Justified Season Finale Thread

I can't believe they killed Winona. (Sorry, this is an in-joke: I think Dave in Texas started this long ago, saying "I can't believe they killed Winona" after every episode of Justified. It's not a spoiler. It's a joke-spoiler.)

Eh, figure a lot of you watch the show and I did this post so I'll link it.

One Embarrassing Thing: Though I like the show a lot, I used to make fun of it -- in a loving way -- because Raylan was clearly baiting people into shootouts, so he could kill them and make the paperwork all look good. I used to joke (again, in a loving way) that Raylan seriously needed some retraining in the use of deadly force.

To wit, cops pull out their guns and begin shouting and acting very aggressively and frighteningly precisely in order to reduce the risk of a shooting occurring. The show of force is intended to forestall the use of force.

Raylan goes about this the exact opposite way. He moseys up, gun in holster, and engages in patter with you, often philosophizin' 'n such about what it takes to pull a gun and kill a man, often throwin' in some casual banter about maybe killin' you and throwin' out some deadpan snarky insults to your honor and your manhood.

This often has the effect of making his provoking his opponent to pull on Raylan, which, given that Raylan's an advanced practitioner of the quick draw, he really shouldn't.

At any rate, I like that Raylan does that; it's interesting. Murder frequently is. But I did joke about it as if the Show Itself weren't aware of this very serious problem in Raylan's use of deadly force.

Last night's episode made it pretty clear the show is aware what Raylan is doing is bad policework at the best and akin to murder at the worst.

So I withdraw that snark.

On the other hand, Raylan's not killing enough people anymore. The first season they had him kill a bunch, I guess to establish the character and to draw eyeballs. Since then, they've tried to be more realistic about how much killin' a lawman can do without being kicked off the force.

Seriously, Raylan barely kills anyone anymore. They seem to "conserve" all of Raylan's killin' for the season finale, but then he don't barely kill no one in the finale, ether!

I'll take a little less realism if it means we can have some more killin' again.

Moar Murder, please.

posted by Ace at 02:34 PM

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