This final season of FX's Justified is, in a few words, pretty freaking incredible. If you haven't caught up with this show, you really need to do yourself a favor. All of the 5 previous seasons are available through Amazon Prime (as well as "methods") and you can catch every episode of Season 6 on FX Networks if you have a cable package with FX included.
Honestly, besides Season 2, Season 6 maybe end up being, front to back, perhaps the best season of what I believe will be remembered as a classic television series. The way the writers have managed to wrangle everything back in to revolving around the core characters while introducing a few new faces in a way that feels organic and logical, is spectacular. It's back to basics for the final season, and that's exactly what we all wanted and needed to say goodbye to this amazing show. But while this entire season has been amazing and full of unpredictable moments, this past week's episode did something so unexpected that it has thrown everything into question and set up the possibility for almost any outcome, no matter how insane. And despite how shocking what happened was, the way the show did it is almost more exciting and than the act itself.
*SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6 OF "JUSTIFIED" INCOMING! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! IN BOLD! IN ITALICS! IN CAPITAL LETTERS! AND WITH ASTERISKS!*
Oh, my god, guys! Ava totally shot Boyd in the chest and ran off with that 10 millions dollars! Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! Needless to say, the final moments of Season 6's "Trust" were absolutely, shockingly crazy bonkers. But here's the thing. It wouldn't have been really that surprising if Ava had simply pulled the gun on Boyd or even struggled with him and shot him by accident. Clearly in the last few seasons the rift between the two has been forming despite a few patches here and there. It's the fact that she actually pulls the trigger and that she does it without hesitation - as if she had premeditated the entire thing - that makes it so shocking.
It's shocking because we have faith in what we know about TV tropes. We trust them. We know there's an unspoken code in television, especially television with disproportionately large body counts, that says there is a hierarchy that governs what characters can and cannot do to each other. Simply put, in the world of Justified, Raylan and Boyd can kill each other. And they can kill characters of a lower standing than them. But those characters of lower standing cannot kill Boyd and Raylan. They're sacred. One only meant for the other. And then Ava puts a bullet in Boyd's chest to match the one she put in Bowman's and everything goes flying out the window.
But it's trust that messes everyone up. Look at Boyd, for instance. He's as confident and as trusting in the hierarchy of Justified as we are! With this episode, it seems Boyd himself has realized that he's the main villain of a popular drama on FX and that none of the people around him really matter. That's why he's so blasé about feeding two of his most loyal henchman to the marshals so that he can head the other way and steal Avery Markham's money. When Ava asks why on Earth he would do such a thing, he simply explains it away - those loyal nincompoops are just the price of going to war with his arch nemesis Raylan Givens. But it's not just that. It's all the little things he does. The way he won't even pretend to be interested in some friendly back and forth with Limehouse. The way he yells at Ava when she won't stop asking questions. Boyd Crowder trusts so much in his status as the Angel Eyes to Raylan's the Man with No Name that everyone else is basically off his radar. And that trust is exactly what brings him down. But Boyd isn't the only one in the episode afflicted with illusions of trusteur.
Take Wynn Duffy and poor, stupid Mikey. Jonathan Kowalsky has done a great job at slowly seeding in Mikey's anguish after finding out his boss is a rat. But Mikey's not going to do anything. We know how TV works. Wynn Duffy is one of the immortal ones. He's one of those characters that no matter what situation he's confronted with, he finds a way to slither and slink his way out of it. And Duffy knows it too! That's why he's so nonchalant and dismissive in the face of Mikey's threats. He knows he's safe. He knows that affably dumb Mikey isn't going to do anything. Like us, he trusts that everything is going to work out like it always does. And then Mikey knocks him out, handcuffs him to his RV table and puts a call into Katherine Hale. By trusting what he had always seen to be true, Duffy never even considered his henchman's feelings or motivations. He simply trusted things to work out like they always have and like us, it left him shocked (and unlike us, unconscious and handcuffed to a table).
And then there's Boon - Avery Markham's replacement for his corpsified commandos, a pale, wild-eyed gunslinger who fancies himself the fastest gun around and who looks like he cuts his own hair and glues on his mustache every morning. In the fourth to last episode of a series' final season, there are a few things seasoned viewers trust not to happen. And of those things is devoting a large chunk of screen time to a character we only met a few weeks prior. And yet there we found ourselves, watching as Boon cryptically threatened that unsuspecting hipster diner employee and lamented that his girl Loretta might not like him anymore after he, you know, shot her great-aunt to death in her own living room. It's an extremely weird scene to plop down in the middle of one of the final episodes of Justified ever, one that undoubtedly left a lot of viewers wondering what the h was going on. That is until we look at it in light of Ava shooting Boyd.
Now everything's up for grabs. Now anyone of any character standing can be taken out by anyone else. Could Boon actually be the Jack McCall to take out Raylan's Wild Bill? Because this episode so blatantly violates all of the rules and restrictions Justified has established over the years, because this episode so blatantly violates our trust, anything is now possible. We're the true victims of trust in this episode. Or are we winners?
One of my favorite things in movies and in television is when the writers use their most knowledgable fans' intelligence against them. You most often see it in horror movies, but occasionally there will be a lucky moment when it happens in television - the most tropey entertainment there is - and any time it happens like it did this past week on Justified it's amazing.
There's this episode of a show Penn & Teller did where a magician uses performers the cups and balls trick for Teller. The magician knows that Teller knows the trick. Three balls and three cups, one ball under each cup. There's some shuffling some magic then he asks how many balls in each cup. And the magician knows that Teller will say the opposite of what he should say to make the magician look good - Teller knows there are three balls under the middle cup because that's the trick, but a layman would say there's still one under each cup just like there were at the start. And what happens? Teller says what a layman would say and as the magician pulls back the cups... one ball under each. The magician used all of Teller's knowledge as a magician himself to completely take him in. That's what Justfied is doing for it's fans. It's taking our knowledge of television, our faith and trust in the medium and using it to shock us, surprise us and completely take us in.
In a clip after the cups and balls trick, Teller explains that to use someone's knowledge of something to completely fool them like that is the greatest thing one magician can do for another. And, as Justified showed up with "Trust," it also just happens to be the greatest thing a TV show can do for its audience.
