Raylan Givens fessed up to a huge secret in last week’s Justified. What happened in the follow-up episode, “Kill the Messenger”? Let’s review and find out.
LOSER: Raylan’s candor
FX
When last we left Justified, as alluded to above, Raylan confessed to Art that he was the one behind Nicky Augustine’s untimely removal from our mortal coil. We now find Art consoling himself with a drink, only for Raylan to show his face and immediately receive a swift punch to the face. He did not take it so well.
It turns out to be the worst kept secret in the office given Raylan’s prominent shiner and Art’s suddenly injured hand.
LOSER: The Crowes’ driving ability
Allison shows up to the Crowes’ new house to check in on Kendall. He’s no longer moving to Miami with his sister Wendy but going to stay in some shockingly nice house with a presumably forged rental agreement.
Unfortunately, after Allison leaves the check-in, she’s run off the road by the increasingly unstable Danny Crowe, leading to an entertaining moment when Raylan and Allison catch each other all beaten up in the face at the Marshals office.
Raylan immediately dispatches himself to take care of the Danny Crowe problem with Rachel insisting on backing him up on the trip.
LOSER: Ava’s new jail stint
Ava’s been moved to the state penitentiary and, fortunately for her, the lawyer whom she and Boyd made put on headphones isn’t as incompetent as he seemed. He knows that Ava’s presumed shanking of the corrections officer Ficus was a fix and gets to work on digging up any other previous situations that must have occurred.
Ava makes friends with another white girl named Penny who tells her not to deny the claims that she shiv’d the guard and to keep her mouth shut. Some black girls come and make some mildly lesbianic threats until some chick named Gretchen Swift comes in, declaring that her brother was paid to have her look after Ava. But then things go south when the girl says that Boyd is a “race traitor” and they then beat her up and cut her hair off because I guess that’s what chicks do in prison.
WINNER: Dewey Crowe’s sudden balls
FX
Dewey and Danny Crowe go into Boyd’s bar to attempt to coerce the bartender to help them get the money Boyd screwed Dewey out of for Audrey’s back. But the situation turns to shit real fast when Dewey Crowe opts to pull out a gun to try to tackle his own brand of intimidation. Unfortunately, the bartender proves exceedingly competent and almost fights them both off before eventually being taken down by the numbers game.
Danny decides that the right move is to take the bartender hostage and ransom him back to Boyd for the money owed. That’ll go over well.
WINNER: Boyd and Wynn’s new business partner
In an effort to get some sweet heroin from Mexico, Picker sets up Boyd and Winn with a Korean by way of Mexico named Mr. Yun. He’s well put together in one of those vaguely intimidating ways and even allows the cash up front portion of the deal to be waived because he’s that confident in his abilities to make the deal work. And if things go south, the Mexicans will be right on hand to chop some heads off so that’s helpful backup.
WINNER: Chinese Easter
Raylan and Rachel go on a search for Danny Crowe, almost getting jumped by him and Dewey in the process at the house the Crowes took over to house Kendall. Some guy named Mike is the owner of the house and the local hardware store which Raylan and Rachel end up going to, only to find Kendall working the counter because he’s “off for some multicultural bullshit.” This kid is just the best.
Raylan assumes they must have killed Mike but instead find him in the back of the store. It turns out that he offered up the house to Wendy when she said that she was living in a car and needed to rent the place. But then the other Crowes came into the picture after the rental agreement was signed and he basically got had.
Raylan tells Mike he needs to tell the Crowes they can’t rent the place and Mike then reveals that he also rented out a cabin to them.
WINNER: Not having a safe word
Raylan and Rachel track Danny and Dewey to the cabin and find them holding the bartender, Carl, hostage. But Carl says it’s just some sex games gone awry — he would rather just be released and go handle the business with Boyd’s help instead.
Danny and Dewey come back and Daryl blames Danny for everything going to shit, right as Boyd and crew come for a chat with the crew. But Boyd didn’t necessarily come for vengeance, he wants to offer the Crowes an opportunity to make some money instead.
Boyd then rolls into his former Aryan friend Gunner, the one who set up Ava with the help of his sister, and, with the Crowes — a vicious Daryl in particular — beats Gunner down and tells him that if anything bad happens to Ava again, it’s his ass.
LOSER: Boyd’s deal with Hot Rod
FX
Hot Rod survived his encounter with the Wood brothers and Johnny last week and calls Boyd under the auspice of not being induced to do so at gunpoint. Hot Rod tries to subtly warn Boyd that trouble’s afoot…they’re supposed to have the meet in Mexico for Hot Rod to smuggle the heroin but cousin Johnny probably has some plans to make the situation a mess. So Hot Rod tells Boyd that it’ll go as smoothly as the last time they had a deal in season two, when Boyd robbed Hot Rod. Boyd doesn’t seem to know what to make of it but it seems like a safe assumption that Boyd will put two and two together in time.
And time turns out to be fast! Boyd returns to the Crowes as they’re counting their skinhead-taken loot and Boyd offers Daryl another job: Help him kill his cousin Johnny.
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Despite an extra ten minutes of length tacked onto the episode, “Kill the Messenger” was about as fast paced as it can get. I particularly love the episode of Justified when all of the plotlines come together in one beautiful orgy of chaos and this episode was no exception.
The best news of all is that we finally get why Daryl Crowe is such a threat; his taste for violence really shined through in his beatdown of Gunner and that, combined with his fairly competent intellect, might make him a viable threat a couple episodes down the pike.
For now, though, this is Boyd’s show to carry. The heroin deal goes down when Justified returns in two weeks and it looks like it all hits the fan for him and cousin Johnny.
The episode gets four and a half Korean slaves in Mexico from me. This show is clicking on all cylinders now and we’ve got a whole lot of season left.
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