As I was watching tonight’s Justified, one thought kept rolling through my head: where’s the pineapple?
If you got that joke, you probably recognized Psych star Maggie Lawson on the show this week, playing the not-so-innocent nurse Layla. She continued this season’s trend of borrowing regulars from other shows for guests (following Dexter star Desmond Harrington in the season premiere). Her organ-harvesting relationship with creepy prison nurse Lance (Clayne Crawford) was so very un-Juliet O’Hara that it was fun to watch, even if she did ultimately make the show’s stupidest mistake: thinking she could out-draw Raylan Givens. Even loaded with enough tranquilizers to knock out a wild animal, Raylan is still the quickest shot. After Layla put down Lance, Raylan put a bullet into her.
But there was plenty going on this week, all of it with a certain extra verve that can only come from Elmore Leonard himself (who got a co-story credit this week). Rachel partnered up with Raylan again, which gave us another opportunity to appreciate how well she balances him out, and how Erica Tazel has made Rachel such a strong supporting character over these two-plus seasons. The two of them again made an interesting team as they tried to reel in (and calm down) Dewey Crowe, and get a handle on what Lance and Layla were up to.
And as if being dumped in a bathtub wasn’t enough, Raylan got home to find out that Winona had left him, again. Now, I sincerely doubt that this is the last we’ve seen of the ex-Mrs. Givens (since she’s still very pregnant and Natalie Zea is still a show regular), but I can’t say I’m surprised or upset. I never enjoyed Raylan and Winona together, and the two of them have been so on-again, off-again that I never thought they’d live happily ever after. She’s never really had much of a clue what she wants, and I’m not sure he does either. If it were up to me, I’d love to see them stay apart, but as I don’t see Raylan being an absent father (given how much his own dad left to be desired), I’m scratching my head wondering what the best way to handle this subplot is.
Meanwhile, Boyd finally got a face-to-face with Quarles, and how great was that scene? We’ve seen everybody else kind of cower in front of the new bad guy, but not Boyd. If he can handle looking Raylan in the eye, of course he can handle Quarles. I think the only person who didn’t expect that was Quarles himself, and he’s probably rethinking how he plans on dealing with Boyd in the future. It was a perfectly acted conversation, if you could call it that, between Walton Goggins and Neal McDonough, and it left me wanting more.
This whole episode had me excited for where the show is going to go this season. It told a great self-contained story as far as Dewey and the alleged kidney thefts went, but it also dangled more of the ongoing conflicts in front of me, and it had me interested in both. Justified has always been able to play both the short and the long games simultaneously, which is not something many shows can do. Now let’s see where it goes next.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Feb 15, 2012 @ 09:02 EST5EDT
