Look, I’m not the kind of guy to use the phrase “whiz-bang,” but goddamn if ” Dark As a Dungeon” wasn’t a whiz-bang episode of Justified. It felt like Stefon wrote this episode, because it had everything: ghosts, fires, vaults of money under a pizza place, and over there, is that Adam Levine? No! It’s a Kentucky lawman being hilariously callous about his dad’s remains!
“Dungeon” – which takes its title from a song about coal mining written by Merle Travis in 1946; here’s a damn good Johnny Cash version – put Justified firmly in endgame, as loose ends began to get wrapped up, and the pieces were set for the showdown (this isn’t the kind of show that would have a “finale,” I think “showdown” is a better phrase). The craziest loose end is Ty Walker, whose sweaty ass shows up at Ava’s house to offer her and Boyd a proposition. I can’t sing Garret Dillahunt’s praises loud enough, but even as great as I’ve come to expect him to be, he blew me away here. He’ll help Boyd rob the vault if Boyd can get him out of Kentucky. Walker is sweaty, weary, and altogether resigned. He wants this plan to work, but part of him knows that it won’t. He also gets to deliver a line that, in my estimation, sums up Justified as a whole: “You have to trust me or you have to shoot me.” (Ava comes in second with “The past and the future are a fight to the death.”)
Well, when Raylan shows up, he ultimately goes with the latter, as Raylan is wont to do. Raylan had convinced Markham to put a $100,000 bounty on Walker’s head, and when Raylan tells Boyd about it, Boyd gives up Walker, like, immediately. Walker flees and ends up getting shot in the back. The best part of this is Raylan forcing Markham to pay Boyd, which is funny because it serves the dual purpose of needling Markham and showing Boyd the inside of his vault, which Raylan knows will be too much for him to resist. It’s this close to entrapment, but Raylan has always operated just on the sunny side of legal. To be fair, Markham’s vault is fucking filled with money, so Boyd can’t really be faulted for suddenly thinking that $100,000 is peanuts.
So the noose is slowly closing in on Markham, because literally no one is on his side at this point; indeed, when Raylan goes to talk to him, the man’s back is quite literally against the wall. Markham’s honey-dripped voice and perpetual half-smile belie nothing in the way of concern, so either the man is stupider than he looks or he’s just so used to coming out on top. Perhaps a combination of both. He has no idea – seemingly, I could of course be wrong about this – that Katherine is playing him, planning to marry him while also giving Art a file (that she obtained from Wynn) that supposedly outs him as the rat. If he’s not being outright played, then we’re in for some brutal shit, because that’s the only way Markham could come out on top after this.
With only five episodes left in its run, Justified is going out with such a bang that it will be all but impossible to say goodbye. In Raylan’s tense front-lawn confrontation with Boyd, he summed up my feelings pretty expertly: “I can’t lie, part of me is gonna miss this when all this is over.”
A Few Thoughts
- Nice scene in Arlo’s shed. For a show so focused on the ghosts of the past, it was a surprising move on Justified‘s part to have nothing interesting in Arlo’s forbidden closet of mystery
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