Written by Chris Provenzano who wrote two great Season One Mad Men episodes, "Shoot" and "The Hobo Code" (eight and nine) which is when I would say the show really showed what it was made of.
Directed by Peter Werner of last season's "Kin" which involved the hill people
I'm going to guess the goal of this episode were to figure out a way to get Raylan and Wendy together with a common interest. Justified is pretty precise with its plotting but if there was one that ever felt like, filler is too strong a word but you know what I mean, it was this one. Boyd and Ava both progressed, albeit at a slug like place. It is the sort of episode that if Lost did one like it, I'd be furious for a week.
EDIT: From Yost: Once [actor] Edi Gathegi wanted off the show, and we decided to kill Jean-Baptiste in episode 5, I just looked at it and said, “Well, we’re gonna be short an episode, so we better come up with one now. Instead of trying to stretch out the last three episodes [of the 13-episode season], let’s put something in now. What can we do?” I thought it would be cool if there was something about Kendal and Wendy, and that it would be a cool idea for an episode if Raylan had to come in and help Wendy. That’s basically all I had. I came in with that on a Monday, and we broke the episode on the Monday, we wrote the outline on the Tuesday, and Provenzano started writing it on the Wednesday. We just had to really jam that in, and then we went back to put stuff into [last week's] episode 7 with Kendal calling Uncle Jack ...
Fortunately, this isn't Lost, it's Justified, which manages to churn out episodes every week that could stand alone better than any other serialized show does.
Uncle Jack, not the namesake of the Breaking Bad prison hit specialist, but an actor who also appeared on Brooklyn Nine Nine Tuesday evening, appears to be above board at first. He drives a nice car and has a rapport with Kendall and wears a jacket. If you ever want instant respect, wear a jacket. It will get you picked as foreman during jury duty, or it will get you elected Tribe Leader on Survivor.* He also has a respectable job in the energy industry.
* And also the first contestant voted out. Go Marlins!
Except none of these things really. Even the jacket is undercut by the ugly shirt he's wearing underneath it. Kendall trusts him not, eventually revealing the he knows Jack is in fact his father. This after the rest of the front dissipates, and while he's not a Crowe by blood, he acts almost like a relatively white collar version of them.
In true Justified fashion, he has zero wits about him. After the half baked idea to take Kendall to Cedar Point (never a good idea to abduct a kid in order to take him to Sandusky) he loses him after half a second and requires Wendy to get Raylan to fix things up. The carrot for Raylan is information about the Crowe/Crowder activities and location.
So, here we have Raylan aware of what Boyd is up to just as C&C Heroin factory are coming home.
At the end, there's a nice moment with Raylan trying to get Kendall out of Harlan alive, giving him th Caller #7 money. Even if Raylan came by the means and the money dishonestly, and planned to spend it on himself, he ultimately uses it in the interest of a noble cause. So maybe if they play the song again this season, it's related to Kendall, and Raylan's unique perspective on being raised by a criminal.
And by the way, the money Raylan gave to Kendall is begging to get stolen by his Uncle Brother or something.
Justified Identifiers
- Woman shooting a long gun (Wendy with the garbage bag shotgun)
- A bag of money ($35k, now $20k after the car, makes Jack a target)
- Double cross is in the works (Crowe on Crowder)
- Lack of other marshals (Hey, Raylan is on "vacation" though)
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