Copious Notes

Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder, the most dangerous man in Harlan, on FX’s ‘Justified.’ © FX photo by James Minchin.

Raylan Givens is the hero of Justified, the good-lookin’, Lexington-based U.S. Marshal who’s usually one step ahead of the bad guys on the FX television series.

But with four seasons almost done, fans will tell you Harlan County crime boss Boyd Crowder is every bit as essential with his mix of literary reverence and ruthless discipline of his henchmen.

The man who plays Boyd, Alabama-born, Georgia-raised actor Walton Goggins, has another essential character in mind with the show.

The past two seasons on ‘Justified’ Boyd (Walton Goggins) has had to face off against Detroit mobsters trying to take over his turf. © FX photo by Prashant Gupta.

“Harlan County has a real mythical, mystical quality in the context of the show,” Goggins says during a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s the seventh character in the show.”

He compares it to the way the city of Los Angeles worked into The Shield, the FX series on which he played Detective Shane Vendrell for seven seasons.

“Lexington and Harlan County are what the show revolves around, what the nature of the show revolves around, so it looms very, very large,” Goggins, 41, says. Referring to the author whose short stories about Raylan Givens inspired the series, he says, “What we try to do is be true to the characters that Elmore Leonard created, and the ways in which they are unique to that part of the country.

“Always, in the back of our ears, are people from Kentucky whispering, ‘You’d better get it right.’”

Goggins has gotten it right and grown his role as much as any character in the show, starting as a white supremacist explosives fiend, becoming a backwoods preacher and eventually evolving into the crime boss of Harlan, though he always seems to be fighting off Northern aggressors who think they can do crime better.

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Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) is in a tough spot with Quarles (Neal McDonough) in the season three finale of "Justified." © FX photos by Prashant Gupta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the April 10, 2012 episode of Justified but intend to, do not read further.

In the end, Raylan’s father was willing to shoot him, and he was willing to essentially sacrifice his life for Raylan’s No. 1 nemesis.

Season three of Justified did not end quite as artfully as its two predecessors. How are you going to top Mags taking a lethal drink of her own apple pie? This season’s numero uno bad guy, Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough) did die in the final moments of the season finale in a moment appropriate to the episode’s name, Slaughterhouse.

Tripped out on drugs and on the run, Quarles kidnapped a family camping at Christian rock festival — how far is Wilmore from Harlan in Justified geography? — and eventually lured Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) into a trap to take him back to Limehouse’s ((Mykelti Williamson) barbecue establishment to get the half-million dollars Tonin (Adam Arkin) said would be his ticket back to Detroit.

My bet is Tonin would have killed Quarles anyway, but we will never find out because is a scuffle Limehouse lopped off Quarles’ arm. With his *dying breaths, Quarles informed Raylan that he didn’t kill State Trooper Tom Bergen (Peter Murnik) the previous night at Boyd’s bar.

Arlo (Raymond Barry) with his son Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) in one of Arlo's final moments of freedom.

It was Raylan’s dad, Arlo (Raymond Barry).

For that, Arlo was  hauled into jail in Lexington where Boyd (Walton Goggins) was already cooling his heels for the murder of Devil, which happened earlier this season. It’s a murder we saw Boyd commit.

But in the interrogation room, Arlo took the rap for that murder too, saying in both cases he was trying to protect Boyd. Moments before that scene, Boyd told Raylan he considered Arlo family.

Thing is, in an earlier exchange with Raylan, Arlo said all he knew was a cop in a hat was shot — Raylan’s profile.

So, did Arlo shoot a shadow, knowing full well it could have been his own son, to protect his son’s nemesis?

The message seems to be that in some cases, vocation is thicker than blood. At heart, Arlo is a crook who prioritized protecting the crime boss who took him in over anything else, even his own blood. And Raylan is a heart a lawman, and seeing one of his own colleagues gunned down erased any qualms he had about sending his father off to probably die in prison.

It’s another twist in the bizarre Justified relationships we’ll take into season four.

Presumably, we will have two chief bad guys still on stage when Justified returns, both with sharper edges than they had before.

In a voice-over, Raylan says he asked Boyd if he was proud of having a feeble old man take the fall for him, and it didn’t seem to bother Boyd, which takes some shine off his persona. It also could add fuel to Raylan’s pursuit of Boyd, though we would have to scratch deep below Raylan’s surface to find any love left for Arlo.

And Limehouse showed how shallow his grin and smooth talk is, dispatching Errol (Demetrius Grosse), a lifelong friend so loyal he returned and took a bullet for Limehouse.

When Justified returns, we’ll have a better sense what both men are capable of, and less willingness to give them a pass as good ol’ bad guys.

We’ll also have Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns), who got a better sense of what Raylan was capable of in this episode when Raylan played a game of roulette with him trying to find Quarles’ location.

And who knows if Tonin will return, as we only saw a little of this character played by one of Justified’s higher profile guest stars. And we never saw that ear thing we were told about a few episodes ago, though if I were going to ask the Justified writers for anything in the coming season, it would be, can we cut back on the really gross stuff like dismemberments, chained up sex slaves and slaughterhouses?

Well, if Limehouse is back, I guess we’ll still have the slaughterhouse.

And don’t forget, Dickie Bennett is still alive, with a knack for getting out of jail.

Who knows what kind of new bad guy the Justified writers will cook up for next year, or do we already have enough people gunning for Raylan?

As the final scene reminded us, we also have the prospect of Raylan as dad next season, and relations between him and Winona (Natalie Zea) are still quite chilly.

And that is also what the weather will be the next time we return to Harlan with Justified.

* A good friend a loyal Justified watcher points out we never saw Quarles die, and that having a limb cut off is not necessarily a fatal injury. I replied that it probably is if no one helps you, and I don’t know who in the crowd that was there would help him, but hmmmmm.

Dickey (Jeremy Davies) and Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) have a very "Justified" confrontation. © FX photos by Prashant Gupta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the April 3, 2012 episode of Justified but intend to, do not read further.

Coalition is the penultimate episode of Justified this season, and it finds a lot of guys wigging out.

Left with nowhere to go, Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough) has turned into a full-blown Oxy addict. Dickey Bennett (Jeremy Davies) rightfully suspects everyone is after him as he tries to reclaim his mother’s $3 million. And Arlo Givens is off his meds, hallucinating his sister Helen (Linda Gehringer) coming back and telling him to stop letting Boyd steamroll over him.

Things are coming to a head.

Ava (Joelle Carter) tries to hold Arlo (Raymond J. Barry) back in a tense moment with Boyd (Walton Goggins).

At the center of this episode is what appears to be an old-fashioned bank heist at the establishment where everyone thinks the money is, though like last week’s church, it isn’t. For a while though, it looks like everyone will be congregating at this bank, allowing several criminals a chance to take each other out, or the law to nab everyone.

But we still have an episode to go, so it’s not going to be that easy.

Boyd (Walton Goggins) quickly figures out Limehouse’s man Erroll (Demetrius Grosse) is leading them into a trap and calls off the heist that everyone seems to know will happen and how it will happen.

Here’s where Boyd ain’t so smart, in almost a James Bond villain kind of way: The people he puts in charge of guarding people he’s trying to detain. The trio of two prostitutes and  one goon he puts in charge of holding Quarles is pretty quickly subdued after the have a little drug party together. And then his cousin John (David Meunier) fails to hold Dickey and Erroll. Boyd’s a strong crime boss, but his henchmen are pretty weak.

Dickey appears to be neutralized when he attempts to get the location of Mags money out of Loretta at her foster home. Raylan is waiting for him and shoots him in the leg. But who knows.

As Coalition came to a close, it really looked like we were going to lose a major character.

Quarles went out to Boyd’s under Limehouse’s (Mykelti Williamson) orders to take Boyd out. But Duffy was in the shadows, hoping to take out both of them by blowing up Quarles’ car while the Detroitand Harlan crime bosses confronted each other. But the blast was not quite big enough and Quarles escaped after shooting an straight-laced officer we were told in an earlier scene had missed his son’s T-ball game to track the possible bank heist.

Yes, the Justified writers made Quarles seem like a bigger scumbag than we already thought he was. Accomplishment.

As the episode ended, Mags money was still missing and Quarles was on the loose.

Raylan did not figure heavily in this one, but had two cool scenes, though he did not get the best line.

First was a scene between Raylan and Limehouse where Raylan invokes a Wizard of Oz allusion in a colorful way we cannot relay on a family newspaper blog. Suffice to say, he indicated to Limehouse that he didn’t think he was so great.

The other was a talk between Raylan and Loretta, who may hold the key to the missing money. Raylan told her that if it was Mags’ wish that Loretta had the money, he would respect their wishes, but he would come down on her if he found she had made any extravagant expenditures like having Van Halen play her birthday party.

“Marshal,” Loretta replied, “Do I strike you in any way as a Van Halen fan?”

Well, considering the characters in this show, she might want to know what 5150 stands for.

Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Quarles (Neal McDonough) have a talk in 'Guy Walks Into a Bar,' the 10th episode in season three of 'Justified.' © FX photos by Prashant Gupta.

This is the point in Justified seasons where the intensity starts to ramp up as the storylines draw to a close. We learn more about our guest characters, and everyone begins to take their places for the grand finale.

For Dickey Bennett (Jeremy Davies) that place would be out of jail. As a pardon hearing draws close, Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Art (Nick Searcy) are trying to convince the judge to keep him in prison. But at the last minute, Raylan punts away his last chance to keep the little thug behind bars, and Dickey is a free man.

He may have been better off in jail, because between the episode and the preview for next week, Boyd (Walton Goggins) and Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson) both declare their intentions to kill him. How many lives does this cat get?

Jenn Lyon as Lindsey, Raylan's new flame.

The maneuvers to keep Dickey in jail did put a bit of a drag on this episode. But there were some moments of unique Justified cool and the resolution of a minor drama: the election of a sheriff in Harlan County. The episode paints a lovely portrait of Harlan politics where votes go for a shot of whiskey or a sexual favor. In the end, Boyd’s candidate loses to Quarles’ (Neal McDonough) man, the incumbent Sheriff Tillman. But then Boyd, as Quarles puts it, “slipped that hillbilly rug right out from under my feet,” by trapping Tillman in a nepotism charge that gets him tossed from his office and puts Boyd’s man in charge.

Cue Justified-cool scene one, when Quarles stalks out of the sheriff’s office. Boyd is waiting to gloat, telling Quarles, “You are a conquistador, but we are not your savages,” and that he is lucky to get out of Harlan alive.

Quarles is now a very different character from when he joined the program as a criminal corporate executive. Now, without his backers in Detroit and Boyd outmaneuvering him in Harlan, he is simultaneously turning into a much more vulnerable and dangerous man. He’s becoming the junkie he used to work to create, and in one scene we hear a very sad, disturbing story about how his father prostituted him as an early teen, and he eventually took the chance to kill his father at age 14. Is it true? Quarles seemed convinced, but then he was also trying to keep a man from shooting him — a man he was preparing to, uh, let’s just say the final scene of this week’s episode was one of the most disturbing things we have ever seen out of Justified – like father, like son.

Quarles has more to say in Justified cool scene two, the one we saw in the single scene preview for this week’s episode, appropriately titled Guy Walks Into a Bar.

Quarles walks into Raylan’s bar and tells him he will kill him. Raylan says let’s go, and for a moment it looks like we may get the showdown four episodes early until Raylan’s new flame, Lindsey (Jenn Lyon), intervenes. Quarles backs off, which was probably good for him because he was so jacked up in that scene, he would have been an easy mark for Raylan.

The way Quarles is going, who knows what his actual endgame will be as he is getting more manic by the episode, and apparently some more heavies from Detroit will be coming in next week.

Quietly becoming the biggest heavy is Limehouse, who is holding a lot of cards — read cash — and has a number of associates, but no real allies.

The big Lexington namedrop was Masterson Station Park, which orange jump-suited Jed (Richard Speight Jr.) jokes he was driven through on his way from prison to the marshal’s office, where they hoped to strike a deal to keep Dickey in jail. It’s plausible. But then Raylan says they ordered pizza for him from Vitello’s, a pizza joint that doesn’t appear to operate in Central Kentucky, though there is one in Murray. In Justified Kentucky geography, that could be close. But Goodfella’s Pizza would have been a cooler namedrop.

Quarles (Neal McDonough), Gary (William Ragsdale) and Duffy (Jere Burns) meet in Tulsa. © FX photos by Prashant Gupta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the Feb. 28, 2012 episode of Justified, but intend to, do not read further.

The mid-season installment of Justified significantly humanizes our carpetbagger villain, Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough).

Before our weekly playing of Gangstagrass’ On the Run, the angel of light shows up at Raylan’s (Timothy Olyphant) new digs over a bar with presumptions that he is in Boyd Crowder’s back pocket. Quarles seems to believe everyone is as crooked as he is. Anyway, in rebuffing Quarles’ offer, Raylan hints that something went wrong in Detroit and that’s why Quarles is in Kentucky, giving Raylan and Quarles something in common, except Raylan doesn’t have a male hustler chained up in his bedroom because of his trouble.

Quarles makes the sheriff of Harlan an offer he can't refuse.

And things are not going great for Quarles as “The Boss” in Detroit is worried about his operation and sends his sniveling son Sammy (Max Perlich) down to check things out, and buy some horses at tracks that are altogether unfamiliar to people who reside here in Central Kentucky.

This is a rare (particularly for this season) zero bodycount episode of Justified, with the chess game completely trumping any gunplay. Quarles goes down to Harlan to buy off Sheriff Tillman Napier (David Andrews) who goes and shuts down Boyd’s bar at Quarles’ request. Raylan shuts down Quarles home base with a court order and his financing with the boss, putting Quarles on a solid track to go after Raylan. In our final scene, Quarles and Duffy (Jere Burns) have gone down to Tulsa to check in with Gary (William Ragsdale), Winona’s ex who put out a hit on Raylan last season.

But what could be the most significant developments take place in Kentucky, between the Kentuckians.

When Raylan confronts Boyd (Walton Goggins) about why Quarles believes they are in business together, Boyd has another profound statement.

“This is our home, Raylan,” Boyd says. “I start to turn on my own people, no matter how contentious at times our relationship may be, that’s a world that becomes so muddy even I can’t fathom it.”

The us vs. them boundaries are being drawn, as Boyd also makes an overture to Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson), who informs Boyd that he is far out-financed and outgunned by Quarles, or so it seems. Like we said, our visiting bad guy became more human, but also more unpredictable and desperate this week.

Winona (Natallie Zea) and Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) try to come to an understanding. © FX photos by Prashant Gupta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the Feb. 21, 2012 episode of Justified, maybe because you were watching a basketball game, but intend to, do not read further.

This was an episode where Raylan decided to stop putting up with people’s … uh … stuff.

Frustrated after Winona left him again, Raylan wanted to take a few days off. But, as usual, events down in Harlan keep him on the clock. This time, a pill clinic set up in Raylan’s late Aunt Helen’s house gets shot up as the episode opens, and Raylan has to go down and look into it.

Raylan (Olyphant) and Ava (Joelle Carter) check out Delroy's operation.

That brings into play this week’s intriguing guest star, Tom Cruise’s cousin and yet another Lost veteran William Mapother, as an Oxy-addicted, prostitute beating pimp who amusingly likes to talk to people about accountability – the ethics of criminals seems to be a recurring theme this season.

Speaking of the bad guys – and there are plenty this season – this is an episode where we are really seeing Boyd (Walton Goggins), Quarles (Neal McDonough) and Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson) start to plot against one another. The obvious conclusion about the pill clinic shootout is that it was Quarles taking a shot at Boyd. But Boyd knows that would be rather obvious and doesn’t jump to any conclusions or action. And he’s right. We find out none of these crime bosses went after the clinic. It was one of Limehouse’s associates, trying to push their operation from the background to the foreground.

This leads to the episode’s most compelling scene, where Limehouse berates the bad lieutenant for stepping out on his own, telling him this could bring a great deal of trouble to Harlan’s black community. In a chilling moment, Limehouse says he will have to make things right, and it doesn’t sound like a it will be easy or pretty.

Speaking of chilling, Quarles has almost as great a scene with Duffy (Jere Burns) where we can see the wannabe white collar criminal is a getting wigged out the more he sees Quarles’ sadistic side. Quarles also thinks he’s pegged Raylan as a bad cop doing Boyd’s bidding. We know that’s not the case, but we can also see how it may seem that way, and setting this up as the city slickers vs. the locals, Raylan and Boyd could end up on the same side of this fight.

The one scene with Raylan's dad, Arlo (Raymond J. Barry) reminds us there's little love lost between the father and son.

At the end of the evening, we do see Raylan and Winona back together, and yes, she did leave because, with a baby on the way, the nature of Raylan’s job is getting to her. Adding an ominous tone to this is Quarles interest in going after Raylan seems to be leaning toward attacking the things Raylan loves, so we can see a situation arising soon where he goes after Winona or even Arlo (Raymond J. Barry). While saying Raylan and his dad are estranged is an understatement, you still have to wonder how Raylan might react if Arlo is attacked, which the scenes from next week seem to indicate could happen.

One mystery reopened is the money in the evidence locker that Raylan put back for Winona last season. It’s gone again, and this week’s final scene gives us a plot twist far from Kentucky.

Right now, midway through the season, Justified episodes are giving us a lot to take in. It starting to feeling like time for some of these situations to start sorting themselves out.

Damon Herriman as Dewey, who thinks he's had both kidneys removed by a really twisted bad guy on "Justified." © FX photos by Adam Taylor.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the Feb. 14, 2012 episode of Justified, but intend to, do not read further.

On the creepy scale, tonight’s episode of Justified was way up there – for this series.

While we got some of those key broad narrative scenes, including the aforementioned first meeting between Boyd and Quarels (we’ll get to that in a few graphs), the through line of this episode was Lance, the prison nurse and rogue organ harvester who had Dewey believing he didn’t have kidneys anymore and needed to come up with $20,000 in four hours or he would die a horribly painful death. If you’re a creepy criminal like Lance, it must be good to have absolute morons like Dewey to prey on.

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens in this week's episode of "Justified," "Thick as Mud."

Anyway, we are tipped to a little organ transplant ring apparently running in Lexington – who knew we were such a bad little town? – that quickly gets checked by the episode’s end when hottie doctor Layla blows away Lance the creepy prison nurse and Raylan has to take out Layla before she pops him – Raylan apparently being able to overcome the tranquilizers that put most of Lance’s other victims into such a deep sleep he can remove their organs without them waking up.

That was this week’s short story, though in another medical storyline, we also meet a doctor in the middle of the tug-of-war between Boyd and Quarels.

The moment of the episode was the meeting between Boyd and Quarels, where they quote Thomas Jefferson and Saul Bellow to one another – talk about over-educated criminals.  Quarels comes offering a partnership with Boyd, but the sincerity of that offer is as deep as their scene is long. Boyd makes it clear to Quarrels he considers him a carpetbagger in a three-piece suit, and most carpetbaggers who come to Harlan wind up dead.

We also learn, right away, that Limehouse was indeed holding out on Dickie Bennett when he told him a few hundred thousand dollars was all that was left of Mags’ money, which Dickie believed would be around $1 million. Later, we also learn that Limehouse is keeping an eye on the growing tension between Boyd and Quarrels, so Limehouse keeps getting more and more interesting.

We also had a moment that indicated Boyd still feels he has a score to settle with Dickie.

Purely judging by the tension being wound up and the title of next week’s episode, Guns Come Out (like they haven’t already, this season?), next week could bring an explosive Justified.

But the question that will be on most of our minds until then is, what was in that note Raylan appeared to receive from Winona at the end of tonight’s episode.

Glenn (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) have the first of few meetings in "Harlan Roulette," episode three of the third season of Justified. © FX photo by Prashant Gupta.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the Jan. 31 episode of Justified, stop reading. This post does talk about what happened.

If you are hired for a guest role on Justified, odds are you may not be getting a long-term contract. Several characters were one-and-dones in Tuesday’s (Jan. 31, 2012) episode of Justified, including yet another character that looked like he might have been fun to have around for a while.

Pawn shop owner Glenn Fogel hid his lethal side under a drawl, a smile and some witty banter, particularly when Raylan showed up sniffing around. Unfortunately, Glenn surrounded himself with unpredictable drug addicts who got to carry guns, so he won’t be back again this season … or ever.

But fear not. He may have been one bad guy too many this season, and this was the episode that set up the bad guys.

It started with Limehouse (Mykelti Williamson) and Boyd  (Walton Goggins) meeting on a bridge to discuss Mags’ missing money, but Limehouse had a trump card informing Boyd that his lackeys had not followed his orders to burn the marijuana he had that had gone bad since they had taken it from the Bennetts.

Quarles (Neal McDonogh) explains his plans to Duffy (Jere Burns).

There is an order of natural selection in the Harlan criminal word, and sidekicks like Devil (Kevin Rankin) aren’t in the positions they’re in because they couldn’t get tenure at UK. Scenes like the one this episode, Harlan Roulette, was named after are actually great stay off drugs messages because the addicts invariably make very bad, often fatal decisions.

One of the things that makes the show cool is the mutual respect guys like Boyd and Limehouse have for each other because, despite their differences, they know they’re the smartest guys in the room – or on the bridge, as it would be. And everyone knows Raylan is smart … well, everyone except Quarles (Neal McDonogh), this year’s city-slicker bad guy who fancies himself the smartest in Kentucky.

We got to know him a bit better this episode and know his plans for setting up what sounds like a fairly sophisticated operation for running the pill pipeline through Harlan. The scene where he details his plans to Duffy (Jere Burns) has a brilliant look behind the mask. While Quarles is on the phone selling his son on what a great place Kentucky is going to be to live, Duffy goes looking for a bathroom in Quarles new home but finds an oxy addict tied up in a bed. It’s up there on the creepy scale with Mags serving apple pie at the end last year’s season premiere.

The episode ended with a game-on exchange between Raylan and Quarles that indicates things are about to get explosive. And some more one-and-done characters won’t be making it to the end.

The exception to the smart rule would have to be Dickie (Jeremy Davies), who we’ll be talking about at length next week.

Margo Martindale reacts before accepting the award for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for '“Justified' at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2011 in Los Angeles. © AP photos by Mark J. Terrill.

Thanks to Margo Martindale, we can now call Kentucky-set Justified an Emmy-winning drama.

Margo Martindale accepts the award for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for '“Justified.'

From the first episode of the show’s second season she caught our eye with her extra-creepy performance mothering a man to the great beyond after giving him a presumably peacemaking drink of her lethal Apple Pie. Up until the end, when she served herself the deadly drink, Martindale created a complicated woman in Mags Bennett who clearly didn’t relish the life that she had made for herself and her family but was determined to do whatever she had to in order to preserve it.

Emmy week was a great chance to remember that performance including the church meeting speech and rough discipline she meted out to her screw-up son Coover.

Unfortunately, since she did drink the Apple Pie at the end of this season, it’s a one-and-done for Mags and Martindale, whose next gig is the CBS drama, A Gifted Man, which premiers Friday.

But thanks to her, Justified is now on Emmy’s radar and stands a good chance to pick up a few more trophies with a strong season three. Two words: Walton Goggins.

A few other Emmy notes:

Surfing around, two things I am not seeing mentioned much:

~ I love Lonely Island, but is 3-Way and I Just Had Sex really prime time award show fare? Maybe I’m being a prude, but I appreciated Jon Stewart’s line about it.

~ How did movies and mini-series get slotted for the 10 o’clock hour? As TV critic Alan Sepinwall said in a Twitter hashtag, #nobodywatchesthose. Maybe its because they attract movie talent like Kate Winslet, but that’s a bit of an odd move after you’ve just spent a couple hours celebrating the outstanding talent on TV.

Overall, it was a pretty good show. Maybe it wasn’t as good as last year’s Jimmy Fallon-led affair, but Jane Lynch was enjoyable out of the Sue Sylvester persona and the show had good momentum – until the TV movie/miniseries categories. I may be the only person who liked the Emmytones. How could you not like the drama lead in, sung as if it were the opening to a 1950s variety show?

Drama, drama

That’s what its all about

Sorrow and sadness

Murder and madness

Lust and lechery

Treason and treachery

Blood splattered

Dreams shattered

Physical pain and endless emotional trama

That’s drama – yeah!

Come to think of it, all of those elements were in Justified.

Margo Martindale in her final episode as Mags on Justified. (c) FX photo by Prashant Gupta.

Despite some of the stereotypes – few of which have been refuted on Justified - we do have a healthy respect for fine writing here in the Bluegrass State. Wasn’t that our own Wendell Berry getting an award from the President recently?

And that may be a big reason why, advancement of some stereotypes noted, there is a healthy admiration for Justified here, Wednesday night’s season finale being a prime example.

This was not the blazing finale of Season 1 or the one last week’s penultimate episode seemed to portend.

But in terms of storytelling, it was beautiful. There was an echo of last season’s finale in which Boyd Crowder (played by the brilliant Walton Goggins) told Raylan (played by the steadily growing Timothy Olyphant), “I’m going to bet my life on you being the only friend I have left in this world,” before the lawman let the outlaw go take care of some business. This time around, Boyd got Raylan out of a jam, and then let Raylan have his prized quarry, Dicky Bennett, though Boyd had several scores to settle with Bennett family’s idiot son.

It was a scene that reaffirmed the deep bond between Raylan and Boyd, which should make life interesting next year because this season finale sealed Boyd’s status as the crime boss of Harlan County.

That came in a scene that affirmed some Justified writers love The Godfather – but they love a twist more.

Mags and her “sheriff” son Doyle were having a surrender-your-arms pow wow at a church with Boyd and Raylan’s father, Arlo. The Bennetts were feeling pretty good about themselves and their ability to outmuscle the Crowder clan and had dispatched their henchmen to do in some of the key Crowder faithful while they met. Mags as Don Corleone in the baptism/revenge sequence, eh? You could see that bullet going right through Mo Green’s glasses.

But Boyd was wise, and had ambushes set to begin the end for the Bennett family. By the last sequence, we had Mags sitting with Dickey left as her only living son after Doyle was shot through the head as his gun was trained on a helpless Raylan. She also had to admit to Loretta that she was the one who killed the girl’s daddy at the end of this season’s first episode. Bringing this season full circle, Raylan and Mags sat down for a final drink, and she poured herself a glass of her dreaded Apple Pie.

Sadly, we will not have Margo Martindale’s brilliant performances back for Season 3.

But there will be a lot of questions to be answered, including will Winona be waiting for Raylan when he gets back to Lexington?

Does Ava survive Dickey’s gunshot?

What shape does Boyd’s new empire take, and will it bring him in stark conflict with Raylan?

And maybe the easiest to answer: Does Raylan step away from the Marshal’s service to become a firearms  instructor? The bet is no, because Justified wouldn’t be what it is without its Kentucky roots, which include fine writing.