Justified is a great show, but like most shows, it has weak episodes, and this is one of those times. Justified mixes the wild west with the modern era, and each week Raylan Givens, a softly spoken US Marshall with a cowboy hat (Timothy Oliphant, always awesome) puts the world to rights, often by drawing faster than the criminals. The premise is that, despite the high body count the man leaves behind him, it’s always justified.
This week, the main story focuses on a young black man, Clinton, who just wants to see his son and goes on a rampage trying to get to him… breaking one man’s face with a telephone receiver, shooting his buddy Flex in the hand, stealing a car, tying up an old lady… in the context of the show, it’s all pretty unjustifiable, so normally we’d expect to see him in a body bag by the end. Not this time.
This time Clinton is the brother-in-law of one of the Marshall’s, the rather boring Rebecca who seems to be the token black person on the show, and should be written out immediately. Despite killing Rebecca’s sister in an automobile accident when high, and causing all this trouble, the coda is the one you’d expect from a more sentimental show. The brother-in-law lives, and gets to give his gift to his son, before being taken back to jail.
This, in itself, runs against the ethos of the show, the man should be dead or dying, and certainly shouldn’t be seeing his son. A worse ending is dished out for Flex, however, who was looking to go straight and become a magician, but having been shot in the hand realises he’ll never make it and seeks revenge against Clinton. Flex is the classic hero in a Justified tale, seeking revenge, wild west style, for someone who wronged him, he’s the kind of kid who needs to be talked down from doing something justifiable but stupid. Instead, the Marshall service gun him down, just to save Clinton, the murderous rampaging brother-in-law, from a death he deserves.
This is against everything the show stands for, Clinton should be dead, not being visited by his son, and Flex, who got caught in a situation that he had every right to seek revenge for, should be in custody, not being buried six feet under.
Perhaps worse, however, is the failed attempt to give Rebecca more depth; here they’ve tried to make her interesting by giving her a sad backstory about a dead sister and a drug taking brother-in-law, to elicit some sympathy, but really it’s only a weak facsimile of Raylans own storyline, where he constantly has to deal with a criminal father and outlaw friends.
My only hope is that the wizard Flex lives and it was all part of an elaborate gangsta magic show. Long live Flex!
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