#i wanted to do this with raylan and boyd but i couldn’t find a good pic

[atomicradiogirl]

yes i know raylan is bisexual and tim isn’t even evil i don’t care

[manamania]

I already talked about this but I just wanna add something to Ava and Boyd being a couple. And get ready because this is LONG!

(Spoilers)

I was on board with them as a team throughout all of Justified… until the final season. I was sad when Ava broke things off with Boyd while in prison, though I completely understood why she did it. I couldn’t help but imagine how betrayed and lonely she felt when she heard Boyd was prioritizing other things above her release. I mean, imagine finding out the man who swears to do anything to protect you is now talking about “starting over.” I would feel so abandoned, especially if I was also trying to fight for my life every single day.

And then when she’s out and a CI for the Marshals, I was on edge and worried SICK about her. Because not only is she in fear of going back to prison and getting killed, she’s afraid that the man who claims to love her is going to kill her. And it isn’t even a paranoid thought; Boyd absolutely was going to kill her.

The episode where Boyd is all but dragging her out to the cabin and intimidating her, it confirmed to me that he was more like his brother than he thought. He might not have been smacking Ava around like Bowman, but he was threatening her and forcing her to do things she didn’t want to do, reminding her that he had power over her. The man she once swore was actually different was now starting to behave like her abuser. She realized she had traded being Bowman’s property for being Boyd’s property.

That alone adds a very sad element to their relationship. Because in the beginning, when they were living together, trying to get by honestly and do good, it showed they could’ve had a nice life together. Ava wouldn’t drink, Boyd wouldn’t do crime. He even expressed hesitation for getting her involved because he didn’t want her to get hurt. And I do believe he genuinely loved her and wanted to see her happy and safe. But his own ambition took over and eventually, she was at the top of his hit list (next to Raylan of course).

While I love Boyd as a character (I mean it’s Walton Goggins, it’s hard NOT to love him) I was disgusted by how he treated Ava towards the end. She betrayed him, yes, but her reasons were out of self preservation. She couldn’t trust him, because how could she? He hadn’t lived up to his promises. He was always putting his ambitions over her. And yeah, he’s allowed to want revenge against her for shooting him and taking his money, but dammit if he didn’t deserve that bullet and more.

And this might be reaching a little, but I was also extremely frustrated by Raylan’s apathetic attitude towards Ava, like he didn’t really appreciate the dangerous position she was in. It reminded me of how women are often left to fend for themselves when it comes to the dangerous men in their lives. That the justice system can’t really protect them. She tried to get away from both Raylan and Boyd because she knew they weren’t going to help her and she was RIGHT (save for the finale when Raylan allows her to go free).

When Ava drove off and disappeared to start over without Boyd or Raylan I was almost crying! Because after all the years of abuse, empty promises from all the men in her life (save for her uncle), taking the blame for others actions, and getting caught up in the wrong mess, she finally got what she wanted. A peaceful life of her own without anyone to answer to.

Ava Crowder is a survivor and she’ll always be my favorite.

[ablogthatishenceforthmine]

Thoughts on Ava’s Betrayal in “Trust”

In “The Promise,” when Boyd asks Ava why she betrayed him and attempted to kill him, she tells him that it was because it’s what she thought he would do. While I think this is true, I also believe there is more to it than that. Ava realized what Boyd hasn’t, what Boyd can’t: their relationship is beyond repair.

Ava is able to see and face this fact because her love for Boyd is much simpler,  and grounded than Boyd’s love for Ava is. Now, that is not to say that Ava’s love is greater than Boyd’s because it’s not. It just means that her love is less complicated and more straightforward than his.

 Boyd needs their love to be larger than life. He needs them to have this epic love story. He needs their relationship to be mythologized.

Boyd needs to romanticize himself so that he can be okay with what he does. After Raylan shoots him and he almost dies, Boyd is no longer comfortable with being so cold-blooded and senselessly violent. But throughout the series, he fights with that part of himself. He enforces a code on himself, although he seems to constantly change it. He still pursues a life in crime, still commits murder, and acts in other violent ways, but there are lines he says he won’t cross...until he does.

So, after his near death experience, in order to do these things, he needs build and believe in this mythology around himself. He will say and believes he’s an outlaw, not a criminal, showing how he needs their to be some romantic or mythic notion to his criminality. 

And that’s where Ava plays a large part. She and their love give him something larger to be a part of, something larger to fight for. He can use it  to tell himself that everything he does doesn’t come from pure, selfish greed; he’s doing it for Ava, for them and their love, for their future. He building instead of destroying.  That’s not to say that these goals are false. They’re not. And he repeatedly puts Ava before selfish greed, but their epic love story is part of the outlaw mythology that he needed to establish for himself.

Now that’s not to say that Boyd’s love for Ava isn’t real, or that he’s just using her. It’s that their relationship and his love for her provides him with something more than just love. If all Boyd wanted was someone to love in order to provide this function, he could have picked anyone. But he fell in love with Ava, and he makes that love central to how he views himself.

Ava and her love for Boyd doesn’t have the these complications. She doesn’t need Boyd for her sense of self, or to make her feel okay about who she is and what she does. She just loves him. Simple. But because Ava doesn’t need Boyd for her sense of self its easier for her to see that their relationship is beyond repair. Boyd can’t see it because he needs their love or his whole sense of self will fall apart. But because Ava’s love for Boyd is so grounded, she is able to see their relationship in season 6 for what it and and would it could become.

Also, Ava has been in an abusive relationship, with Boyd’s brother no less. Bowman is brought up a lot this season, more than usual. He is often brought up in relation or comparison to Boyd. The season keeps reminding us that Ava’s been in an abusive relationship before, and she got out of it by shooting and killing him.

It’s why she can see the signs of where their relationship is heading, and gets out, earlier than she did with Bowman. After finding out that she has been snitching to Raylan, Boyd tells her that he trusts her but, he doesn’t. He treats her differently. He snaps at her. He yells at her. He manhandles her. He treats her as a subordinate. He treats her in a way he never has before. 

No, none of this is anywhere close to Bowman’s treatment of Ava. But it’s definitely troubling and a deterioration of Boyd’s previous treatment of her. For all that Boyd is and all the terrible things he’s done, he was a good romantic partner to Ava. Hell, in seasons 2 to 4, they had one of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever seen on TV.  They were open, honest, and transparent with each other. Ava tells Boyd that she wants to be involved, even if its dangerous, and  that she doesn’t want him to hide anything from her. He respects her agency, and her wishes. He doesn’t hide anything from her, and involves her in his criminal enterprise. Compare this to Raylan and Winona’s relationship: Raylan tries to keep her sheltered from his job and the life he leads, and keeps things from her for own good. Boyd respects Ava’s decisions and her desire to be involved in his criminal enterprise. Ava and Boyd listened to each other and rarely every yelled at each other. They talked things out. They tried to always understand where the other was coming from, even if they didn’t agree with the others decisions. They trusted each other completely. Boyd valued Ava’s opinion. He conferred with her when making decisions.  In short, take out the crime and the amorality, they had one incredibly healthy relationship. So when you compare Boyd’s previous treatment of her to his treatment of her in Season 6, the direction its heading is pretty concerning.

And Ava, having been a bad relationship before, sees the signs even if there is no outright abuse. Now, I don’t think and am not saying Boyd would have abused Ava if they had escaped with the money together. I’m just saying it would have been a bad, unhealthy relationship. The trust between them has been  permanently broken. It is likely Boyd would continue to treat her in the same manner as described above. Further, for some time, Ava feared for her life from Boyd. She lived with the fear that he would kill her.  Even through it turned out that she was wrong, and that Boyd wouldn’t and didn’t kill for her being a snitch, that doesn’t magically undo the time she spent fearing her would. Living like that, in fear of her life from her fiance, it changed her and them. And they can’t ever go back. Their relationship cannot recover through everything it went through in seasons 5 and 6.

Ava is able to see this, while Boyd has deluded himself that their relationship is salvageable. This is why Ava betrays Boyd, why she realigns with Raylan, and then shoots and attempts to kill Boyd. She knows that they have is gone. Maybe not the love, but the good relationship, the future they dreamed of. And it’s what she thought he would have done: the selfish, cold-hearted move that prioritizes self-preservation. It is self-preservation because she could see where their future was headed when he couldn’t, and that place was nowhere good, even if they escaped with the $10 million together.

[goodlawman]

Why couldn't ya leave Harlan?

The only indication of his surprise came as the gentle fingers working the knot out of the rope hesitated, seconds slipping by as he realized the back office at Johnny’s was not as impervious to outsiders listening in as Boyd seemed to think. Once the knot was loose, Raylan slipped the rope from around her wrists and rose to his feet to move past the chair the good doctor occupied the last several hours. “I take it you’ve never heard the song. No one leaves Harlan alive,” he replied dryly as he indicated the basic meal sitting on the table for her. 

Despite the foul mood he’d spent most of the day in, he couldn’t fault the doctor her questions when she was neither the reason or cause to begin with. “Since you decided to take the scenic way through our quaint little county here, I’m sure you saw the state of some of our towns around here. Coal ain’t what it once was and big name mining finds a way to use a mountain up and then leave it and the town it employed in ruins. People do what they can to survive the bad times but only the fortunate ones that tucked money under the mattress get to leave and never look back.” Or they buried a suitcase with that same cash out in the garden until someone to dug it up to buy his way out of a problem of his own making. 

Arlo’s actions fell high on the list of unforgivable and yet Raylan still made his deal with the devil to save his father. No going back to the life he’d once wanted for himself, the gold star he’d once dreamed of wearing nothing more than a tarnished dream left behind with the child who once held onto it as some kind of savior. Boyd was right all those years ago when they worked in the mines, Raylan thinking he had a shot at escaping: neither one of us is getting out of here alive, Raylan Givens. I think you’ve always known that as well as I. 

“The rest of us don’t get that luxury and however you make your way, in the end Harlan gets you. That’s the only certainty you get.” 

[penniesforthestorm]

“But us sheep? We won’t never get struck out.”: ‘Justified’ Season 1, Episodes 10-12

The fuse has been lit, and the sparks are starting to fly, as we come to the final stretch of Justified’s premier season. For the finale, “Bulletville”, I’ll be doing a more conventional ‘review’, wrapping up some thoughts on the season as a whole. If you’re just joining us, my notes for the pilot, episodes 2-5, and 6-9 can be found by clicking the links. Read on for more...

Episode Ten: “The Hammer”

-We’re introduced to Boyd’s new church, as he lays out his philosophy to an aspiring acolyte, Bobby Joe: replacing addiction or other types of recidivism with a sense of purpose, which, y’know, isn’t the worst idea.

-Raylan arrives, and can’t resist poking the bear, in a mocking address to Boyd’s ‘congregation’. “...May this food provide them with the nourishment they need, but if it does not, may they find comfort in knowing that the US Marshals Service is offering $50,000 to any individual providing information that will put Boyd back in jail. We can make the check out to cash, or to Jesus.”

-Case of the week: eccentric federal judge Mike “The Hammer” Reardon (Stephen Root) requests Raylan for his personal security detail. Reardon’s penchant for strippers, whiskey, and ‘draconian’ sentencing add up to serious trouble.

-Boyd’s mission: wiping out meth in Harlan County (again, not the worst idea), which happens to be Papa Bo’s primary source of revenue. Cousin Johnny drops by for a revealing conversation--Johnny’s willing to turn on Bo if Boyd has a more successful scheme in mind. Boyd tells him, “Truth always sounds like lies to a sinner.”

-Raylan tracks down ‘Preacher Fandy’, whose church was bombed in the pilot, to see if he’ll testify against Boyd. He’s dropped the Rasta act, and notes that it’s been three months since the bombing.

-Raylan and Reardon have a long chat about regrets-- Reardon describes an early case he feels he was too lenient in, and brings up the subject of Raylan’s Miami adventure, asking, if Bucks had been unarmed, “Would it have changed what you did?”

-Boyd blows up a backwoods meth lab, and, to his dismay, is informed that there was someone inside.

-The Reardon adventure reaches a crisis: Virgil Corum, released after an eight-year stint for possession, corners the judge at his favorite bar. Reardon clumsily fires on him, but Raylan stops him. The judge, indignant, protests, “I thought you guys shoot people all the time! That’s why I picked you!”

-Raylan visits “Fandy”/Otis again, and realizes he’s misread the situation: Otis didn’t identify Boyd because he genuinely didn’t see him. He offers to testify if Raylan will show him a picture of Boyd, but Raylan, wised up in light of his other escapades, tells him, “I’m not that guy.”

Episode Eleven: “Veterans”

-Raylan and the marshals raid Boyd’s camp, and Raylan catches Dewey Crowe, struggling to escape his own tent. The casualty in Boyd’s meth-lab bombing was a CI for the State Police.

-Raylan and Art question Boyd, and Art is infuriated by Boyd’s use of the Bible to justify his own ends, sending him on his way with some hard words about “the hand of righteousness.”

-Nicky, one of the cookers from the lab, comes to Bo and Johnny Crowder asking for protection. Raylan visits Sheriff Mosley in prison, and finds out that Arlo took over Bo’s collections after Bo’s arrest, but couldn’t maintain control.

-Bo visits Boyd, and attempts to bring him to heel with an “offering” of the protection money he’s collected. Boyd doesn’t exactly turn him down, but neither is he willing to follow orders outright.

-Raylan and Art, attempting to track down Arlo, have a chat with Aunt Helen.  She sends them off to the VFW, but, as neither Raylan nor Art are veterans, they can’t enter. Finally, Art calls Deputy Tim, and the three of them try to convince Arlo to give them info on Bo, but Arlo and Raylan’s mutual animosity gets in the way. Outside, a call comes from the police that the two survivors of the lab explosion are no longer, uh, surviving...

-Next day, Arlo meets with Bo. Arlo pleads his case-- the “young punks” didn’t respect him. Bo counters that he placed his trust in Arlo precisely because of his age (as an example, he mentions that Johnny would’ve had ambitions ‘above his station’), and cautions Arlo to come up with the money he lost.

-1st appearance of ‘Lemuel’ and his store of various mechanical wonders, visited by Boyd.

-Raylan encounters Dewey Crowe hitchhiking, and Dewey explains that he was kicked out of Boyd’s ‘flock’ for some... unfortunate personal proclivities, much to Raylan’s derision. Raylan, in a flash of inspiration, ‘deputizes’ Dewey into the Marshal Service, and Dewey instantly explains why Boyd targeted that particular lab- on behalf of his new convert Bobby.

-The church camp is raided again, and Raylan and Boyd have another tete-a-tete. Boyd drops the perturbing detail that Arlo worked closely with Bowman Crowder, and Ava may have known about it.

-Raylan finds Ava, who doesn’t want to hear his plea for her safety. After a confrontation with one of Bo’s goons, a creep named Hessler, Raylan packs Ava into his car and calls Winona, who somewhat bemusedly agrees to host her for the night.

-Arlo and Helen chase off an intruder, blasting away side-by-side. Meanwhile, a contrite Dewey begs to return to Boyd’s flock. Boyd raises his pistol, but decides on mercy instead, telling Dewey to scram. Bobby shows up at the Marshals’ Office, taking the fall for the lab explosion.

Episode Twelve: “Fathers and Sons”

-Arlo shows up, claiming willingness to sing for the marshals, but it’s an open question whether it’ll be the tune they want to hear.

-Bo Crowder meets with Gio, the cartel honcho, in Miami, arranging for a shipment of ephedrine to be delivered by Gio’s assistants, Ernesto and Pilar. In passing, Gio mentions Raylan, hinting that he still wants revenge for Tommy Bucks.

-A pair of strained conversations: Ava at Winona’s, and Arlo at Raylan and Art’s office. Ava is suspicious of Winona’s friendliness toward Raylan; Winona attempts to toss it off. “It’s kinda hard to stay mad at Raylan,” she says. Ava responds, “I wouldn’t know; I’m just getting started.” Arlo refuses to wear a wire to meet with Bo, and he and Raylan goad each other almost to blows.

-Bo, Johnny, Hessler, and a chemist meet with a realtor to rent out space for processing Gio’s ephedrine. During a discussion of the details, Bo sends Johnny away.

-That evening, Ava returns home to find Hessler and his buddies drinking beer in her living room, seemingly on Bo’s orders, and she flees. Winona drops by Raylan’s motel room, and things quickly get intimate. As Winona leaves, we see Ava parked outside. The next morning, Ava visits Aunt Helen, and asks if she can get her hands on a gun.

-Bo and Boyd attend an actual church, and Boyd ‘witnesses’ to the congregation, in a wild, amped-up screed. He proclaims his allegiance to his “one true father”, i.e., The Man Upstairs, grinning pointedly at his earthly patriarch. Outside, Bo gives him a stern serving of ‘Crowder gospel’, boiling down to ‘this joke isn’t funny anymore’.

-Trouble at the VFW: a young soldier about to be redeployed to Afghanistan is threatening to blow the place with a live grenade. Arlo, cool as a cucumber, sits with him and hears his story: He received the epithet “Lucky” after the rest of his unit was killed in Iraq while he was sidelined by an asthma attack. Arlo responds with another parable from the Book of Givens (Old Testament): in Vietnam, his unit was ambushed, and he managed to hide while the rest were dragged off. The story is false, but the lesson is true-- Lucky’s crisis is “why me?”, and Arlo’s answer is “why not you?” Outside, Arlo tells Raylan he’ll wear the wire.

-Ava storms into Johnny’s bar, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, to give Bo a piece of her mind. Johnny attempts to intervene, but she waves him off. Bo tells her he doesn’t want to kill her, but warns her to get out of Kentucky. She tells Bo she’s already shot one Crowder.

-Arlo meets with Bo, wired, but with a trick up his sleeve: he flashes Bo a message that their conversation is being monitored, and hands him an envelope stuffed with newspaper clippings, instead of the $20,000 the marshals gave him as a peace offering. Bo sets up another meeting and mentions that if Arlo ‘sees Raylan’, tell him to get Ava under control. Raylan goes riding off, but Ava has dug herself in.

-Bo’s ephedrine shipment is making its way into town, but gets held up by Boyd, who has a brand-new rocket launcher and seems only too delighted to use it.

So, the table’s all set for the finale. (It seems uniquely apt that my thoughts on said finale will be posted on Good Friday.) See you around....

[goodlawman]

Who was the last person you shot and what did they do to deserve it?

The display read “Anonymous” when the call came in and against instinct he answered, the voice on the other end unfamiliar and eerily calm. Raylan caught the look Boyd threw his way, hesitating at his truck’s driver side door. A shake of the head before Raylan slowly turned, scanning faces in the crowd. Watching for someone acting odd or unnatural, waiting for their answer. 

“Maybe you already know and just want me to implicate myself,” Raylan said slowly, frustration growing when he couldn’t pick out one damn person. “The last person I shot made it clear they wouldn’t stop coming for our territory so I stopped them before they got a chance.” He glanced back at Boyd, his old friend watching him silently, no doubt trying to piece together the other side of the conversation from what he could hear. “Good luck finding out which mine the body’s in.”