Monday, March 16, 2015

What I’m Watching: Justified


Justified: Season 6, Episode 8 “Dark As a Dungeon” (B+)

I feel like I need to have a pen and paper handy while I’m watching this show to be able to write down all of the spectacular dialogue uttered by its characters. The best thing about this final season focusing on the showdown between Raylan and Boyd is that they have such fantastic conversations, layered with subtext and intellectual insults. It’s also so interesting to see just how many levels of good and evil there are, as Tye’s visit to Boyd’s home initially means he’s threatening them, then that they’re partnering, and then that Boyd and Ava are reluctantly turning him over to Raylan. Tye’s final words are fitting for any victim of Raylan’s – “You shot me in the back!” – prompting a superb retort from the trigger-happy lawman alleging that he should have run backwards towards him if he had wanted to be shot in the front. This new dynamic of Boyd knowing that Ava is Raylan’s informant changes things considerably, and things are going to implode in a bad way very soon. I enjoyed Art’s visit to Catherine, full of flirtation and veiled accusations. Raylan practically begging Boyd to take the reward money while Zachariah was busy digging in the mine suggests that, even with Tye’s death, there are still so many players and factors at work here that it’s impossible to predict how things will turn out aside from the certainty that it won’t end with most of our friends left standing. At least we still have a few episodes to go before it’s all over.

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