The End Is Justified

Justified, one of the two shows that THC regularly watches just finished its sixth and final season (the other is Better Call Saul).  Based on Elmore Leonard's novel, it follows US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) who's returned to his native Harlan County in the coal-mining hills of eastern Kentucky to chase the bad guys, most prominent of whom is his former coal-digging buddy, Boyd Crowder (the brilliant Walter Goggins).

The last episode was unexpectedly less bloody than THC (and everyone else) expected, though there was one old fashioned Western style shoot-out, but it was surprisingly satisfying it how it wrapped up.

There were a lot of nice touches in that last episode and the best was when, as Raylan is leaving the Lexington, Kentucky Marshal's office to go to Miami, he pulls a dog-eared copy of The Friends Of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins out of his desk and gives it to a fellow deputy.  It was a tribute to Elmore Leonard who died a couple of years ago and always said Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written and the one that most inspired him (for more see Eddie Coyle's Friend).

(Pictures from Vanity Fair)

End Of The Season

The fourth season of Justified ended last night with the appropriate level of drama and bloodletting and remains my favorite show (though Mrs THC persuaded me to start watching Breaking Bad and I'm now nearing the end of the second season on my Kindle Fire and have to admit it may be as good as Justified).

THC has written about Justified and Elmore Leonard before.  The series has taken Leonard's characters in some different and interesting directions.  As Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens becomes more laconic and withdrawn and his personal life dissolves(Raylan) the most interesting character is becoming Boyd Crowder.  Boyd, who worked as a young man with Raylan in the coal mines, started out as a garden variety pathological bad guy but has emerged as a much more complex and, sometimes, oddly sympathetic character, who is faithful to his fiancee Eva ((who shot and killed Boyd's brother, her former husband (he became former when she shot him) (yes, I know, that why this is a sentence that requires parentheticals within parentheticals)) and aspires to a stable (Boyd) middle-class life, while at the same time running a criminal enterprise.  At times he's less cynical than Raylan, who seems to be devoid of belief in anything other than in his ability to get the bad guys.  Boyd is played by Walton Goggins who manages to carry it off believably.

In other good news, the malevolent Master of the Pithy Observation, Wynn Duffy, last seen fleeing out of the country to avoid the wrath of the Detroit mob is now back (Duffy)and reunited with Boyd.  Now, if they'd just bring back the incredibly stupid but very entertaining Dewey Crowe, who missed this season, all would be right with the world.   (Crowe)

It's time to sit back and wait for the 2014 season.  To close here's a little taste of Boyd Crowder set to music.  Clips are from the first two seasons.