The season premiere of Justified starts like another day in 1983, a newspaper is delivered, a man goes to retrieve it bitching at his wife who gives as good as she gets, a man wearing a parachute falls from the sky with bundles of cocaine; you know, the usual. Is it any surprise then that Raylan would be sleeping at his desk 30 years later? He picks up his cell and who should be on the other line but a bail bondswoman. Yep, she’s attractive so yeah, he slept with her (providing a funny but oddly unsnapable moment between the two). She offers him three grand to go after a man who jump his bail from Tennessee. Raylan agrees to take the case and tells Rachel nothing of where he goes.
Jody, the bail jumper, comes by his ex’s place and tries to bribe her with fast food toys. Immediately he starts off of on the wrong foot with Raylan, who resorts to punching the man’s car window to have a decent chat and point a gun in his face. Like someone who’s never gone up against Raylan before, Jody is unimpressed by Raylan’s gun so Raylan does the logical thing and shoots the man’s airbag. It deploys and Raylan calls the bondswoman back saying he’ll just bring the guy in.
In Harlan, Boyd has a chat with one of his former dealers where the man, Hiram claims to have been saved by The Last Chance Holiness Church and claims people of the holler are getting off of oxy and “hooked on Jesus”. Boyd asks when he was saved and Hiram replies last week which provides a “problem with arithmetic” because h has had Boyd’s product for three, therefore should have been selling for two and have at least 10,000 dollars of his money or at least the oxy to square himself with Boyd. In a typically understated fashion, Boyd stands up and moves away from the window mere moments before Hiram’s truck explodes outside. I wonder who could have done that.... “Now Hiram, saved or not you’re gonna have my money by the time tomorrow night rolls around or the next firecrackers gonna go off in here.”
At Arlo’s house, a couple of kids break into steal something from the walls and take some copper wire while they’re at it. Not long after a siren starts up outside the house bearing Constable Bob and Bob checks out the former residence. On the road, Jody is annoying Raylan who threatens to put him in the trunk and asks him to be quiet twice before slamming his head into the dash.
Next morning one of Ellen May’s clients thought that it would be a good idea to get her high and dress as a bear. That ends about as well as expected. Raylan visits Constable Bob, who explains his sudden appearance by motion detector and Raylan quips he can’t cover the whole in the wall “the smell of baking cookies”. He retells Constable’s Bob apparently oft told story of putting a guy in a coma in shop class before finding a bag with Waldo Truth’s driver’s license in it. Raylan opens the trunk to put the bag in and tell Jody that if he’s good, he’ll let him back up front.
At Audrey’s Ava says Ellen May’s client is unlikely to press charges because of his position and asks her why she has a gun. Ellen May says that clients and “not just clients” hit her. Ava responds that she only hit her once and that she had saved Ellen May’s life. They have “the drug talk” and the “no guns at work” talk.
Raylan goes to a hardware store to try and get some stuff to fix up Arlo’s house and ends up being flashed by the teen girl who broke into his house and then offered him a screw. Settle down, she dropped a box of them on the floor. Raylan squeezes past her to leave and is unimpressed by her relatively new boobs unlike the hardware store owner who let her slip out the back because a second flash.
Ava says she doesn’t believe a “backwoods preacher” could be turning people away from the oxy. Johnny posits it might have been because of the change in oxy to make it harder to get high. Boyd points out their oxy is from before the change and shoots down Jonny’s attempt to change the subject to Ava’s failing. In related news, Johnny’s walking again, with a cane but still. Ava questions his statement that she has failings and he recovers the point by saying they are clearly outweighs by her plusses. She asks if he wants a Dr. Pepper which coincidentally was what I was drinking when I watched this the first time and when she goes to get one for him, overhears a conversation with Jonny, the bartender, and a new guy who’s asking for Boyd. Both men deny knowing him but the new guy knows anyways because the bartender looked in the right or in this case wrong direction. Johnny asks him to leave and the guy agrees before draining his beer, throwing the bottle at Johnny, and knocking the cane from under him. Ava also tries to stop him but is deterred in a more civil way. She gets the sawed off from behind the bar and goes to defend her man.
Well, that’s not something you see every day….
Boyd introduces the man as his former sergeant, Colton Rhoades in Kuwait, who jailed Boyd no less than five times.
Raylan waits inside the door of the hardware store until Constable Bob pulls up with his sad Pacman siren. Raylan explains that his car has been stolen and Constable Bob is very understanding before asking Raylan to pull his gun on him. Bob’s plan of defense is a knife against a gun. And he thinks the state police will take him next year. Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye. He then points out the bag in the back and calls it his ‘go bag’. Then Raylan asks what we’ve all been wondering: “You mean like toilet paper?” Humorless Bob proceeds to tell Raylan what sorts of things constitute a ‘go bag’, then tells Raylan that cars around there tend to get crushed.
They stop the man crushing whatever car he was crushing, not a late model town car, and find Raylan’s ready to be chopped. His trunk is empty. Raylan asks about the man in the tuck while Bob rambles on about Raylan being a marshal. Things lead to Raylan having to punch the crusher guy. Inside the small shed, Jody tells the kids to let him go because he will kill Raylan whereas the kids would hesitate. He’s proven right after he’s released from his handcuffs and the girl still has the gun. Jody tries to goad the girl into shooting Raylan and even he’s surprised she didn’t. “Jesus girl, you just showed me your tits forty-five minutes ago.” Raylan then offers to let the kids go if they drop the gun and let him go. Bob is then drug in followed by the crusher. As similar offer is made to the crusher and the kids tell Raylan Jody has offered them 10,000 dollars stashed up in Lexington so Raylan then offers them the chance to go free and the 500 dollars in his wallet. Or the $12 and a Piggly Wiggly card. Just as Jody gets ready to shoot our favorite marshal, Constable Bob stabs the girl in the foot.
Raylan’s figured out that they didn’t want the wire and they didn’t want the car, they only wanted the bag from the wall and he wants to know why. Later at his house, Raylan gives Bob a box of family photographs to look after and bob isn’t happy that Raylan called him only because he thought he had no other option and Raylan explains it was for the baby. Driving Jody back to Tennessee, the instruction is the same “Not a word” but the result is different.
Boyd asks how his friend got discharged so Colton tells him how he beat up this asshole he used to serve with costing him his rank and again costing him the service. Boyd outlines the obvious (“I’m a criminal.”) and the less obvious (“I need some help.”). He puts a gun between them and Colton shakes his head.
Raylan goes to see Arlo in prison and Arlo tries to give him advice on how to sell his house revealing that they’ll be splitting the profits. “Maybe I’m listing it wrong; two story three bedroom country fixer upper holes in the wall missin a door?”
Arlo claims to know nothing about the bag in his wall. Raylan puts up the driver’s license and Arlo claims to know nothing about Waldo Truth. Raylan is hoping for a boy so that the family line could end with him.
Hiram sits taped in a chair with a firecracker in his lap and claims that he doesn’t have Boyd’s money. “Truth always sounds like lies to a sinner.” Where have I heard that line before….? Boyd remembers.
So Boyd starts to leave and then Hiram reveals the money to be under his lawn mower. Boyd then quotes Isaac Asimov “I expect death to be nothingness”. And Hiram tells him he wanted to give Boyd’s money to the church responsible for the drop off in Boyd’s profits. Boyd tells Colton not to tell anyone about the money and tell him to deal with Hiram. One gunshot later and Boyd seems surprised that’s the way he would have taken the statement. “I guess I’ll have to be more careful with my words.”
Raylan walks into Lindsey’s bar and finds her in his room flossing her teeth. He sticks his money in a drawer and tries to persuade her to not go back down stairs. Who could resist? Boyd on the other hand stores his money in the drop ceiling and contemplates the new church.
Preacher Billy insists that his congregation are science followers. And proceeds to tell them of the two times he’s been bitten by his poisonous snakes. Once was justified and the second a mystery. He tells also that his father and his father’s father were killed by snake bites. He then asks the congregation, including Ellen May, why they came.
In prison, Arlo is talked to by the man in charge of the books who knows the value of the bag Raylan brought in. Arlo asks for a book and slits the man’s throat when he goes to get it for him before lying back in his cot and waiting for the guards.
Next week:
Where’s Waldo
