This post contains spoilers through the third season of Justified.

“He didn’t know it was a state trooper. He just saw a man in a hat pointing a gun at Boyd.”

There’s a lot to discuss in the season finale of Justified, an outstandingly strong episode of television that significantly redeemed the overstretched season that came before it—Jere Burns Emmy-worthy performance as Wynn Duffy, the sociology of Noble’s Holler, the question of what Raylan’ll be like as a mostly-absent parent. But for me, the third season of Justified comes down to precisely this shattering question: what happens when parents and children fail to fulfill their obligations to each other and replace the unsatisfying partner with a more compelling one? It’s one that takes on bitter connotations in Harlan, but that, for an anti-hero melodrama, has surprising resonance for a country only beginning to come to terms with a rising dementia epidemic.

There’s no question that Arlo hates his son, and Raylan doesn’t have much use for his father, even if Arlo took a moment to apologize to Raylan at the moment of his transition from free man to soon-to-be convict. Even that admission comes less out of charity and repentance than Arlo’s desire to quiet his own raging mind. “Not an easy thing for me to say,” he admits to his son, before explaining the delusion that lead him to it. “But she insisted. I know she always was your favorite…But you don’t know how she can nag.” But Raylan hates his father, too, telling Limehouse after the latter man addresses him as Mr. Givens that he’s “Deputy Marshal. I’m not my father and I don’t care to be confused with him.”

Much of this episode is an illustration of how Raylan’s abrogated any duties he might have been expected to carry out as a son. Raylan hasn’t had much idea where his father is, much less that it’s Boyd Crowder keeping track of whether his father takes his medications. “I been trying,” Arlo tells Boyd fretfully when called to account for whether he’s sticking to the schedule. “But she hides ‘em where I can’t find ‘em…Thinks it’s funny watching an old man chase around his pills.” And even when it’s suggested that Arlo, in his dementia, might have let one of Boyd’s crimes slip, Boyd behaves more like a caretaker than a man bent on vengeance. “I want you to take one of these pills in front of me. Go on,” he tells Arlo, a father and a child switching places, two criminals reduced to vulnerable patient and patient caretaker.

And what Raylan ultimately doesn’t get, ruminating on the rotten apple and the barrel later (Boyd’s “Well, Raylan, I think even in a little town like Harlan, the apple barrel is obsolete,” and Raylan’s weary “But the expression ain’t, because of the truth contained therein” is one of many great poetic moments in this season, one of the few of television that could without question qualify for literary awards.) is that Arlo’s evil is ultimately less consequential than the opportunity he afforded Boyd. “I’ve connected to Arlo in ways I was never given a chance to do with my own family,” Boyd explains. Whether he’s a coot, a criminal, or simply a sick old man, Arlo afforded Boyd the opportunity for tenderness and for mercy. And Boyd could see what Raylan, who believes that “Arlo’s a criminal, never been anything else,” could not: a man who responded to care and to be treating as if he had something of value left to offer.

That Arlo responded to Boyd’s care, and that ultimately he would have killed for him, is ultimately less proof of his hatred of Raylan than of Raylan’s demotion to mere mortal status in the eyes of the man who bore him. It’s not that Arlo had a clear choice between Boyd and Raylan and chose Raylan. It’s that he chose Boyd as his son against all other men. In that moment, Raylan was indistinguishable from the mass of men. And whether you’re a deputy marshal or an ordinary person caring for an aging parent, that’s the ultimate nightmare of watching a person you love vanish into dementia.

This post contains spoilers through the April 3 episode of Justified.

There’s a lot of ridiculously fine writing going on in this episode of Justified, whether it’s Boyd telling Arlo “Arlo, I’m not saying you’re a lion in winter, but your roar ain’t what it used to be,” or Wynn asking Quarles indignantly “Are you smoking Oxycontin in my motorcoach?” But for all the wealth of language and character that’s present in this episode, it’s also proof to me of the signal failure of this season of Justified: there’s far too much plot, and not enough sense of what the emotionally richest strains of it are.

In fact, I think the show’s devoted time in inverse proportion to the strength of the characters and the themes. Quarles’ dissolution isn’t unpowerful, but he’s a monster more than he is a man, a disappointed gangster who tortures rentboys and has discovered Oxy, reducing him to snorting crushed pills in a trailer and carrying on conversations that operate at the level of “You ever seen Platoon?” “That movie with the old people who go to outer space?” It’s a fine performance, but the character’s contrived to the point of grotesque. And while there’s a marvelously operatic sense of Theo Tonen’s power—as Wynn puts it, “Does he sound like the kind of man to which would you like to say, ‘I’m sorry, but he escaped from a diseased whore factory up in inbred holler?’ But it feels wasted on a character who, I assume, is here one season, gone the next.

I feel that way particularly strongly given how rich Noble’s Holler, with its internal power struggles, its relationship to abused women, and its role as an informal financial center is as a setting. Ellstin Limehouse is a marvelous character, and if we’re not going to get a show that’s told through his eyes (which are quite sharp at assessing Harlan, as in his explanation of Boyd’s modus operandi: “Blow up something on one end of town, and when all eyes are there, hit the bank.”), I still wish he’d been the titan this season.

But the two people who have gotten the shortest shrift at the expense of the show’s core emotional development are Ava and Arlo. Ava’s emergence as a kingpin in her own right is a fascinating development, in terms of the balance of power in her relationship with Boyd, the role for a prominent criminal woman left open by Mags Bennett’s death, and what it means to have a woman running hugely vulnerable hookers in a region where sex work is easily blunted by powerful drugs. Similarly, Arlo’s decline could have been the story that bound all the character’s together. Whether it’s his and Limehouse’s history, the brokenness of his relationship with Raylan and Boyd’s decision to step in as his surrogate son, and his own titanic sense of pride in the meager field of knocking over Harlan banks, he could have been the central thread of the season. It’s easier, and richer, and ultimately more important and touching to chronicle the ravages of dementia than to invent a flamboyant, out-of-town gangster. It’s unfortunate to see Justified go for flash, instead of for the gut.

This post contains spoilers for the February 21 episode of Justified.

If shows like the Law & Order franchise hammer home how easy it is to get lost in the big city, or to hide yourself in it if you’ve got wickedness in your heart, Justified last night felt like it was making a reverse and perverse case for the ability of rot to flourish in the country. Limehouse’s holler is still the most fascinating place the show’s taken us this season, a little fiefdom anchored by history, tradition, and an absolute refusal to be uprooted by racism. But Delroy’s entrance onto the scene is a reminder that you don’t have to have good intentions to build an enclave. And Arlo’s reappearance in his son’s life at the time when Raylan needs him least is a reminder that neglect to relationships is not determined by geography.

Let’s take Delroy first. There’s no question that he’s a smooth talker, telling Ellen May “My parents raised me in a commune of sorts. I wouldn’t call it hippie, exactly. Mostly dope farmers. But strangely, we were a family. Looked after each other. Just like we do here…It ain’t easy looking after you girls. There’s doctors, and clothing and food, what-not. Porn don’t nearly pay the bills. It’s those pills that keep the roof over our heads…Like everyone else, you must be willing to make a sacrifice,” before sending her back into a situation that nearly got her killed. He may be a pimp, but telling Ellen May “It pains me to do this to you, truly. But you have to learn accountability, just like I had to,” before beating her viciously makes him sound more like a cult leader than a hustler. Ugly things can flourish in isolation, particularly when someone’s willing to pray on people who are exceptionally isolated, like J.J., who corrects Ava’s memory of her, reminding the other woman that Ava remembers her from “Middle school. I never made it to high school.” Justified can be a bit talky this season, but in moments like this when it hammers home the importance of education and the isolation of rural poverty, it delivers tremendous sermons with very few words.

Limehouse may rule his holler with a similarly iron fist, but at least he goes to the trouble of articulating and grounding a code. “Gold chains and champagne and hoes and shit,” he lectures a deputy who’s getting all Emiliano Zapata on him. “Oh, son. We have survived in these hills for 15 decades by staying among ourselves.” I can imagine that Limehouse will wield terrible violence before this season is over, but so far, his game of only giving when he’s got first, his insistence that “The people who bank with me are the ones who have access to the things I know” is a form of insurance. The question becomes what happens when people like Dickie Bennett stop trusting the bank. And while Noble’s Holler has held on to its independence by not challenging white folks directly, amassing power can invite investigation, and as we’ve seen in earlier episodes, interdiction.

Then, there’s Arlo. Alan Sepinwall pointed out that if Arlo’s not faking, “the idea of Raylan having to care for the father he despises — wondering all the time how serious his condition really is — could yield some terrific material,” and I tend to agree. It would be fascinating to see FX become the first network to seriously examine the relationship between middle-aged people and their aging parents, particularly when those adults are under severe pressure. But even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, Raylan’s relationship with Arlo isn’t something he can bury in the backwoods. Whether it was Arlo’s continued criminality or Quarles’ determination to ferret it out, some things can’t stay dead and buried, even in the backcountry.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched all four seasons of Sons of Anarchy. And while shotgunning the show’s episodes may not be for the faint of heart (so much grotesque violence!), it’s given me a lot to think about with the show. So every day this week, I’ll be considering another aspect of life in Charming, California.

Since you’re probably not one of the (very few) people who are watching Enlightened, HBO’s excellent, if uncomfortable show about a corporate drone who has a breakdown, followed by an epiphany, and begins living out her principals in all sorts of hilariously awkward ways, you probably don’t get the joke in the title of this blog post. But the Enlightened episode “Consider Helen” was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen on television in a while: a quiet day spent with the mother of the main character, who is grappling with private and unresolved griefs her daughter is too self-involved to acknowledge or understand. All of which is a long way of saying that until that episode of television, and until I started watching Sons of Anarchy, I don’t think I realized how thirsty I was for the perspectives of older women on television. Enough with the women who are meant to reflect me now or in ten years. I want a sense of the women I’ll become, the grand crones and the quiet ones, too.

One of the things I appreciate most about Sons of Anarchy is the way Gemma is allowed to have specifically female problems, and to have those problems treated as if they’re on a level with the hurts and angers of Jax, Clay, and the other members of the club. When, in the first season, when Cherry shows up in Charming after sleeping with Clay, and Gemma breaks her nose with a skateboard, the show could have decided to treat Gemma as ridiculous, as if she’s overreacting. Instead, we get that very funny scene of her and Clay hollering at each other in jail, Gemma refusing to be bailed out. Both halves of this late-middle aged couple are acting as if they’re teenagers. They are equals in their absurdity, both permitted to feel overpowered by their reactions to each other.

Similarly, after Gemma is raped (a plot that I think is handled better than almost anything else in the series), Sons of Anarchy deals with her sexual anxieties respectfully and in a way that insists that rape victims shouldn’t be treated as marked by their experiences. It’s terribly, terribly sad to hear Gemma tell Tara that “Clay’s never gonna… want to be inside something that’s been ripped up like me…Love don’t mean shit. Men need to own their pussy. His has been violated. He’ll find another. It’s what they do.” But the show insists she’s still wanted, first in Tig’s advances towards her in the wake of the attack—Sons of Anarchy probably spends more dialogue insisting that Gemma is attractive than any other individual character—and in her eventual reconciliation with Clay.

It’s tremendously moving to see Clay exceed her expectations of him, not just having sex with her again but seducing her, clearing off her office desk and declaring as only Ron Perlman can, “I want my wife.” Her hurt and recovery are couched in the language of ownership: neither Charming nor the MC are exactly feminist paradises. But even when Gemma puts off telling Clay and Jax about the fact that she was attacked to avoid hurting them and destabilizing the club, both of the men in her life make her recovery a priority when she finally does tell them. Later in the series, she may be marginalized as just an Old Lady, beaten for daring to step beyond that role, but at least in that moment, her husband and her son can elevate her recovery.
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We’ve talked a lot about mental illness and Homeland here, and as a corollary (and possible pick-me-up), I wanted to recommend Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover‘s Gingerbread Girl.

The short graphic novel follows Annah Billups, a 26 year old who insists that she has a missing sister. And not just any sister: her Penfield homunculus, which she says her father removed from her brain during her parents divorce, grew into a full-sized sister for her, and who subsequently appeared, only to seem to be avoiding Annah in the city where she lives and loves. As a result of that surgery and loss, Annah claims to feel things less, both physically and emotionally, an excuse for her to behave less than admirably. She schedules two dates for a single night and goes out with the woman who shows up first, is sexually manipulative, and often generally inconsiderate. But she’s still charming and compelling: damage is not incompatible with charisma, and in fact, the two can go together quite handily.

So is Annah insane? It’s never clarified: a Penfield homunculus is, of course, a way of illustrating brain functions rather than a real thing. But the story of her missing sister Annah has a certain magical quality to it that’s a lovely representation of the divorce from self. Annah wants to feel normal and whole again, but Ginger doesn’t want to see her, she dashes around corners and runs out of stores. And while Homeland gives us a Cassandra rendered explicable and admirable to us even as she’s stigmatized by the people around her on-screen, Gingerbread Girl is told significantly from the perspective of the people Annah hurts and loves, from the people (and in several cases animals) she encounters along the way, who are more inclined to be charitable with her than we might be.

It’s also a good way of illustrating the challenges of treatment. It’s one thing to massively reset your brain with ECT therapy. It’s another to have a problem that’s magical rather than scientific. We’re making advances in brain science, but we’re still not far enough along for true cures to depression and dementia, as in Rise of the Planet of the Apes to seem like the provenance of fantasy or science fiction.