Season 6, Episode 2: “Cash Game”
Put Sam Elliott in any show — heck, in any commercial — and it becomes a Western.
The producers of “Justified” did just that in this, the second episode of its final season and what has been a romping crime story through modern-day Kentucky shifted just a little bit more to the wild west.
I know that may sound a little silly, since Raylan Givens, the hero of the FX series, has always been a modern-day cowboy. The deputy U.S. marshal wears the white hat and the fancy boots and can draw a pistol faster than any bad guy.
But remember, Elmore Leonard, whose stories are the basis for this cable series, started out as a Western writer. When the market dried up for those kinds of books, he shifted to crime stories.
“Justified” merged the two genres with a fish-out-of-water cowboy hero fighting modern scourges, but it has always seemed closer to tone to “Out of Sight” than “3:10 to Yuma” to name two other Leonard movie adaptations.
Mr. Elliott’s appearance as Avery Markham, a criminal businessman, shifts the balance; he is almost as famous as the Marlboro man. Even though he is missing his distinctive handlebar mustache, that craggy face and that gravelly voice, remind you that you’ve seen him in scores of film and TV Westerns — beginning with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
His frequent appearances over the decades led him to be cast as The Stranger in “The Big Lebowski,” offering cryptic cowboy hero advice. (You’ll undoubtedly recognize the voice from Coors beer and Dodge Ram truck commercials.)
The “Justified” writers have also pushed forward a classic Western plot: the rich bad guy trying to snatch up the land of the honest hard-working folks. Several great Westerns — “Shane,” “Cat Ballou” and “Pale Rider,” to name just a few— used it.
Ty Walker (Garret Dillahunt) is doing the dirty work. He approaches the good farmer and his wife, as he approached Raylan last week, with what he describes as “positivity and charm.” But he quickly shifts to a veiled threat. He will get their land, he tells them; “how that comes to pass, depends on you.” He wipes his nose on their freshly laundered sheets drying on the clothesline, providing all the menace of a Jack Palance or Lee Marvin.
That isn’t to say that the crime mystery is in any way played down. If anything, it gets even more intriguing. Did Boyd Crowder set Ava up to discover the stolen bank documents to test her loyalty? And we still don’t know why Ty Walker is buying up all the land. (Walker tells Raylan it is because Harlan, Ky., has a bright future, but no one, least of all Raylan, believes that.)
We do know that he isn’t the brain behind the plan, for as Raylan puts it, “The boss doesn’t go door-to-door.” That boss sure seems like Avery Markham. Is it a only a coincidence that Markham and Walker show up in town at the same time? Which leads us to another mystery: We first meet Avery in bed with Katherine Hale, the local crime boss. Why is she hooked up with him, if she has Boyd trying to rob him? This show is getting nicely tangled.
As soon as we lost a beloved criminal, Dewey Crowe, the writers of the show gave us a solid substitute in Choo-Choo, one of Ty Walker’s henchmen. A giant of a man, he is a bit slow, on account of shrapnel from the Iraq War rattling around his head, we are told. His encounter with Raylan where the deputy marshal tries to establish why Choo-Choo was following him — “I am not following you”— was a twisted bit of “Who’s on First” dark comedy writing. The actor Duke Davis Roberts delivered it perfectly; I think we’re going to love this guy.
And then there is Ava, proving that her brains just may get her out of this series alive. She’s is putting the pieces together. In that pile of bank documents was a deed for a pizza parlor, Pizza Portal. Only Ava recognizes, as we later learn, that it was once a bank. “My baby girl,” Boyd says, “you are a genius.” She may be, since it seems she has figured out where the $3 million in cash is being held.
See, it’s still a solid crime story.
A few things that perplexed me:
What were Ty and Sea Bass, the other henchman, carrying into the house of the good farmer’s house? Rolls of plastic? Did the two kill the farmer and his wife?
Dewey’s crocodile teeth necklace turns up in Boyd’s bar and the bartender hangs it on a stuffed squirrel. I imagine law enforcement could easily spot it and link it to Dewey’s disappearance. It’s hard to believe that something like this would lead to Boyd’s downfall. Or was the necklace just a memento from the writers, so we don’t forget our favorite idiot criminal?
What does Boyd mean when he tells Raylan, “I’ve learned to think without arguing with myself”? Does that mean Boyd thinks he can act to kill faster than Raylan can? Does it point to how this thing ends?
The show is full of peacock men; Boyd and Raylan even have the same Ken-doll bent-knee pose. Now we have Ty Walker, who seems to have taken umbrage at being called a peacock. So, the natural question: who is the show’s biggest peacock?
Can anyone come up with the other great Western movies that use the land-grab theme?
And for anyone trying to catch up, besides DVDs, Amazon Prime members can stream the five previous seasons for free.