Justified: To Helen Back

It doesn’t matter how old you are — no one has the ability to get under your skin in quite the same way your parents can.

Marshal Raylan Givens is generally a cool customer when he’s dealing with the lowest of Kentucky lowlifes…but he pretty much loses his s--- whenever he has to deal with his dad.

Usually, Raylan’s anger takes the form of barely-concealed disdain and impatience. Last night, we finally saw Raylan let go of that anger and unleash what seemed like decades of rage and resentment on his father. And remember: we’ve seen Raylan actually shoot this man before! (Kudos to Timothy Olyphant for not going over the top in the scene where Raylan beats and chokes Arlo in his prison cell.)

Then again, Arlo is a particularly nasty piece of work isn’t he? The cruel joke throughout the first half of last night’s episode is that Arlo knew full well that Helen was dead — thank you, writers, for not having her death be a fake-out, which would’ve been tempting to do since we didn’t see her get at the end of last week — because of him. (Arlo was part of the group that ripped off Dickie, and Dickie came looking for Arlo to get revenge.) So what did Arlo decide to do? He made Raylan believe that Helen had been killed by the Bennetts in response for Raylan killing Coover.

I continue to be floored by the way the show has established a rich, decades-spanning family rivalry between the Givens and the Bennetts in a little more than 10 episodes. More importantly, the show has found a way to have that rivalry inform this season’s storylines and characters. (Boyd, for example, has been an ally or foe to Raylan, Arlo, Mags and Dickie.)

I’m also impressed by the restraint the writers have shown in handling their hero. Throughout season 1, Raylan earned a reputation for being extremely quick to shoot bad guys. (The first thing we saw him do was gun down a criminal in Miami.) The FX promos leading up to season 2 — especially the great “Star Wars”-themed spot — even seemed to play up that reputation. Instead, Raylan (having been scolded by superiors) has been a lot more reluctant to fire his weapon this year.

That was never more apparent than it was in this week’s “Reckoning.” After the death of Helen, surely Raylan (or Arlo or ANYBODY) would shoot someone in this hour. So it was a surprise to see that not a single shot was fired, though I’m making the bold prediction right now that WON’T be the case during next week’s finale.

Raylan, working in an unofficial capacity, used his best detective skills in this hour. He figured the Bennetts were involved, so he went to see Mags, who told him about the truce she and Helen had reached. She also told Raylan that he might find Dickie in Coover’s house, but instead he found Arlo, which led to another wonderfully-bitter scene between father and son. At this point, Arlo was still laying the guilt trip very heavily on Raylan, but we got a lot more insight into Raylan’s family history. Turns out that after Raylan’s mom died, her sister (Aunt Helen) came to take care of both Raylan and Arlo. More importantly, it was Helen who insisted that Raylan get the hell out of Harlan and make something of himself.

Arlo couldn’t help but get mouthy, so Raylan had him arrested…but not before getting some useful information about Dickie’s whereabouts. It was through this information (we assume) that Raylan learned about Jed, Dickie’s accomplice who had been shot by Helen before she died. Since Jed’s blood was at the crime scene, Dickie had convinced Mags and Doyle to pin Helen’s murder on him and kill Jed as he was “resisting arrest.”

And he would’ve gotten away with it too if it hadn’t been for an annoyingly-stubborn wife…and Raylan coolly walking up and foiling the plan. This scene was fantastic for so many reasons. As soon as Jed opened the door and learned that Doyle wanted to see him alone, Jed knew he was a dead man. When Jed’s wife wouldn’t let her husband go off by himself, I started to worry that Doyle was just going to kill Jed, his wife and their kids. I don’t even think I exhaled until Raylan showed up and sent a fuming Doyle away.

Raylan promised that he could protect Jed if he could deliver Dickie. Jed promised to testify, but claimed that there was no way to know in which of the Bennetts’ many cabins he was hiding.

Enter this season’s Black Pike storyline. Jed had also informed Raylan that Dickie came looking for Arlo after being ripped off by Boyd. So Raylan rolled up to Boyd’s house…only to find Boyd pointing his weapon on him. The one false note in this episode for me was the fact that Ava was also pointing her gun at Raylan. We get it: Ava’s with Boyd VERY comfortable being an outlaw’s woman now. I just thought it was over the top.

Anyway, Boyd informed Raylan that the Black Pike deal hadn’t been finalized, so Raylan convinced Arlo to back out of the deal that had made Mags an extremely rich woman. Mags didn’t want to do that, so she decided to sell her son out instead.

Raylan ordered Doyle to handcuff Dickie…and then knocked Doyle out so he and Dickie could talk alone in the woods. Now, we all knew that there was almost no way that Raylan was going to actually kill Dickie. However, what made this scene great is that, if Raylan wasn’t exactly planning on killing Dickie, he at least wanted to leave himself that option. (Why else would he knock Doyle out?) More importantly, Olyphant’s great performance as he told a whimpering Dickie what he’d taken away from him by killing Helen really made you believe that Raylan didn’t know what he wanted to do. In the end, Raylan arrested him and calmly attended Helen’s wedding.

Except that the calmness won’t last long now that badass Mags is back. I liked the little hint of foreshadowing when she offered Arlo some moonshine. By the end of the episode, she’d embraced a broken Dickie (awesome work from Jeremy Davies, by the way) back into the fold after she got him out of jail. The moment set up what will likely be an all-out war in the season finale.

If it even comes close to season 1’s classic finale “Bulletville”, it should be a doozy!

So what’d you think of this episode? What did you make of the quick, conspicuous shot of Raylan’s headstone at the Givens family plot? What will Loretta’s role be in the season finale? (There’s GOT to be a reason we checked in on the unhappy girl in the foster home this week, right?) Finally, who was that mysterious visitor that got Jed to retract his testimony against Dickie?