I skipped my morning writing session today. Didn’t plan to, but a few minutes before the alarm went off at 5 a.m. I reset it to 6:30. I normally catch up on sleep on the weekend but I have to take my car in for its 30,000 mile overhaul at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. I want to make sure it’s in tip-top shape before I drive over to Austin for World Horror in about a month’s time.
I officially deleted Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior from my DVR recording schedule. I thought about doing it last week, but forgot, so I recorded this week’s episode. I hate it when the camera lies to us. Sure, you can hand-wave that we were seeing things from the perp’s perspective, but that rarely works for me unless it’s very carefully set up that way.
My introduction to French farce was a Theatre New Brunswick offering of A Flea in Her Ear back when I was in high school. It’s one of those high-energy productions that has a lot of doors with people going in and out on each other’s heels, narrowly avoiding seeing each other and ending up in all manner of hilarious situations.
That was what I was reminded of with this week’s Justified. Turns out Winona didn’t just take one $100 bill, she took all of them. And Raylan didn’t recover the one that ended up in the bank robbers’ pockets. When she tells Raylan she’s sorry, he says, “I know that. That’s the only reason I’m not hitting you over the head with the phone book.” He’s willing to put his career (and his liberty) at risk to save her. In a way, the bag of money is a McGuffin—the thing everyone is fixated on that drives the action, but in and of itself is sort of immaterial. The simple act of getting it from Raylan’s room back to the inventory locker is a comedy of errors. It ends up in the skeezy judge’s chambers, of all places, and when it finally gets to Winona’s office, it becomes an object of interest in a bomb threat. Sheesh.
However, despite his intense interest in saving Winona from jail, Raylan is still a Marshal. When the bomb threat comes in and he thinks he might use the distraction to make sure the money gets where it needs to be, he turns back because he senses something deeper going on and he’s not willing to put the judge’s life at risk. Good for him.
Of course, Raylan’s path has to cross with Boyd’s at some point. Boyd is the cat among the pigeons, a thief hired to act as security for a woman who represents a mining company in a wrongful death suit. She dresses him up in a suit (Raylan admires his new attire not once, but twice) and brings him to court after showing him videotape of the guy’s death. Carol seems a bit of an odd duck, and I sensed that she was disappointed when Boyd wasn’t interested in watching the snuff film a second time.
When Raylan is ordered to search the courtroom for bombs because the judge is (probably rightfully) nervous about some of the people involved in the case, Boyd offers his professional assistance. “I have spent a considerable amount of time hiding explosives,” he says in that soft voice of his that carries so much power. When someone else observes how strange it is to see Boyd in the courthouse, he deadpans, “Without shackles or an attorney present, it’s strange for me, too.”
I see this incident with the stolen money as a great equalizer between Raylan and Winona. Until now, she seems to have had all the power in their relationship but Raylan’s efforts might get him cut some slack from now on. And at last we have the vector that puts Boyd and the Bennetts on a collision course, courtesy of the mining lady. Mags and her boys are going to need to be dealt with, Boyd’s new boss tells him. Raylan tells Carol that Boyd has had his back on a couple of occasions in the past, despite the fact that Raylan also shot and arrested him. It might be time for Raylan to have Boyd’s back in the coming battle.
