10) Burned (Season 6, Episode 9)
Following on the heels of one of Justified’s darkest installments is one that’s a pure delight (give or take the usual threats and betrayals). With the season’s plot having been revealed as a fight for the soil and soul of Harlan County, it seemed fitting that “Burned” would call back to “Brother’s Keeper” by staging a big shindig. The host this time was Avery Markham, a man as diabolically smooth as Sam Elliott’s mustache-less upper lip. So many characters were set on putting each other in jail or in the ground by this point in the season, but it was a hoot to witness one last celebration of feigned civility between both sides of the law.
With Raylan, the Crowder gang, Loretta, Markham and his fiancée (played by Mary Steenburgen, a dynamite addition from Season 5) all gathered in one place, “Burned” has some of the season’s best dialogue, either shared between individual characters, or put on display in orating fashion. You wouldn’t even need Boyd’s botched attempt at blowing up Markham’s vault to make this a memorable hour, but the deft way in which “Burned” builds to a climax, then further delays the series’ final showdown, is pure Justified.
Best Scene: The return of Loretta was one of Season 6’s best decisions, her transformation into a criminal powerhouse capped off with a rallying speech to Harlan’s common folk worthy of Mags Bennett herself.
Memorable Line: “How’d you figure?” “Something in your way.” Raylan and Ava spend much of the season dancing around one another, but when he’s played all of his cards and she’s played (almost) all of hers, the melancholy core of their relationship is all that’s left.
