Passing mantles between characters is a pretty common device for shows that want to end definitively, but with the door open to the idea of further adventures taking place in a world we’ll no longer be watching. At the same time, the heavy emphasis on humor this week feels like it’s coming from the writers realizing this may be their last chance to do Elmore Leonard dialogue, and by god, they’re going to make it count. Script duties for “Cash Game” went to Dave Andron and VJ Boyd, who have mainly been credited on the show’s one-off episodes. It makes them ideal for writing quick characterizations, like Calhoun, or Patrice, another plot-moving character who all the same gets more memorable, hilarious lines than a lot of regulars on other shows (“Eww, gross,” being her response to Raylan calling her Mrs. Schreier).
The tougher balance when trying to do Leonard is maintaining a feeling of, to misquote Dolly Parton, laughter through fear. Knowing when to cut tension is often just as important as being able to build it. Ava’s situation continues to be the show’s toughest story to thread, as there’s not much to laugh about when you’re facing a prison bid if you don’t roll on the fiancée who would kill you for doing so. Joelle Carter is doing maybe the best work she ever has on the show, as her scenes with Boyd make her uncertainty palpable without forgetting that, like Boyd, Ava is only smarter and more resourceful the more you back her into a corner. There’s still room for a little levity now and then (her sarcastic imitation of Raylan when asked to return Calhoun’s docs is maybe the funniest line-reading of the hour), but like everything else in her life, the balance is being held on the edge of a knife.
Unlike the other main characters, Ava isn’t being replaced, but instead looks more and more like a spiritual successor to Katherine Hale. Both women are known to most as the Mrs. to the head of a crime outfit, but wield far more power than they let on. Katherine kept the Dixie Mafia together while her husband Grant was in prison, and it’s only through Ava’s eyes that Boyd is made aware of the bank buried beneath Ty’s pizza parlor. But if Ava is Katherine, does that make Boyd her Grant, the guy who gets locked up, or newcomer Avery (Sam Elliot, a born-to-be guest on Justified, even sans mustache), the man who walks away?
Katherine is running Boyd, and just like Ava, she doesn’t trust him. Worse, both she and Wynn Duffy underestimate “the hillbilly,” which Wynn of all people should know is something folks do at their own peril. As has been proven time and again by Justified, those with power who come to Harlan rarely make it out the other end in one piece. Avery likes to rule with his wallet, but as Ty continues to discover, sometimes even cold, hard cash isn’t the coin of the land. Brute force (and painter’s sheets) seems to be the only sure-fire weapon Ty has for this mission, though as Raylan quickly deduces, the devil himself wouldn’t have to get his own hands dirty. “The boss man don’t go door-to-door.” Seems only fitting that an episode this outright comic should circle back to a sitcom question for the ages: who’s the boss?
- Stray Thoughts
-How ‘bout those menacingly framed bookend shots of Boyd when he’s calling Calhoun? We know that Boyd isn’t Satan, but for the man on the other end of that phone call, he may as well be.
-Ty’s last name, paramilitary background, and issues with authority seem like a collective homage to William Walker, a mercenary who was paid to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, only to turn around and declare himself president in 1856. Check out Alex Cox’s 1987 movie Walker if you’re interested in a telling of the story that’s as unconventional a western as it is a biopic.
-“Clean body high, mellow, no paranoia.” As soon as marijuana is legal enough to advertise, there’s going to be a bidding war to get Sam Elliott as a spokesperson.
-“Dewey. Heh.” Even Raylan can’t help but chuckle at the mention of his favorite whipping boy, which makes what he doesn’t know yet that much sadder.
-While we’re running with a theme of doppelgangers and replacements, could there be any more appropriate a thing to hang Dewey’s gator-tooth necklace around than a taxidermied squirrel?
-After Googling what a Franklin Sandwich from Denver Biscuit Co. is, I do not blame Ty for drooling.
-Choo-choo’s thought process for letting Raylan take his car: “I shoulda choked his cowboy ass out and left him for dead on the side of the road. But then I figured, someone drives by and sees I’d have to kill them. You know, and then somebody else drives by and sees, then I’d have to kill them. Then, you know, another car drives by and sees and I’d have to kill them…you know.”
-Ava on stealing Calhoun’s docs from Boyd: “It was kinda fun, to be honest. Felt like I was in a movie.” The way she walks up to her shed, weapon in hand, sure makes it look like a movie: Goodfellas, with Boyd Crowder in the role of Henry Hill, and Ava as the revolver-totting Karen.
-“How’d you know to look in the shed?” “Told you: I heard Boyd banging around in there.” “What was he doing?” “He was banging around in there.”
