#will 'i can excuse murder but i draw the line at being made an accessory' williams

[doctors-star]

cowboys? cowboy content?? our sweet sweet traumatised cowfolks? pray tell what you have dreamt up for them

yeehaw

She sits very still and perspires gently, hands folded neatly in her lap. The clock ticks methodically on the mantelpiece, polished to a houseproud shine and sitting alone on a doily like a butte in the desert; in the visions she and her brother had shared, there had been more indulgences in her home than just the one brass carriage clock, the good kid gloves and the polished Windsor chairs, but that could all wait. Her husband, she had found, was not the type of man to make a great many purchases, and whilst he is unwell she can hardly go about spending money on anything but food and medicine for her poor darling.

There is a cough in the other room, harsh and bloody, and she shifts slightly on her chair. There will be time for that later, anyhow.

For now, she is restricted to sitting here in the front room with her knees together and hair neatly pinned away at the base of her skull as she waits in the oppressive, dusty heat. The wind is blowing from the southwest, carrying desert sands up with it towards the prairie, so there’s no chance of opening a window today to shift the air; in between the resolute, monotonous ticking, she can hear sand tapping at the glass and at the boards like a thousand ghostly fingertips, scratching to get in. But her house is one of neatness and cleanliness and pristine, precise pride, so there shall be no entrance for any ghosts or spirits here.

Noelle salts and burns her choices, careful lest they rise. Danser Town will be no different.

The door behind her opens with cautious, quiet motions - she has become used to the sound over the long weeks of her husband’s terrible illness as she sweeps from room to room without disrupting the patient. She turns and stands in one quick, nervous motion, but she has been sat still too long: it is less pretence than she would like that she sways dizzily, vision spotting for a moment. There is a careful hand under her elbow, but no more, and when she leans into it a little another hand catches her other shoulder to hold her steadily at arm’s length. Noelle recovers herself, eyelashes fluttering, and reaches up a hand to fan at her face. “My, this heat! I do apologise.”

“Indeed,” Williams says tightly, hands lingering about her arms disinterestedly to ensure she keeps her feet. “Will you sit? Or may I fetch you some water?”

“Please,” she says, gesturing through to the kitchen. Williams, politely, waits for her to enter first, to seat herself at the table in one of the good Windsor chairs, to direct him in the pouring of a glass of sharp, flavourful lemonade. He declines to take one himself. “But you must tell me,” she says, sipping her cool drink and watching him through her lashes, “how does my dear Tobias?”

Williams shifts his weight, resting his hands on the back of the seat he also declined to take. “Ma’am, you know I am not a doctor,” he prefaces carefully.

She does know. She would not have let this man cross her threshold otherwise.

He drums his fingers on the wooden hoop and she braces to respond to bad news. “Your husband is getting worse,” he says firmly, eyes fixed on his own hands, “and there is nothing I can do - ah, nothing I can give him that will make him better.”

Her little gasp echoes in the quiet. Noelle pats at her cheeks with a handkerchief; Williams, politely, looks away. “Is there really nothing you can do?” she presses, playing the dutiful, caring wife almost by rote, now. “You are sure - there is no medicine, no-”

Williams’ gaze snaps to her. It is not so much the spitting fury in his glare that makes her recoil, fingers floating defensively to her sternum, as surprise at it coming from this corner. Will Williams has always been small and polite and harmless, prone to tipping his hat politely at people, and listening to old folks gripe about aches and pains, and crouching on rocks in the river for hours to look at plants and fish and things nobody else cares for. She sees him most often swept up in the dust cloud which follows Holden, Morin and McPherson as they roll all unruly about the town, and maybe it’s only in comparison to them that Williams looks so deeply unthreatening - but the man lets little children push him around, so. She does not think it unreasonable that she had not expected his ire.

“I can advise him to take some morphine for the pain,” Williams says, very slow and measured in a voice like banked coals, “and to watch what he eats and drinks. More than that, for either of you, I will not do.”

Noelle feels abruptly very cold. There is no sound but the distant ticking, an occasional violent cough from the back room, and the sand tapping at the glass like so many revenant ghosts.

Dying does not make a universal sound for all folks. You can’t listen out for it, no matter what some preachers might say; ain’t no choirs of angels, no whispering ghosts, no knocking at your chamber door. People die in so many ways, see, and it takes them all different. Sometimes death sounds like gunshots and screaming, sometimes like long, drawn-out silence and rattling, bloody coughs.

And sometimes, death sounds like watch what he eats and drinks. More than that I will not do.

Noelle sits frozen, her fate hanging from threads in this strange, nervous man’s thin fingers. Williams glances at the window, and sighs deeply. He steps around and folds himself into the chair, looking much smaller now he no longer looms over her like some great spindly crow. “Tommy reckoned I never should have come out to attend Mr Lloyd,” he says conversationally, turning in his seat to pour himself a glass of lemonade which he places on the table but does not drink. “He doesn’t like your husband awful much. Some daughter of a friend of an aunt, or something, used to char here before you married, fixing meals and scrubbing the boards and such. Mr Lloyd, he - well. I understand that her sweetheart was the doting type, see, so it shook out in the end, only they had to get her out to his place in the city awful fast and they married in an embarrassing hurry. People’ll always whisper that that baby doesn’t look like his pa, though.” Will pushes his glasses up his nose and leans back in his chair to fold his arms and watch her carefully, trying to work out if she had known that. If that, or something like it, was what excused the little labelless bottle behind the tin of tea. Noelle schools her features and attempts to look more unsurprised than she is. She would have expected something poor of Tobias, but nothing quite like this. She had known no specifics. Williams raises an eyebrow briefly at whatever he finds in her face. “Tommy only let me come see Mr Lloyd because I said I’d look in on you and make sure he wasn’t knocking you about any.”

Noelle raises an eyebrow in challenge, sipping her drink. “Do you worry about that, Mr Williams?”

He doesn’t cower or dodge her gaze, which she doesn’t quite expect. “I worry about plenty, Mrs Lloyd,” he says calmly, “but I don’t worry so much about you getting into a situation you couldn’t get out of on your own. Incidentally, Tommy’s gonna swing by and pick me up in-” he leans the chair back on two legs to peer at the carriage clock in the other room “-well, any time from now, since he’s late.”

Noelle hides a smirk in her lemonade. She must admit to quite liking this side of the town’s nervous naturalist; Holden would likely skin poor Williams if he knew what Will knew, and what Will was doing anyway. It was smart of him to bring a buddy, but it meant that he had known even before today what she was doing, and he had come anyway. “You’ve awful confidence in me,” she says, batting her eyelashes to see what he’d do, “for a little lady on her own. Why, as my husband is ill, I haven’t even got a strong man to take care of me.”

Will’s brow furrows slightly in apparent confusion in response to her slight flirtation. “No, you don’t,” he says, as though unsure what that should have to do with anything.

The surprise of it makes her laugh despite herself, though that does seem to worry Williams a little. He keeps turning the lemonade, undrunk, between his fingertips, making it rattle slightly on the table, and his eyes frequently dart to the clock on the mantelpiece to note how late his friend is. It loosens her tongue somewhat; Noelle is so frequently entirely honest with people, and it is oddly refreshing to stop talking in double meanings and half truths. She wants him to stay longer in this oddly honest space, where she had never really imagined herself being, and tell him so.

It reminds her of talking to Jonah, a bit, even though a man more unlike Jonah than Will Williams there never has been. Everything seems to remind her of Jonah, now that he’s gone.

“I had thought, once,” she says, watching his face but keeping her tone light, “that when a widow I might marry you.”

As expected, Williams looks poleaxed - quite blindsided by the idea. “I - don’t think you would have,” he says stiltedly.

She waves a hand. “Oh, not now, obviously.” She couldn’t possibly marry a man who has something to hold over her. Noelle could rule Will well enough, but - there was that flash of rage at being made her alibi, her dupe, and he could always ruin her.

“No, I mean - I wouldn’t have-” Will winces and tilts his head, uncomfortable. “I’m not - the marrying type, I think.”

Oh. Noelle shrugs; she could have made that work, too, but it would have been a terrible effort to drag him to the altar, and likely not worth it. “And your Tommy Morin - is he the marryin’ type?” she says, laying the implication on thick. “Or is it Finn Holden? McPherson, now, he’d be disappointing an awful lot of ladies, but…”

The blush spreads from his cheeks at speed, turning his fair northern complexion blotchy and red. “All my friends are morons,” he tells her flatly. “Would you marry ‘em?”

Noelle tilts her head to concede the point. “Naw, you always were the best prospect of the bunch.” Will goes, if possible, yet redder. He looks so like a kid, then, that she cannot help it; he reminds her, again, of Jonah when they were younger and running cons smaller than this one just to eat and even though they were the same age they had ever tried to protect one another. She wants to protect Will, now. “I won’t tell anybody,” she says seriously, and his eyes flick to her and squint, examining her face for sincerity. “You can - whatever you do about Mr Lloyd’s...condition. I won’t tell anybody.”

He tilts his head slightly, like he’s listening for something. “Why not?” he says cautiously.

Noelle turns her gaze on the table and her neatly folded hands there. Sometimes she tries so hard to look respectable she worries that it’s sinking in, making her really into those women who sit diminished and demure at their husband’s pleasure.

Tobias would shoot Will himself, probably, without even troubling the sheriff.

“Because I reckon a person ought to be punished for what they’ve done, not what they are,” she says eventually. “That seems...fair.”

Will nods sharply. “Suits me,” he says, a little too quickly. “But I’m not going to tell anybody about your husband, either.” Now it is her turn to cock her head at him, mirroring like a sharp-faced eagle competing for prey. Will shifts his glass again. “I don’t figure that many people are going to miss him awful much,” he says thoughtfully. “As, as long as no-one else falls ill like him, then, I suppose that’s all right. And - sometimes - people do bad things to bad people. Maybe, maybe he dies, and another aunt’s friend’s daughter has only the kids she wants to have with the man she wants to marry. Maybe you live unbruised. Maybe - maybe you pay your bills at the general store quicker than he did and German can afford credit for a starving family whose kids survive the winter.” Will throws up his hands. “I don’t know.”

Noelle looks at him for a long moment. “But you want to believe it.”

He sighs massively and leans forward to prop his elbows on the table and bury his face in his hands. “God,” Will says, the word muffled and cracking down the middle, “yes, I want to believe that. Of course I want to believe that.”

Noelle reaches out carefully and places her fingers on his forearm lightly. “Will, I think - whatever you’ve done, I-”

He leans back, her fingers falling away as he scrubs at his face. “I haven’t done anything,” he says sharply. “That was - that was someone else, and long ago, and - nothing.”

She doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t even get the sense that he believes himself; rather, that this is something he is attempting to persuade himself is true. But over the sound of the sand on the glass there comes the sound of boots and spurs, and Tommy Morin hollering for Will to come out quicksmart, for something’s gone terribly wrong and his expertise is required, so she never gets to ask. She supposes he wouldn’t tell her anyhow.

Will scrambles to his feet, collecting up his leather bag with a sigh of worried resignation. “Well, ma’am, that’s me,” he says, abruptly all polite once more, and Noelle almost - misses him. The other him, who had been honest and angry and not the moral stickler he had been pretending to be. “I don’t suppose you’ll need me out here much longer.”

“I suppose not,” she agrees, and passes him his hat. What she’ll do then, well… But certainly, Tobias Lloyd does not have long left to keep troubling Will Williams.

He turns to the door, but the wind suddenly picks up; the whole house is briefly sandblasted, the shingles drumming with the vicious, sharp stones, and Tommy quits his yelling to cough and spit. Williams makes a face which he cannot quite help, and Noelle must take pity.

“Here,” she says, passing him the glass of lemonade he had abandoned on the table. “Seems you might want it out there.”

He glances between her face and the glass and back again. And then, carefully, reaches out to accept it. Will drinks quickly, watching her face, and passes the glass back. “Thank you,” he says softly, and for a long moment Noelle wants to thank him too - for listening, and for believing that she might have the right of it, and for drinking her lemonade.

But then he pulls his neckerchief up over his nose and mouth and departs into the sandstorm, Tommy sparing only a moment to tip his hat at her before grabbing Will’s elbow and continuing to yell through the wind about something having happened to Finn’s wrist during undisclosed activities and now needing bandaging. Will twists over one shoulder to offer her an amused, exhausted look and a brief wave as he is hauled away into the dust, and Noelle stays standing in the doorway to watch them go with sand swirling around her ankles and encroaching into her pristine, proper home.

She leaves the door open a while. She’s never really wanted to be upstanding.

[amerie-wadia]

balancing on breaking branches: part two

jj goes to the water when the world begins to spiral around him. always has → read on ao3

a/n: wrote this a few days ago and waited to post bc i wanted to write more but i like how this turned out and i don’t want to write a bunch of nothing just to meet the word count of the first part. 

If JJ had a boat life would be a lot easier. If he had a boat he’d be setting sail and cruising straight down the Atlantic Coast, swerving a hard right near Miami, and finally touching down in the Yucatan Peninsula. He could swim and surf and eat lobsters until his hair went grey and his back broke down. He could have a houseboat with a slide and sleep with all the windows open so he could hear the crickets and the crashing waves along the rocks and sand.

If he had a boat he could sail away before Pope found him.

But JJ didn’t have a boat. Nor did he have anywhere to hide. He wasn’t dumb enough to go right back to Rixton’s Cove, but he was dumb enough to go to the Chateau. Well, it wasn’t a dumb idea at the time. The HMS Pogue was at the Chateau and JJ was in need of a boat. A plus B and all that.

The real difference was: Pope had a car. So while JJ ran and tried as hard as he could to think about Yucatan and lobsters and stars, Pope had managed to drive all over town and still made it to the Chateau before JJ. And JJ would’ve turned around if it wasn’t so dark outside and Pope’s car hadn’t been turned off.

“JJ? What the hell, man?”

Pope’s voice shocked him and he jumped, instinctively clenching his fists out in front of his chest in case the noise was Barry coming to pay his respects. Or Luke.

It was Pope. Standing, back hunched slightly in the worried way that Pope often stood, with his hands lowered and eyes kind and wide. And JJ had the biggest fucking crush on him.

“You can’t just walk away when someone’s talking to you,” Pope continued but JJ was furious and still shocked and he shoved past Pope hard enough that Pope stumbled. To JJ’s dismay, he followed JJ through the yard and around back. “JJ!”

“Shut up, Pope.”

He marched up the steps of the porch, up and down around the police tape, and into the house. Pope followed him more gracefully as JJ took the HMS Pogue keys from the kitchen counter bowl where they always sat.

“Taking evidence from a crime scene, that’s really smart.”

“This isn’t a fucking crime scene.”

“This isn’t a crime scene? Look around, dude!”

JJ tried to shove past Pope but he stood firm in the doorway with his arms outstretched. JJ wanted to shove him as hard as he could but he also refused to push very hard. Not when one wrong blow could send everything crumbling down.

“The cops are gonna come looking for you if you take that? And what then, JJ, do you want to be considered an accessory for murder?”

“John B didn’t fucking murder anyone.”

“I’m being serious right now. Do you really want to give the cops more reason to put you in jail?”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Well I do.”

JJ froze, giving up on shoving around Pope and instead he huffed and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Move.”

“Only if you’ll talk about what you said to me.”

“Pope, no—”

“Yes, we’re going to talk about this.”

“God, Pope. Just fucking move!” JJ threw his hands too hard, palms out, and shoved Pope backward. Pope’s grip on the doorframe was stiff and he definitely stumbled but he didn’t fall to the ground like JJ was expecting. His eyes were wide and JJ couldn’t tell if it was fear or just the darkness of the room. “Move!”

JJ knew he was being childish, knew he sounded childish as his voice began to tremble with rage and exhaustion and a bit of desperation. Pope shook his head.

“Let’s talk. That’s all I want to do and then you can sail away to Yucatan or wherever the hell you were planning on going.”

Pope let a hand fall from the doorframe and motioned for JJ to sit down on the couch.

“Wasn’t gonna go to Yucatan,” JJ mumbled as he took a seat. Pope didn’t turn on any of the lights but the moon glowed through the windows just brightly enough that JJ could see the curves of Pope’s face. It was private but JJ knew he was still seen and he wished the moon would just shut up.

“You like me, huh?”

It sounded so innocent when Pope said it that way. Maybe it had always been innocent. But the thought of Pope knowing, the thought of Kie knowing, felt violating and raw and guilty.

“Maybe.”

“It was really brave of you to tell me.”

“Shut up, Pope.”

“I mean it.”

“Shut up, Pope!” JJ yelled, angry that Pope wasn’t angry. Angry that Pope wasn’t hitting him or kissing him. Angry that this revelation seemed to have such a tiny effect on Pope while simultaneously tearing JJ apart. “If I could take it back I would, but I can’t. It was stupid and we can just forget that it ever happened.”

“It wasn’t stupid.”

This conversation was stupid and it was too dark to see Pope’s facial expressions and JJ knew if he got up now Pope couldn’t stop him.

“Can we just forget about it?” JJ asked instead because he most likely couldn’t make it to Yucatan in the HMS Pogue and in a few years all his debts might be paid off and maybe he could actually just buy a plane ticket.

“I don’t want to forget about it,” Pope said, quietly and confidently and in a voice so raw it gave JJ goosebumps. JJ knew it wasn’t what he wanted, knew Pope was just being a good friend. But Pope’s voice sounded different, sounded gentler and it hurt.

“What do you want, then? To sit in the dark and talk about our feelings?”

“Well—”

“It was a rhetorical question, Pope!”

“No, JJ. That is what we should do because John B is dead and you haven’t talked to your friends in two months. We’ve been so worried about you man, about your dad. And then when we finally do talk again you tell me that you’re basically starving and that you like me and now you just want to run away again and ignore us? Not this time.”

Pope’s hand raised into the air and then came crashing down in the space between JJ’s fingers and it was strong and gentle and made JJ’s skin feel like it was on fire. Pope squeezed, drawing their fingers together so tightly that JJ knew he couldn’t just run away. Pope had to know the effect that it had on JJ.

“Please, don’t cut me out again.” Pope’s voice was shaky and it sounded slushy and JJ momentarily forget how to turn inhales in exhales and by the time he could manage to get a full breath in, he realized he was actually going to have to be honest with Pope.

JJ was really good at partial truths. He was a good liar because there was always a tinge of truth—hidden between the lines somewhere—in all the lies he told. He had spent his whole life making excuses and crafting stories that were so close to the truth that no one could see where the blurred lines were drawn in the sand.

But Pope was asking for the truth. The real, whole, honest truth. And JJ didn’t know how on earth to be truthful.

“What else do you want me say?” he asked because there were a million things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t say too much and ruin everything more than he already had. Omitting the truth was different than lying, it wasn’t pretend. It was just strategic.

“How, uh, long?”

“A long time, Pope.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

The darkness coated some of the awkwardness but the air between them was heavy and JJ wished he had something to fiddle with.

“Like, for real?” Pope asked suddenly, maybe even hopefully. JJ wished Pope would stop asking because JJ had already told him he liked him, he didn’t need to be teased over and over again.

“No, Pope, I’m just fucking with you. Yeah, I’ve had a crush on your since I met you and it’s super embarrassing and I really don’t want to keep talking about it, okay?”

“A crush?”

JJ wanted to scream but he didn’t have the energy.

“Yeah, a crush.”

Pope’s hand was still tethered to his own the touch was a bit too much right now. Pope’s grip loosened and suddenly he drew his hand back. Maybe he was thinking about all the times JJ had stood too close or texted him too late into the night. Maybe he was thinking about—

Lips.

Lips pressing against JJ’s own that must belong to Pope because there was nobody else in the room. Lips that engulfed his own, lips that JJ had been dreaming about for years suddenly kissing him. Pope was kissing him.

Hands.

Hands whose fingertips brushed around his ears and through his hair and held his head steady. Hands that could just as easily be hitting him but held him so gently.

JJ’s breath hitched and he relaxed his lips, pressing them against Pope’s and drew his own hands around Pope’s neck to cradle the back of his head.

The moment was gone just as quickly as it had come and Pope’s eyes were the only light in the room but JJ didn’t need to see Pope to know he had never looked more handsome.

“So much for talking,” JJ teased, breathless and flustered but feeling the first shred of confidence he had all night. “What was that?”

“That was a kiss, JJ.”

JJ rolled his eyes.

“I know that. I mean, why did you do that?”

“I’ve always wanted to,” Pope whispered, face so close to JJ that he could feel the breath on his skin. Pope’s lips lingered around JJ’s but didn’t come close enough to touch.

“You have?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Maybe you should do it again, then?”

Before Pope could make up his mind and before JJ melted into the couch cushions, he drew Pope’s face towards his own and pressed their lips together again. Pope’s hands wrapped around his waist this time, tugging JJ closer to dismiss the space between them. Pope’s lips were one thing, but having his entire body pressed against JJ was a whole different story.

It was real and it was happening and it was everything and nothing like JJ had pictured it. All the daydreams of Pope’s hands and his lips and his smile gave him butterflies and rosy cheeks, but the real Pope made JJ speechless, made him feel like he was walking on water, made him feel so confident he could run a marathon or paint the Mona Lisa. The real Pope was a million times better than the daydream Pope.

“Don’t go away again,” Pope pleaded into the kiss, voice wet but light and just as breathless as JJ’s. “Please.”

“I won’t,” JJ promised, tucking his face into Pope’s shoulder and indulging in the immense comfort and safety he felt there. Pope’s arms drew him closer somehow, stable and real against his body.

———————————————————————

taglist: @ifyourelostyoucanlook @backintheggamebaby @playitaagain @girlsru1eboysdroo1 @the-pogues @apoguecalledjj @kiaracameron @midsommers

[mst3kproject]

1008: Final Justice

I had a patient a while back whose name was Geronimo.  He was very impressed that I pronounced it correctly on the first try.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him how I knew.

Thomas Jefferson ‘TJ’ Geronimo III Mitchell is deputy sheriff in the middle of nowhere because that’s how they punish mass murderers in Texas. He has a shootout with mobster Joseph Palermo literally right in front of his office door, which ends in a couple of people dead.  Mitchell beats the shit out of Palermo, then arrests him, and is told to escort him back to Italy so he will no longer be Texas’ problem.  Naturally the mobster escapes on the way, and Mitchell II sets about pissing off the entire island of Malta in the attempt to hunt him down and recapture him.

I take back what I said about both Gregorio Sala and Joe Estevez. At the time I reviewed Track of the Moon Beast and Werewolf I had totally forgotten that the reincarnation of Mitchell here is supposed to be an Apache.  Joe Don Baker is officially and forevermore MST3K’s whitest Native American.

I know we’re supposed to consider Mitchell, the Sequel an antihero who plays by his own rules, and cheer him on in his attempts to recapture Palermo.  I know Wilson turns out to be a bad guy and Palermo has probably killed more people than Mitchell has. But this asshole spends the whole movie stomping around, being rude and obnoxious and shooting people and belittling the woman who’s trying to help him and generally leaving me sitting here thinking so this is how Europe sees Americans.  The Superintendent calls him ‘a walking disaster area,’ ‘leaving bodies in the streets’, and he’s right.  This man is the personification of police brutality.

Do you know what would have happened if Mitchell had gone the hell home when he was told to?  Yes, Palermo would have gotten away, but absolutely nobody would have died, way less property would have been destroyed, and the population of Malta as a whole would have had much nicer weekend!  Do these people not matter?  How about the woman who saw her son nearly killed in front of her?  How about the stripper who got her throat cut?  If Mitchell had just sat his ass down none of that would have happened.

In fact, I think I can make a case that this Mitchell is a significantly less appealing character than his predecessor.  See if you can follow me here.

Mitchell Senior was completely lacking in social skills and basic hygiene, but his motivation throughout his movie was to get justice for a murder victim nobody else cared about.  He followed the rules to a T – the bad guys tried to bribe him with a prostitute, and he arrested her for possession of drugs.  The only guy he killed was the villain, and while he did shoot Bocca he deliberately minimized the chances of a fatal injury.  He rebelled by following his assignment so hard his boss wished he’d never given it to him.  Having been told to follow Cummins, he follows him almost all the way to Mexico. And it was the 70s, so he has an excuse for being badly-dressed!

Mitchell 2, Electric Boogaloo, ignores the rules.  He’s a guest in another country, their police are telling him to stop breaking their shit, and he goes out and keeps doing it.  He commits more on-screen crimes than all the bad guys put together.  He starts a fight over a glass of milk and nearly drowns a bartender.  He shoots dudes down in the street, steals boats, and destroys property.  Having been asked to give his word he lies through his teeth, and he dresses like he might as well be wearing a sign that says asshole from Texas.  He’s so awful he makes Mitchell One look good.

He wouldn’t even be a good character for a comedy, since the point of an asshole in a comedy is that he does things we wish we could get away with, and when comedy assholes are supposed to be the good guys they usually end up learning something (often that they’re assholes).  2 Fast 2 Mitchell learns nothing. He doesn’t come to respect this foreign culture he’s encountered.  He doesn’t realize he was acting out of line.  I honestly think that, like MacGuyver in Atlantic Rim, he’s meant to teach the rest of the cast that assholes should be free to be assholes so they can save the rest of us who aren’t brave enough to shoot first and never fucking bother with the questions.

I’m not sure Final Justice is a comedy, anyway.  It did occur to me… there are at least parts of this movie that I’m pretty sure are meant to be funny.  The idea of transposing cowboy movie shootouts and chases to a European landscape of renaissance art and architecture is probably supposed to be funny.  You’ve got a so-called ‘hero’ who’s a rootin'-tootin'-shootin' cowboy and a villain who’s an honour-and-family-obsessed Italian mobster… that’s a genre crossover, and those are usually comedies, right?  I’m almost certain that Mitchell getting repeatedly arrested and yelled at by the Maltese police is a joke, and the old Nonna trying to confess her sins to a mobster disguised as a monk feels joke-ish.  Yet it’s just missing something.  What could it be?

Oh, right, a main character who’s actually funny.

There is one thing that actually made me laugh in the movie, rather than because of Mike, Crow, and Tom’s commentary – and that’s the blurred rectangle over every shot of the Smuggler’s Tavern strippers, to make sure we won’t see a nipple.  It could not draw more attention to itself if it tried, and maybe it’s just the edition I watched but there was not a single wardrobe malfunction in the shots they used anyway!  There were bits with the strippers topless in the original cut, but those didn’t make it into the version MST3K used. So they blurred it out… just in case?  Did they not want us imagining nipples?  Did the tumblr staff edit this movie?

So the main character sucks… sometimes entertaining side characters can save a movie.  Sadly, there are none here.  The villains are stock mobsters with it’s-a-me, Mario! accents.  The Maltese police chief talks big but seems unwilling to actually do anything to back up his threats to Mitchell.  Then there’s Maria, who is supposed to be a policewoman but mostly acts as a tour guide.  She’s very nearly another example of a sexy lamp.  She does nothing of any importance in this movie except for turning up to spring Mitchell from a jail cell.  The writers clearly couldn’t think of any better way to get him out of a locked room, either, because they have a stripper do the exact same thing.  This other woman never has much by way of personality, and is otherwise just there to look pretty.

The other function Maria serves is to repeatedly tell her superiors that Mitchell didn’t start any of the fights he gets into.  Anybody who has been watching the movie knows that this is a giant fucking lie.  He’s the one who challenged the mobsters in the courtyard and he shot first.  He could have shrugged off the weirdo in the Smuggler’s Tavern pouring beer on him but he didn’t.  Every time things go wrong in this movie it is always his fault.

As far as thematic material goes, I’m pretty sure Final Justice is trying to examine the difference between ‘law’ and ‘justice’.  This is a worthy topic of discussion.  The law is not always just, and even when it is, people do not always apply it in just ways. But a guy who wanders around a foreign country shooting people with only a suspicion that they work for the bad guy, who walks into a bar and announces ‘I don’t want any trouble here!’ before punching everybody in sight, is not the best spokesman for that idea.  Mitchell probably has extra guns stashed all over his house in case The Gubbamint tries to take them away.

The fact that the Maltese are not shown doing anything except yelling at Mitchell 2: Through the Portal of Time, seems to imply that they would have been completely unable to capture Palermo on their own.  Boy, good thing Mitchell was there!  Do Americans really think other countries can’t handle their own problems without an intervention by some bald-eagled ass-whoopin’ liberty?  Looking at the history of the twentieth century, I’m gonna say that yes, they do.

Really all Final Justice is, is a bad cop movie with some unusual accessories.  If it were set in New York or Los Angeles it would be entirely forgettable.  The art and architecture we see in Malta, and the glimpse of their culture (I will admit that the floats in the festa parade are just slightly nightmare-fuel-ish) is pretty much the only reason to watch it.  Even then, there’s not enough of that stuff to make up for how fucking awful the movie’s entire mindset is.

I used to feel pretty meh about Final Justice but I’d never bothered to actually try to analyze it like this.  The more I think about it, the more layers I uncover, the worse it gets.  Everything about it is terrible.  The only level I can find to praise it on is that the photography is decent and you can always tell what’s going on, but even that is wasted on fucking Mitchell 2: Hellbound doing stupid offensive shit. Even the title sucks.  The movie was shot under the working title The Maltese Connection, which at least sounds kind of cool even if the movie it were attached to would still have been Final Justice.

Fuck this movie.