What I’m Watching: Longmire

Longmire: Season 6, Episode 5 “Burned Up My Tears” (B+)

This show has always excelled at building up a murder into something completely unexpected by introducing a suspect we didn’t see coming and then ending in their unforgettable demise. The last time that happened on this show was when Barlow himself ended up biting the bullet after it was revealed that he was responsible for his own son’s death. Nothing is back to normal just yet, and Walt and Vic are fighting over who should take public responsibility for killing Chance since neither of them wants to see the other hurt as retribution. Not that it could ever be seen as going well, Walt’s trial did seem to be going especially poorly in this hour, and the fact that Walt’s lawyer didn’t want Lucien to testify on his behalf spoke volumes. Now, things got considerably worse when the lawyer for Barlow’s estate got killed and Walt was the prime suspect with Vic next in line, and that was before the big reveal that it was Lucien who was actually the culprit. He certainly didn’t expect that Walt would be able to identify the twentieth most important character in an 800-page book, and I can say that I didn’t expect any of this to happen. Having them both pull and shoot each other in the hand made this feel very much like the modern-day western that it is, and Lucien running off a cliff and jumping made for quite the intense finale. I thought that would be it, but he had the chance to share some final words that show that there’s at least one person out there who thinks Walt is a good man. It’s been a great performance from Peter Weller, and a character I won’t soon forget.