TV Review: Justified – “Wrong Roads”
By Brandon Wolfe
In the aftermath of their Mexican adventure, Daryl has a sitdown with Boyd where both men lay their cards out and realize they each know exactly what the other is up to. Daryl makes the case that he wants in on Boyd’s “family” business, and the fact that Boyd’s heroin supply is still presently being transported by Crowes Danny and Dewey means Boyd isn’t in a position to dismiss him just yet. Meanwhile Raylan is still mourning that vacation that wasn’t to be when he catches wind of the pile of bodies belonging to the crew of Memphis pot kingpin Hot Rod Dunham that has turned up in Mexico. He does decide to skip town, but on business, to visit the Memphis DEA, where he links up with a sly dog of an agent named Miller, played by Eric Roberts, who seems to be having a great time in the role.
Raylan and Miller look into the surviving member’s of Hot Rod’s crew, starting with enforcers Jay and Roscoe, who claim ignorance of Hot Rod’s whereabouts and are prepared to wait out the inquisition until they learn that Boyd Crowder has hijacked the shipment that they had intended to hijack from him, setting them on a path to track Boyd down. Raylan and Miller, on their end, track down Hot Rod, who has been fatally wounded by his captor while trying to escape. Miller shares a touching goodbye with Hot Rod in one of those great ‘Justified’ moments where men on opposing sides of the law can still enjoy a measure of camaraderie.
While waiting for the shipment to arrive, Boyd finally makes time to visit Ava in the penitentiary, where Ava tells him that he will be visited by a friend who will need a favor from him that Ava needs him to grant, which Boyd agrees to do. This “friend” is Rowena, the prison nurse who is going to act as Ava’s heroin pipeline into the prison, and she wants Boyd to kill a man who burned a friend of hers to death. Boyd goes to the man, Elmont Swain, and finds that he’s an elderly man who doesn’t have a lot of time left, and that he had reasons for what he did that make the situation a bit greyer than they first seemed. Boyd, in a moment of seeming pity, tells Elmont that he does not wish to kill a sick old man, and instead offers to give Elmont money in exchange for disappearing. But on the way out of town, Boyd pulls over and allows his henchman Jimmy to strangle Elmont, while Boyd, to his credit, seems genuinely displeased over what he ordered to be done. And it doesn’t even ultimately benefit Ava because Rowena then decides she wants a second favor. She wants Ava to kill Judith, the tough-old-bird inmate who headed up the heroin program previously.
Eventually Daryl gets pulled into a group meeting between Boyd and his partners, Wynn Duffy and Picker, to negotiate his terms. Daryl wants 20% in exchange for providing safe passage for the heroin between Mexico and the U.S. via his proven connection. The group balks at this deal, but are interrupted by Jay and Roscoe, who demand the drugs and/or money from Boyd, and they in turn are interrupted by Raylan and Miller, in one of those other great ‘Justified’ moments where a gathering of various parties with conflicting agendas have a tensely funny showdown. The result is that a surprisingly Shakespeare-savvy Roscoe winds up dead while Jay is arrested and Raylan is very curious what all these clowns are up to.
Later in the day, Miller happens upon Danny and Dewey on the highway by chance and pulls them over. He almost allows Danny the opportunity to prove his cherished “21 Foot Rule” before a panicked Dewey runs both men over and takes off with the truck full of heroin.
Whew. As you can see, a whole lot happened on ‘Justified’ this week (such to the point that the episode ran 15 minutes longer than usual and confused my poor DVR; thank God for the FX instant-replay airing). This was a week of many heated confrontations, between Boyd and Daryl, Danny and Dewey, Danny and Miller, and also between Raylan and Art, who meet face-to-face again in the marshal’s office and for whom the possibility of reconciliation seems ever more hopeless. This was the shot in the arm the series desperately needed after a distressing listlessness was starting to creep in. Blowing up the boxes in so many different directions at once has set the series on the course for a very busy final four episodes. We even got an all-too-brief Raylan/Boyd reunion.
If there’s a complaint to be made here (and I’m not sure there is, but if), it’s that ‘Justified’ is kind of doing the same thing it did in Season 3, where it had so many villains vying to do so many things at once that it got a bit too messy to maintain. Season 3, entertaining as it was, bit off a bit more than it could chew while trying to keep tabs on so many antagonists, and poor Raylan is just one man. I’m glad ‘Justified’ finally got its affairs in order and I’m really hopeful that it navigates through all of this a bit more deftly than before. I also hope that Raylan pulls in fellow marshal Tim for some help with all of this, because he needs it and Tim is awesome and should be on this show more than five minutes a year
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