Because I was at SXSW last week, this open thread is a twofer, for which I’m sort of glad, if only because it gives me a chance to comprehensively discuss the political acumen of Mr. Boyd Crowder. This post contains spoilers through the March 20 episode of Justified.

Perhaps the biggest question in contemporary liberalism is whether it’s possible to forge a populism that brings together the white working class with people of color and immigrants. Boyd Crowder is probably not the person to answer that question, given the blowing up of churches and the white supremacy, but his behavior in these last two episodes suggests that in a world where we could run him against Rand Paul in Kentucky, we’d have one hell of an entertaining race on our hands.

His confrontation with Sheriff Napier at the debate is epic. After Napier tries to suggest that Boyd should be disregarded because his status as a felon means he can’t vote (a nice example of Justified drawing drama from real laws), Boyd calmly unloads on him. “”I didn’t come here to vote,” he explains. “You think Shelby’s the only man in this room been done by a coal mining company?…You talk down to me because I been in trouble with the law…[Starting with a picket line where] I know that you weren’t there Mr. Napier. There sure were a lot of men there who looked like you. Men standing on the company side. Laughing at all us hillbillies who were just trying to stand up for what we believed in.”

That summation of the balance of power gives way to some hilariously unorthodox electioneering. Ava’s decision to go contrary to Johnny’s wishes and the core of her and Boyd’s business, killing Delroy to save his girls may have been rather thrilling in the moment. But it doesn’t mean she’s exactly a feminist, just that she’s willing to run whores for a somewhat more innovative purpose than the vicious junkie she murdered. “The girls, they’re excited to practice their constitutional right to vote, and to give a free handjob for every vote cast for our friend Shelby,” she explains. “They’ve already given blowjobs to a couple of boys Napier was counting on to haul for him and convinced them to take the day off.” And Boyd is smart enough to realize that if shots, sex and populist appeal aren’t enough to pull off the election, that you can never go wrong knowing your electoral law as well as your voters.

Speaking of prostitution, we get a look inside the deeply troubled mind of Robert Quarles tonight in the wake of his defeat. When Wynn Duffy finds out his partner in crime has been popping Oxy, he asks “How long have you been taking those? Mr. Quarles, maybe it is time you leave Kentucky.” “I got nowhere else to go,” Quarles explains to him. And when a young man barges in on them with a gun, threatening to kill Quarles for torturing Brady Hughes, Quarles talks his way out of the standoff by exposing himself as a raw nerve end.

“My father was a heroin addict. He wasn’t necessarily an evil man. But he couldn’t kick his addiction, couldn’t keep a job either,” Quarles explains.Luckily for my father, he had a very pretty little boy. And plenty of men were willing to pay for my company. What is your name?…That’s what it was like for me, Donovan. For many years. And then one day a man named Theo realized what was happening. You see, Theo believed deeply in family…Theo ushered me in, where inside, on his knees, was my father. I was fourteen years old, and I understood what it meant to honestly be free…Hurt him. No, son, I never hurt him. I did everything I could to help him. And then I set him free.”

I’ve been debating with myself all season long whether I think the decision to make Quarles a sexual sadist adds to or detracts from his character. I tend to think the details, even these ones, are a bit formulaic. But I do think there’s something interesting about sending Raylan, in a moment when he’s a bit of a mess, up against someone who’s crazy. These are, in their own ways, two mythic figures facing each other at a moment when they’ve both been badly hurt. It’s Batman v. the Joker in Kentucky. In this land where hollers replace dark alleys, Raylan’s as close as you get to aristocracy, someone with a sense that peace is owed him and he’s going to take pleasure in wresting it from his rogue’s gallery.

This post contains spoilers through the March 6 episode of Justified.

One of the things I like about Justified that makes it somewhat different from a show like Sons of Anarchy is that it acknowledges how hard a good crime is to set up, pull off, and get away clean from. The trap that’s been sprung for Raylan tonight is a sophisticated one, and there’s no question he’s blindsided, failing to see some possible implications and events as early as one might wish he could. But it’s still one that he can pick apart even as it’s closing on him.

Still, as traps go, it’s a decent one. Whether Quarles knew that Gary had a hit out on Raylan and Winona, it was a decent move to pick a victim who could be easily linked to Raylan. There might have been better ways to do it—kill Boyd in a way that makes it look like a fight (which would strengthen the idea that Raylan was on Boyd’s payroll), or kill Winona and make it look like Raylan got jealous or angry at his abandonment. But the hit on Gary is clean, and relatively easy, and besides, they had to use that bullet that Raylan threw at Wynn somehow.

Justified’s always done a nice job of balancing between the competing ideas that Raylan’s a badass and Raylan’s badassery creates a lot of problems for him, and the bullet is a perfect example. “Deputy, that just might be the coolest thing I ever laid ears on,” Garritty gushes. Dempsey’s a bit more skeptical, wanting to know “Did you come up with that on your own?” Raylan’s a hep cat when he explains that he “Heard it on the Johnny Carson show once.” But no matter the coolness of the act itself, Raylan’s temper has handed his enemies a literal and figurative weapon against him. Raylan may be able to see Duffy’s weakness before he does, but when Duffy declares that “Between you and me, Raylan Given is a very angry man,” he’s seeing Raylan more clearly than he sees himself—and he knows how to use Raylan’s anger against him. Raylan’s colleagues, who are willing to play at a cooler temperature—when told not to play stupid, one replies “I’m not playing. I’m an idiot. Ask anybody.”—may be awful stressed a la Art, but they escape with considerably less trouble.

Sammy sees the same short fuse in Quarles, it seems. Quarles may hate Sammy as the son by blood who held onto the place that Quarles believes he should have had, but at least this time around, the goofy runt is proving his mettle. It’s only by the skin of his teeth that Quarles gets out of that house before Dempsey discovers the room he tortured a prostitute in (Duffy hasn’t had time to redecorate), and once he does, it appears Detroit’s had enough. Sammy tells Quarles he’s cut loose, and when Quarles pulls a gun on him, Sammy coolly talks him down. And then, on the way out the door, tells Quarles of his unique little gun, “That’s awesome. It ever jam on you?” Whether it does or it doesn’t, Quarles ends up popping pills and shotgunning sermons instead of pulling the trigger. Awesome, it seems, can be overrated.

This post contains spoilers through the February 28 episode of Justified.

First, the question of whether Arlo was faking memory loss with Raylan last week, or whether it’s real appears to have been answered. In a beautifully-shot moonlit sequence, we—and Limehouse’s lackeys—”Got some old white fool down the road shouting for Mr. Limehouse.” It turns out Arlo’s charged Noble’s Holler because he believes his wife’s gone missing and “I’m not leaving ’til you send one of those lap dogs up in the maze and bring back my Frances.” But his wife is dead, and Arlo ends up with a splitting headache in the care of Boyd Crowder, with his son telling the outlaw who’s caring for his old man that “It just sounds like he’s off his meds, and I wish you luck with that.” There’s a real sadness to the tale of old hoods in their twilight years, their bodies unable to stand up for the interests of their fading minds.

Raylan isn’t doing too well himself, it turns out. After Winona’s abrupt departure, he’s living above a bar where, in exchange for mild bouncing duties, he gets free DirecTV, the first drink of the night on the house, and regular encounters with girls who say things like “We’ve seen you in here the last couple nights, and we want to know if you were born before disco or after.” Quarles, who attempts to bribe Raylan on the mistaken assumption that his choice of residence is due to Boyd underpaying him rather than Raylan’s essential self-loathing and love for $3 martinis. It’s that assumption that annoys Raylan the most, even more than the fact that Quarles thought “That I was working for you. Taking orders. Doing your bidding. And on the cheap no less.” And having given offense, Raylan’s desire to crush Quarles has become a rather more serious matter.

I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about Quarles. Setting him up a serial abuser of rentboys and resenter of his boss’s son by blood gives him a personality detail other than Joker-like cheerfulness. And it’s kind of fun to see Sammy as a sort of weak-chinned second-generation dilution of a mob dynasty who buys two horses for his daughter rather than one, who answers Raylan’s “What is that, gabardine?” with “Sharkskin. $3,000,” not getting that he’s the butt of a joke. But something about Quarles as sexual psychopath doesn’t quite sit right with me: it’s a rather flip treatment of the serious issue of domestic abuse within the gay community, and we haven’t seen any great brilliance in Quarles yet that would lead the Detroit mob to keep him around in spite of the rather considerable baggage he carries with him.

That said, his attempt to bribe the Harlan sheriff, telling him, “Make a couple of bandaid repairs on those mountaintops everyone’s always bitching about, courtesy of the sheriff’s office,” has set up a great clash. I love the idea of him running one candidate and Boyd another. Quarles may talk a good game about the low prospects of Detroit ending up with “a shitkicker rebellion on our hands.” But one is coming for him anyway.

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.

This post contains spoilers through the February 14 episode of Justified.

Despite the fact that Dewey spent much of this episode running around convinced that he’d lost his kidneys and Raylan shot a woman—”I can’t believe you shot me,” she protested before dying. “I can’t believe so either,” a drug-befuddled Raylan told her—it struck me as a warm and loving episode of the show, as close as Justified will ever get to doing a Valentine’s Day-themed episode.

First, let’s take Raylan and Winona. He’s coming home late to her, but he’s developed, if not a feminist consciousness about how little work he’s doing to get ready for their new life, a conscience about it. “Seriously. You’re seven weeks pregnant. Ready to move. I haven’t done anything to line up a place for us. I’m just out there running and gunning,” he castigates himself. I’m almost sorry Winona lets him off the hook, telling him, “Alright, you’ve convinced me. I’m angry, but I’m still not going to fight with you. I’m done thinking that I could change you. And I’m done trying to convince myself that I could ever feel about anyone the way I feel about you.” But it’s interesting to see Raylan seriously consider changing his life on his own, and not because, as Art suggested, his woman is just telling him that he should. Fatherhood is a serious thing, and I’m glad the show respects Raylan, and us, enough to show him doing some independent thinking on the subject.

Then, there’s Raylan relationship with Dewey, which ends up being critical to finding the man who cut him up. Dewey’s misadventure is as tragicomic an exploration of the changing mechanisms of American commerce as anything I’ve ever seen on television. Who knew the rise of credit cards could put such a hit on small-timers? “I don’t have time for that! I need cash! Where do people use cash?” he wails to the appliance store salesman, before complaining to a stripper that “Don’t tell me guys pay you by credit card? I saw some girl on television who said she could make $3,000 a night on the pole. Given she’s a nine and you’re a six if I’m feeling generous, but I figured you’d be good for a grand or so!” “It’s 10 o’clock in the morning,” one of the girls points out. Dewey reminds me of the characters on Raising Hope, to a certain extent: he’s not very smart, and he does some bad things, but he’s not unworthy of our affection, or Raylan’s. I thought the single line by the cop that “He’s your fugitive. Knock yourself out,” was a lovely summation of the reasons Raylan is both successful and entangled here in Harlan.

And speaking of entanglements, gosh do we have a lot of them coming at us. First, it’s clear that Limehouse kept Mags’ money—and it’s less clear that he can keep his people on lockdown. “The only way I can see him finding out from this end is if someone were to tell him,” he declares of Dickie Bennett. “I’ll stop him. Besides, I heard they fixing to send him back to Trambell.” Then, Quarles first attempt at forging an alliance with Boyd gets him a lecture about Carpetbaggers’ history in Harlan, which is not uniformly positive. But it’s hard to imagine he’ll leave satisfied with a bourbon.

This post contains spoilers through the February 7 episode of Justified.

It may just be that my personal taste in baroque redneck feuds is low, but since Justified introduced Limehouse (and, as Matt Zoller Seitz astutely points out, took a huge step towards remedying the odd exclusion of African-American characters from its particular Kentucky cartography), I find myself much more interested in what’s going on in Noble’s Holler than in whatever antics the Crowder gang is up to this particular week: the drama there is drawn from a deep and particular wellspring rather than manufactured for maximum baroqueness and squick. I’d much rather plumb race relations in Harlan than an organ-smuggling ring.

We learn about Noble’s Holler and Raylan in the same breath, every time he speaks of it. “Noble’s Holler. Nice community,” he tells Brooks as they drive out to meet with Limehouse. “Carved out for emancipated slaves after the Civil War. Good white folks of the county trying to dig them out going on 150 years now.” Brooks is amused, but she’s also intrigued, telling him “You’re all up on your race relations.” But she’s only willing to give Raylan so much credit. When he tells her “I pay attention during Black History Month,” she wants to know “So you’re bringing me along on a mission to African America to smooth your path?” But I like that he’s done the same for her: maybe the whiteness of the Harlan that we’ve seen is a testament to the depth and persistence of segregation. There are places each of them can’t walk comfortably, or at all, if they go alone.

And we find out later, that used to be literally true. As Raylan explains to Boyd, Noble’s Holler, and Limehouse himself, served that role in Raylan’s life. When he was a child and his father, both drunk and sober, got violent with his mother, she fled a familiar route, a kind of reverse underground railroad. “Oh, I’d heard the stories,” Raylan muses. “White women seeking shelter there, white men not daring to follow them in. Not Arlo, though. He wasn’t scared of black folks.” It’s a fascinating reversal of the white supremacist stereotypes of black men ravaging white women, and a piece of information I’d imagine has repercussions throughout Harlan, whether they’re acknowledged—or seen—or tacitly ignored. I’d have to imagine that acting as a sanctuary is one reason white men in particular would want to uproot Noble’s Holler: if white women have an interest in acting in at least some solidarity with black communities, that’s a risky proposition for the men at the top.* But all of this fascinating speculation is, and I fear will remain, largely for naught as long as white men are, for once, trying to get in Limehouse’s stronghold in pursuit of Mags’ money.

I quite like the revelation that what’s left of that mythical pile is “$46,313, and receipts for everything your mama spent buying every piece of land for that mine deal.” There’s something nice about announcing in that the bloodbath to follow will be over a deeply diminished share of ill-gotten gains, that Harlan’s crooks are tearing themselves to pieces over small cash. Everything, it seems, is like Mags’ rotten and bug-infested marijuana, not even good enough to send up in a glorious burst of smoke. But that means we’re going to have to care something about these criminals. And I’m not sure I’m much invested in an organ-snatching orderly, or even much in Boyd’s effort to become a small-time white-supremacist-tinged Stringer Bell, especially since he doesn’t seem good enough at it to be worth the effort.

And while Quarles is nutty enough to watch, his race-tinged sermon to Devil that “Chasing money through a black holler? Cozying up with people you’d just as soon see swinging?…Can I get an amen?…I have the resources to turn your shitty little project or whatever you call it into a money-making machine,” feels weirdly false, especially given that Quarles comes from a heavily black industrial city and it’s hard to imagine the syndicate he represents is all-white. When the concept of Noble’s Holler touches on something weird, and specific, and emotionally true, Quarles’ rant feels like a put-on to me. We haven’t seen enough below the surface for me to see him as a truly worthy opponent yet, in organizational or metaphorical terms.

*With this proposition out there, I was a big disappointed that Brooks, as it turns out, seems to be the daughter or granddaughter of one of the women in The Help, and that Raylan’s conversation with her about her heritage extends about as far as noting that Ole Miss girls are pretty.

This post contains spoilers through the January 31 episode of Justified.

Has there been a better image of the contempt with which addicts are so often regarded as Glen Fogel’s sick game of Harlan roulette with one of his employees on Justified last night? I think it’s very easy for shows about drugs and crime to focus on criminals, who have more wherewithal to plot and execute, and who are more thrilling, and perhaps more comfortable, to sympathize with than the people who purchase and use their project. There are notable exceptions, of course, like Bubbles on The Wire. But I think there’s something powerful about watching criminals directly exploit the people who produce their profits or in other ways facilitate their crimes. These transactions aren’t just made in money: they’re paid in emotion and blood as well.

“You win, you get a pill. You lose, I’ll put a pill in your casket for you,” Glen says, his contempt only becoming clearer the more he speaks. “With all the oxy you do, you’ll live just a few more years anyway…you thought I was going to let you kill yourself in my office? Maybe it’s just your lucky day. Or maybe not.” Addicts don’t even seem to be people to him, he’s amused by, rather than appalled by or sympathetic to, the level of the dead man’s need. It’s clear why those assumptions about addiction are useful to him, but that contempt can also be a weakness. Fogel clearly relies on Raylan agreeing that an addict’s word isn’t worth much of anything, and he’s surprised when Raylan’s willing to rely on the man who “hung me up in a tree,” though perhaps the fact that “he didn’t hit me with a bat” counts for a little extra.

If that operation is coming to a messy end, Boyd Crowder is hoping for a new beginning to a well-run empire. “My father, he considered himself a Harlan criminal. But he became more than a middle-man,” Boyd monologues. “His association cost him his life. We will not make that mistake. We will work within Harlan. We will control every aspect of crime within its boundaries…We will be meticulous, and we will be clean. No more smash-and-grabs…we’re all sitting together at this table in service of the almighty dollar.” It’s not clear, however, that he has what it takes to be Stringer Bell—or Quarles, for that matter. While the latter man has awfully nice-runnig tracks on his wicked little gun, Boyd’s style is still to bust into establishments with guns and to spell his name out for the title transfer. Boyd’s approach may be right at home in the holler, but Quarles seems more likely to be a transformational figure.

Especially if race comes into play. Travis Bickle may not precisely be a model of racial reconciliation, though it remains to be seen what of his views Quarles absorbed when he was at an age to be watching the children’s programming his father denied him. But at least Quarles doesn’t have tattoos and a racist upbringing, the kinds of things that prompt Limehouse to inquire of Boyd “There are those who wish my people harm, and there are those who wish for the restoration of white supremacy in the land. Do you believe that?” Harlan’s a long way from being any sort of peaceable kingdom. But the players have revealed themselves if the lines have yet to be firmly drawn. Gunfights seem likely. And Raylan might want to swap for some boot that are made for running.

This post contains spoilers through the January 24 episode of Justified.

Last night’s episode of Justified felt a bit more like Season 1 than Season 2, which strikes me as too bad. It’s unfortunate to set up with a villain as promising as Quarles and then to not see him for an entire episode, though the show did make up for it by giving us a very, very creepy lesson in the use of lye and butcher knives in motivating employee performance.

As much as I missed our blonde friend from Detroit, I did appreciate the episode’s light touch with Winona and Raylan, who seem to be bantering their way towards something more tender and stable than what they had prior to their divorce. “I think he’s married,” Raylan jokes when a realtor shows up unexpectedly to show Winona’s house. “So was I,” Winona tells Raylan, before laying out all the reasons he’s better for her than some dude who swans around showing houses. It’s something Raylan has clear doubts about, clear enough that he consults Boyd in prison to ask, “What do you make of a man who divorces a woman, then gets her pregnant, then thinks maybe they should move in together?” “You’re speaking to a man who’s sleeping with his dead brother’s widow and murderess,” Boyd reminds him.

Later, looking at ultrasound photos, Raylan deadpans, “I think we might have a problem. From this angle, it bears a striking resemblance to the creature from Alien,” before admitting his anxieties about fatherhood in a surprisingly touching moment. The best lawmen have squishy hearts, and the modern ones can admit when they need a woman as when, after a fellow Marshal’s murder, Raylan tells Winona, “If you don’t mind, stay.”

Boyd may not have helped Raylan resolve his relationship troubles, but that doesn’t mean he’s universally feckless. First, he pries the information about Mags’ secret stash out of Dickie, telling him, “Everything you squirreled away over all them years. You tell me how to get my hands on it.” And it turns out that Limehouse, a man who isn’t afraid to whip out a butcher knife or a bucket of lye to make a point, giving a nodding watchman a choice between the chemicals or a pledge to “never fail me again in any capacity,” has anxieties about Boyd’s release from prison. “These dangerous times for us,” Limehouse lectures. “The law sniffing around us. That Crowder boy fresh out of jail. Now more than ever, we need to stay vigilant. Starting with the man on night watch.” Lye, it seems, isn’t the only chemical in the mix. It remains to be seen whether they’ll stay inert, or be ignited by a dangerous catalyst.

This post contains spoilers through the January 17 episode of Justified.

Before plunging into what looks to be a tremendously exciting season of Justified, a thought: why is it that our great prestige television about cities that aren’t New York, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC has to be about the drug trade? Baltimore is defined by the drug trade in The Wire. We see Albuquerque largely through the lens of people who participate in the meth trade, or who are trying to shut it down in Breaking Bad — the city’s geography is bounded by the houses of the participants, Los Pollos Hermanos, the laundry, and Hank’s office. And Justified gives us a Kentucky populated by a colorful variety of narcotics wranglers. The Sopranos is a notable potential exception, though drugs are certainly part of the mix, and there’s an extent to which the show is about New Jersey’s relationship to New York.

I understand why we tell stories about criminal enterprises in general and drugs in particular. Cops and robbers, chase and race are both classic storytelling models. And the networks and problems of production, trade, and distribution make for fascinating character and power relationships between criminals and present substantial challenges for law enforcement officers. But are drugs really so psychically important to our country that they deserve this level of attention? I know I’m not alone in considering the War on Drugs both an over-investment and a failed strategy. And while I appreciate living in a neighborhood that isn’t blighted by drug-linked crime, I’m also not exceptionally concerned about Marlo Stanfield or Walter White showing up and upsetting that balance. So is this pattern just a result of the structural rewards of telling drug stories? Or do we see something rotten at the heart of America, a blight worse than the troubles we identify in our great cities?

I wanted to start on that note because I appreciate the way the show used Quarles’ arrival in town to set up a running conversation about real estate, and by extension, territory and a sense of home. When he first showed up, I actually assumed he was talking about the city of Detroit, rather than the criminal enterprise based there that he happens to represent. It quickly becomes clear that it’s not, but I like the idea of Detroit as a criminal conspiracy, the city’s profound troubles providing opportunities for men like Quarles to rise. “You picked a shitty time to get into commercial real estate, and now you’re under water. Detroit did not make an investment. It made a loan,” he warns. “Things are getting tough all over. So if you can’t have the money here by tomorrow, I trust you tell me right now.” He makes good on the threat by the end of the episode, but he’s set a theme that persists for the rest of the episode. There’s Boyd and Raylan fighting over Raylan’s broken promise, with Raylan spitting, “You think we’re in the holler? I’m a deputy U.S. Marshal.” Geography will reach out to pull you back, if you let it. And Raylan and Winona, they lie in bed after making love for the first time since Raylan was shot, property and geography become a proxy for talking about commitment. “Maybe we need more room,” Raylan proposes, baby planning. “After all the time I’ve spent redecorating?” Winona asks, a prickliness that’ll come up again when Raylan tentatively proposes naming their baby Felix, like the cat. “It’s sweet. It’s sweet that you think you have a say in the name,” she tells him.

Those twitchy power dynamics are all over the episode, and make for some of its best moments. “Didn’t wear your suit,” Raylan observes as he meets Boyd in the conference room. “Why do you say that as if I’ve only got one suit and not the whole closetful?” Boyd complains. And they poke at each other over the question of asset forfeiture. “How sizeable, Raylan?” Boyd asks.”Well over 10 dollars,” Raylan tells him. “If I had that kind of money, I’d be in Mexico by now,” Boyd tells him. One of the reasons things get so nasty is because the stakes are smaller than they are in Albuquerque, but the people involved need the money and the assertions of power more. When Ava clocks Devil with the frying pan and is told she didn’t have to, she forcefully asserts that it is, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.” Duffy slaps back at Raylan by treating him like a low priority, saying, “I would love to be of more help but I’ve got to get back to watching women’s tennis.” And Fletcher Nix, who on another show would be a great season-long villain, projects his air of menace in Raylan’s house in part by playing naive. “I look like I know anything about watches?” he asks Raylan. “I could take those off your hands. Give you $20 a piece for them,” Raylan plays along, a little bit classy and a little bit cheap. But he beats him by playing very, very cool. It’s going to be a terrific season.

Since I read it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking reading Amanda Marcotte’s excellent essay on why the television shows that are critically considered to be the best we’ve seen in the last decade all focus on men, almost all of whom are anti-heroes. There’s no question that some of this is a result of who’s creating these critically-lauded television shows: lots of Davids for the big three of Deadwood, The Wire, and The Sopranos, and lots of dudes generally. But it’s not that men are incapable of creating astonishingly good female characters, and in fact, many of the shows that occupy the second tier of great television programming feature innovative, emotionally compelling female characters. It’s not a question of creating great women. It’s a question of getting them at the center of the frame, and of getting their perspectives to be the dominant ones for a change.

To try to figure out how to do that, and what we can learn from some of the best female characters of the last 10 years, I’ve asked Amanda, Ryan McGee, and Rowan Kaiser to put some thoughts to paper about the fictional women who have touched them most. Amanda’s post on Community‘s Britta Perry will go up tomorrow, followed by Ryan on Buffy and Angel‘s Cordelia Chase, Rowan on Veronica Mars, and me on Gemma Teller Morrow on Friday. I’d be curious to know what some of your favorite women are, particularly if there’s someone you think I haven’t come across yet but who I might love.