What I’m Watching: Justified

Justified: Season 1, Episode 9 “Hatless” (B+)

There are so many great lines on this show that I had to stop keeping track at a certain point. Most of them are uttered by the one and only Raylan, but all of the supporting a d guest cast members always does a great job of uttering their fare share of terrific lines. Starting off with “I didn’t order assholes with my whiskey,” this episode was a great snapshot of Raylan when he wasn’t even trying to operate with the law on his side. He still acts the same, giving people ultimatums and seemingly trying to force his enemies to make him shoot them. Raylan leaving his hat at the bar also made him seem a bit off his game, but he still did a great job. Winona asking him “you’re a little too old to be fighting, aren’t you?” elicited a perfect response from Raylan: “certainly too old to be losing.” Raylan’s surveying of the situation as something that would take him only a day or two to figure the whole thing out was impressive, and his threat to upend the villains’ entire existence if they went anywhere near Winona or Gary was priceless. The guest turns here from Malik Yoba, David Eigenberg (recurring at this point, it would seem) and particularly Jere Burns as the slimy Wynn Duffy were completely excellent and added a lot to the episode. Raylan talking down both a bad guy (“just because you can’t box and you’re stupid doesn’t mean you need to end up dead”) and a suicidal Gary (“pitch it to me before one of us kills you”) was great. The most satisfying part of the whole episode, of course, was Wynn getting undermined by his boss and then everyone shooting but not quite killing each other.