JUSTIFIED - TV GUIDE: Matt's TV Week in Review: A Wedding, A Farewell, and More!
Apr 29, 2011
by Matt Roush
... JUST THE BEST: If you thought it couldn't get better than Mags Bennett's whoop-dee-doo on FX's Justified, think again. FX's best and ballsiest drama hit another intense high in the next-to-last episode of a fantastically entertaining second season. Timothy Olyphant, who generally excels at underplaying the part of laconic but lethal U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, comes to the forefront, fueled by grief and rage as he seeks to avenge the senseless murder of his beloved Aunt Helen ("that woman saved my life") at the hands of the degenerate Dickie Bennett (scene-stealer Jeremy Davies). This is Olyphant's best work in the series to date, seething as his crooked dad Arlo (the terrific Raymond J. Barry) tries to pin the blame on Raylan, when it's really his own antics — robbing Dickie's pot stash with Boyd Crowder — that triggered Dickie's murderous payback.
Raylan's rogue crusade for revenge takes him first to Mags, and the look on Margo Martindale's face as the marshal puts a hand on her is beyond bone-chilling. But she does eventually give up her son (only after Arlo threatens to renege on the Black Pike deal), and when Raylan takes a sniveling, whimpering Dickie into the woods for what looks like an execution, things get primal. "This is who we are, Dickie, this is who we've always been," snarls Raylan. "And this is how it ends." But conjuring up the spirit of the woman who put him on a higher path than his backwoods brethren, Raylan instead clocks his pathetic prey and puts him in the system. Naturally, Mags isn't beaten yet. She arranges for Dickie's release — who's the crone she sent into the cell of Dickie's accomplice to get him to confess? — and comforts the boy she earlier slugged for his incompetence: "We'll take care of everything." War on. Wednesday's season finale is going to rock...
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