Justified: Mad Mags

Poor Charlie. Not, not him.

I’m talking about Coover Bennett’s unseen pet, which was unceremoniously killed by Ava’s shotgun blast as she came to Boyd Crowder’s rescue.

Unfortunately for us — and for a despondent Coover — Charlie was killed before we got a chance to see what kind of animal the two nastiest Bennett Bros. were using to threaten people working with Black Pike (like Boyd) or considering signing an agreement that would allow the company to mine in Harlan County (like Reggie, Harlan County’s black guy). The actual answer is here. I would’ve guessed a raccoon.

I thought “The Spoil” was a return to form for “Justified” after the previous two episodes, which focused heavily on the contrived Winona/money bag drama. It was a return to form because it was a return to the season’s main villains: the Bennetts.

Of course, as Raylan amusingly pointed out, between the Bennetts, the greedy/shady mining company and Boyd (who, despite his sturdy righteousness, could strike back at any moment), Harlan County isn’t short on bad guys. Raylan’s job is just to clean up the bodies in the aftermath.

Then again, Raylan may not be in a position to cleanup for anybody else, since he’s dealing with his own mess…and he’s kind of a mess himself. Although, I still stand by my opinion that the some of the drama in the previous two episodes was annoyingly artificial, it served its purpose of putting our main character in a fascinating place.

Early on we got a fantastic scene in a batting cage — that poor teen was just trying to do his job — where Art gave Raylan his assignment for the week: protecting Black Pike bigwig Carol Johnson while she was in Harlan for a town hall meeting. Obviously, the scene was dripping in subtext — and played beautifully by Nick Searcy and Timothy Olyphant — since we knew that Art had busted Raylan and Winona scurrying out of the evidence locker toward the end of the missing money drama. Apparently, the subtext wasn’t lost on Raylan either, since he went back to his hotel and informed Winona that Art knew.

At the end of last week, Raylan seemed utterly disgusted and angry at the predicament he was in, and those feelings seemed to spill over onto this week because he appeared to be hungover for most of the episode. As we learned from last season’s “Hatless”, a drunk/hungover Raylan is a Raylan that will get into (and lose) a fight. This time, it was Coover giving him a vicious beating until Mags (hilariously) tapped him on the head with a shovel to stop. I’m sure a lot of people are shocked that nothing happened to Coover as a result of assaulting a federal marshal, but I figure Raylan’s going to want to handle that one on his own down the line.

With Raylan at his most vulnerable, it was probably more difficult than usual for him to resist the comically-forward advances from Carol, who tempted our hero while in various states of (basic cable) undress. But even Carol’s mild sluttiness was given proper context, as we learned that she was an English major in school who wound up in the mining business because of family. She strikes me as a generally unhappy, severe person who occasionally throws herself at an attractive guy out of boredom.

We also got the story on the Givens/Bennett family feud, which started in the moonshining days and reached its peak during the modern age during a baseball game in which Dickie beaned Raylan with a fastball and Raylan broke his leg with a bat. (And that explains the limp.)

There was a little more Givens family drama as Helen offered to give Raylan the rest of the marshals money that Arlo had stolen if Raylan promised to stay out of Harlan and leave the Bennett alone. Obviously, there’s always the chance that Arlo might have something cooking on the side with the Bennetts (though unlikely because of the family history), but I’m choosing to see this as Helen’s way of showing concern for Raylan and trying to keep him safe. Still, that’s a pretty big gesture.

After an explosive town hall meeting (relax, they were just firecrackers) which was, in effect, “won” by Mags’ powerful and charismatic speech — Margo Martindale (pictured, left) killed it — Raylan accompanied Carol to Arlo and Helen’s house as she tried to get their signature on Black Pike’s behalf.

At that point, the sniper from last week’s episode returned, leading to the episode’s climactic action scene. Though Arlo was shot in the leg — there IS a little hero in the old bastard after all, as he jumped to protect Carol — the tenses moment came when the sniper was about to shoot Helen. Fortunately, Raylan neutralized (but didn’t shoot) the sniper, who turned out to be Kirby Jr’s sister. (Kirby Jr. himself was apprehended off-screen outside of Judge Reardon’s home, so that seems to be the end of that…unless their mom re-surfaces.)

Overall, I thought this was a strong episode, and next week’s looks even better.

So what’d you think of this episode? Who DID set off those firecrackers? (Do we believe Carol when we said it wasn’t her…I don’t.) I know that this is a TV show, but if the Bennetts are such a notorious crime family, how come we didn’t hear about them at all last season? Finally, is there anything on TV right now that’s better than any scene between Raylan and Boyd?