Justified: Oh Brother

Are we 100% sure that Mags Bennett is a villain.

Sure, we know that —as the head of the Bennett weed/moonshine crime empire — she’s ultimately the main antagonist to our hero, Raylan Givens. And if you’ve seen the end of the latest episode, you know that those two won’t be getting any chummier with each other.

Still, “Brother’s Keeper” displayed that, as terrifying as Mags may be to her full-grown, no-good sons, she’s not all bad.

By the way, this was also the episode where the proverbial s--- hit the fan.

Many of the season’s important storylines — Mags killing Loretta’s father and lying to the girl about it, the Black Pike mining company deal, the escalating feud between the Givens and the Bennetts — came to a head in this episode. Now “Justified” has less than a handful of episodes to make sense of this mess.

The episode was mostly set at a day-long party thrown by the Bennetts at their home. Among the guests were Raylan and Carol Johnson, as well as Boyd and Ava.

For the entire episode, I tried to figure out the devious reason that Boyd had for bringing Ava to the party. My conclusion: sure, he figured he’d seem less threatening if he brought her along, but I think he mostly wanted to show her a good time. Who knew Walton Goggins could clog. It also seems like Ava has fallen pray to the charms of another Crowder.

Of course, Boyd had some business to discuss before his happy dance. Having acquired the signature for Arlo’s valuable land, Boyd sat in on a meeting with Carol and Mags and Carol made one final offer to buy Mags’ land before the mining company inevitably descended on Harlan and blew the top off the mountain.

Mags played her trump card: blowing the top off the mountain would be worthless if the company didn’t also own the land where the necessary access roads are located. At first, I thought it was silly that a big-time company wouldn’t think of something so important, but the show made a point of mentioning the fact that it was Carol who had been sent in blind to this negotiation. Since we learned last week that Carol kind of hates her life as a mining company honcho, I can totally buy that she didn’t do her due diligence.

The thing that struck me hardest about this scene — even harder than Raylan struck Dickie when he tried to barge in — was the fact that Mags didn’t just want money to make herself richer. She wanted enough money to make sure that her family and her town were taken care of long-term. Sure, she’s Harlan’s reigning criminal mastermind, but that doesn’t make the invading mining company the good guys.

So Boyd was dancing, Mags was singing: there was absolutely no doubt that things were going to go to hell.

The episode’s opening scene had Mags getting Loretta ready for the party and basically telling her that she was the daughter she never had. (And the child she WISHES she’d had, instead of the three stooges.) Mags also had to dodge another request by Loretta to talk to her dad.

Later, Loretta was helping an increasingly jealous Coover with a chore when she noticed what looked like her dad’s watch.

Loretta wanted to make sure, so she gave Coover a poisoned joint. When he was unconscious, she crept into a bedroom (oh, hi passed-out Dickie) and confirmed that it was her father’s watch. Of course, having her sneakily poison Coover makes Loretta more like Mags than she’ll ever know given what Mags did to Loretta’s father.

She quickly activated the bat signal by calling Raylan’s cell phone. Unfortunately for her, Coover had been pretending (you can’t fool him that easily…he’s a goddamn professional!) and was about to kill Loretta when Dickie intervened. Unfortunately for Dickie, Coover is a human mountain and easily choked out his gimpy brother.

I thought director Tony Goldwyn (the actor who’s also directed some great episodes of “Dexter”) did a great job of staging the scene at Coover’s — and the following scene at the site where the had disposed of Lroetta’s dad’s body — like a horror movie. (The way he snuck up on Loretta in that darkened room was chilling.)

Brad William Henke also deserves credit for giving a great performance. The dumbest and deadliest of the Bennett clan could’ve been a one-note character, but Henke injected just enough pride and jealousy to make him interesting.

I’m speaking in the past tense because Raylan ended up killing Coover. Raylan was about to join Loretta’s father, but Loretta distracted Coover long enough for Raylan to shoot him and send him to his death.

Margo Martindale has been excellent all year and was great in this episode. However, she has never been better than she was in the final scene of this episode. The way she flipped the switch from begging Raylan to see Loretta (not Coover) one last time to coldly walking away was absolutely chilling.

So what’d you think of this episode? Am I the only one that kind of wishes that the show hadn’t definitively told us that Raylan and Carol didn’t sleep together? Finally, what do you think Boyd promised Arlo to get him to sign over the land?