FX
Spoilers for the season finale of Justified coming up after the jump:
Justified started this season as a show about crimes of the week, but from the beginning, and increasingly as the season went on and improved, it was also about crimes of the past. On a social level, it was about the culture of criminality that troubled this corner of Kentucky for generations—the illicit substances changing over the years, but the violence, and the family names, staying the same. On a personal level, it was about the crimes within families—in particular, men failing their sons, and being too weak to accept culpability for that failure. In “Bulletville,” Justified served up a season finale that powerfully addressed those themes, at least in its first three-quarters or so.
Again, the show was served by a quartet of fine performances, as the conflicts between Raylan and Arlo, Bo and Boyd, came to a head. The quiet (well, quiet at first) showdown between Arlo and Raylan was a stellar example. The camera pan up to Raylan’s gun, showing that he had got the drop on his treacherous daddy was a nice visual surprise. But what sold the scene emotionally was how Timothy Olyphant conveyed not just the anger, but the sadness, at having figured Arlo out so easily—and that after Arlo had used the memory of Raylan’s mother to try to lull his boy into complacency.
Bo had wondered if his turncoat ally might have been bugged. As it turned out, Raylan didn’t need a wire. All he needed was four decades of unpleasant memories. How did you know?, Arlo asked. “In truth, I think this is something that I’ve always known.” Followed by Arlo’s explanation, “This isn’t something I wanted to do, son,” and the slight catch in Olyphant’s voice as he answered: “Don’t call me that.”
The relationship between Boyd and Bo is different, but no less moving. Bo is harder than his counterpart, and Boyd—for all his time as a criminal, and all his faith now—is still more of an unsteady boy when he faces his daddy. On The Shield, Walton Goggins proved expert at playing this kind of character—a grown boy, disappointed by his father figures, grasping to attain his own version of maturity. (Boyd is, arguably, a more assured character than Shane—who never quite escaped Vic’s shadow and in the end failed disastrously at trying to emulate him—but the comparison is still pretty close.)
If I have one complaint about the episode it was the last ten minutes; dispensing with Boyd Bo via sniper was a nice fake-out, but it also dispensed with much of the emotional thrust of the climax, namely Boyd’s last showdown with him. After that, we were left with a standard shootout scenario, involving a protagonist we knew would survive. (I don’t look to Justified for absolute gunfight realism, but you notice that the shooters managed to take out Bo cleanly in one shot, only wounding Boyd, while Raylan escaped several shots thanks to the power of the Lead Actor Force Field.)
The ending, however, left Boyd open to figure into Justified’s future, and while it may be frustrating not to know whether he ever would have, could have, pulled the trigger on his father, it’s even more frustrating for his character—frustrating in ways that will hopefully be dramatically fruitful for the show. In general, a strong season end, and a promising series start, for a modern-day Western that showed it could blow you away even when its guns were holstered.