathetic as he unraveled, so for him to get shot in the back twice by Raylan sounds about right. I like that he died before he could say how all his actions weren’t about the money. He may’ve had motives that were sympathetic or understandable, but no one will ever know them. (Although to be fair, Raylan would dismiss them anyway…)
I love Mikey. He’s so positive when he says stupid shit.
Slowly but surely, Raylan Givens is evolving beyond the person he was in the pilot. He used to stay out of Kentucky as spite, spite for his father and spite for his past. Giving up on moving his parents’ remains and committing to Winona and the baby in last episode makes me actually believe that Raylan Givens is ready to put Kentucky behind him. When he can resolve all his business there, he can truly move on to the next step of his life. Otherwise he’ll always be in reaction to his upbringing. Boyd is his one blind spot, and given the homoerotic conversation they have in this episode about the whereabouts of the latter’s balls, it’s clearly established. I don’t think Raylan’s going to die, but if he does, it’ll undoubtedly be a result of him deciding to finish one last case before moving on from the Lexington office. I hope his death will be followed by a translucent Timothy Olyphant escaping the body, complete with halo and harp, grimacing at the audience while “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive”.
How many people did Raylan shoot/kill?: 1, 3 for the season
How many people did Boyd shoot/kill?: 0, 1 for the season
Ronnie Gardocki
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