A review of the DVD set of Justified: Season 2

This is a BIG SPOILER ALERT! Just so you know in advance, I’m going to be giving some surprises away to entice more interest in people who haven’t seen Season 2 of Justified to want to go out and buy THE DVD set. You may not want to read further.

First, let me just say it’s been a long year waiting for Justified: Season 2 to come out on DVD. Because of how late the show comes on at night, I was forced to miss it when the second season aired on television in 2011. I had to be satisfied with tidbits of information on the Internet about the cast and individual episodes dealing with Raylan Givens and his relationships with the Bennett clan and with Boyd Crowder. I especially read such wonderful things about Margo Martindale who won an Emmy Award for her performance as Mags Bennett, the head of the clan. Well, Season Two is now out on DVD, and I was finally able to watch it over a three-day period in a mad raced to find out the whole scoop on my favorite U.S. Marshal, Raylan Givens.

Allow me to also mention something else. I now have to miss seeing Season 3 of Justified because it comes on at 10PM on FX and even later on the weekend. I do wish FX would put the reruns on at an earlier time for the weekend Like HBO does with Dexter. Nine o’clock would certainly be great. Hell, even ten o’clock on a Friday or Saturday night would be fine. As it is, I have to wait another full year for Season Three to come out on DVD before I can eventually watch it. I might be dead before that actually happens, but then it won’t matter will it?

Okay, was Season 2 worth the long twelve-month wait and was all the praised given to it actually true?

Damn right it was!

The first episode of Season 2 begins right where Season 1 left off with Boyd Crowder (played by the great Walton Goggins—yeah, this actor is great in my book and is definitely headed for big things in movie and TV business) going after the daughter of the man who runs the Southern Florida drug cartel…the woman who murdered Boyd’s daddy. He finds her during a rain storm before she can kill an innocent man. As he’s getting ready to get his revenge, guess who shows up? Yep. Raylan Givens unexpectedly appears behind Boyd, ready to kill any and everyone who moves, if he has to. He somehow manages to talk Boyd down so he can use the daughter for his own purposes, which is to return her back to Florida and to tell her father that all the bloodshed stops now. That’s when Raylan’s former boss from the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Miami appears on the scene and tells the head honcho that if anything happens to Raylan in Kentucky, he will personally come back and kill him. Matt Craven plays Raylan’s previous boss with relish and authenticity. You believe him when he makes a threat. I only wish Matt Craven had a more active role in the series, but then again his character is stationed in Miami and Raylan is in Kentucky.

Of course, the Bennett clan is introduced in this episode, You get to meet Dickie Bennett (played by Jeremy Davies from Saving Private Ryan) and Coover Bennett (played by Brad Henke) and the magnificent Margo Martindale who plays the matriarch of the Bennett clan, Mags. Mags seems like a sweet and lovable woman when you first meet her, but she can turn into a riled up rattlesnake faster than a blink of an eye. She has no compunction about killing people who upset her or get in her way. The Bennett clan also has a long history of bad blood between them and the Givens clan that goes back a hundred years. They literally hate each other, though some hate it better than others. As we later find out, Dickie attempted to take Raylan out when they were kids playing baseball. Raylan, however, got the last swing in with a bat and Dickie never walked right again. Dickie still holds a grudge against Raylan for that incident even though it was him who started it. Anyway, now that the power of the Crowder family has been broken, the Bennett clan decides to step in and take over the drug business. They’re going to be Raylan’s main adversaries for the entire season.

This is what you can look forward to and this is where the SPOILER ALERT comes into play.

The Bennetts kill old-man McCready because he called the police about a sexual pervert who’s after his young daughter, Loretta. What McCready doesn’t know is that the pervert is already working for the Bennett family. After Raylan captures the pervert, the Bennetts are upset with McCready and pay him a number of visits to demonstrate their displeasure by torturing and then poisoning him. They explain that he should have come to them first before going outside the community for help. Once McCready is dead, Mags Bennett takes Loretta into the family to care for her like she was her own daughter. Loretta doesn’t know about her daddy being dead, but that realization will come in time.

Boyd Crowder is trying to live a decent, honest life by working at the coal mines and staying alone when in the local bar drinking. He doesn’t want any company. Boyd is also renting a room from Ava Crowder, Raylan’s old girlfriend and the former wife of Boyd’s dead brother. As we know from Season 1, Ava killed Boyd’s brother in self-defense with a shotgun.
Raylan and his former wife, Winona, are basically living together in his motel room. Her husband, Gary (played by William Ragsdale of Fright Night fame) doesn’t like it and soon puts a contract out on Raylan, wanting him permanently out of the way so he can get back with his wife. Winona, however, doesn’t want Gary back. She wants Raylan. Winona also wants Raylan to have a safer job so she doesn’t have to worry about him being killed from day to day.

As the season progresses, some bad guys lull Boyd back into a life of crime. He has the last laugh on them when they attempt to kill him after the robbery has gone down.

Winona then steals $200,000 dollars from the U.S. Marshal’s vault in a moment of weakness and pretty much begs Raylan to help her put it back, which he does at great risk to himself and his career. His boss, Art Mullen, suspects something is up and tells Raylan that he’s had his fill of him. He states that Raylan is damn fine lawman, but a terrible Marshal. He’s tired of cleaning his mess and eventually wants to get rid of him. That doesn’t make Raylan too happy.

While all of the above is going on, the company that owns the coal mine wants to buy the entire mountain from the folks in Harlan County. Boyd, despite his past, is hired to protect the lady who has the make the deal happen. Let’s face it, Boyd is as smart and crafty as Raylan, and he soon decides to get himself involved in some of the big money that’s coming down the pike. He also wants to have a more intimate relationship with Ava, who responds to his overtures.

One thing then leads to another and none of it is what you think. Before long, Boyd makes the rough decision to take over the Bennett’s criminal business with the help of Raylan’s father. This causes repercussions and Raylan’s aunt Helen is soon murdered. It’s now an all out war. Raylan and Boyd are taking no prisoners as they go after the Bennett clan. This is about the time Loretta discovers what happened to her daddy and pays Mags Bennett a visit with a .38 pistol in her backpack.

Now, everything I’ve discussed is a rough outline of Season 2 and is really just the tip of the iceberg with regards to everything that goes on.

All the performers are excellent from the lead, Timothy Olyphant, who is Raylan Givens in every way possible, to his counterpart of Walton Goggins. There can’t be a Raylan Givens without a Body Crowder to work off one another. They are really two sides of the same coin.

Nick Searcy brings off the character of Art Mullen with sheer panache, admiring Raylan on one level, but disliking him on another. In many ways, it’s the character of Art as the head of the U.S. Marshal’s Service in Lexington who bring what humor there is into the show. The characters of Tim Gutterson (played by Jacob Pitts) and Rachel Brooks (played by Erica Tazel) are given more to do in Season 2 as the other two U.S. Marshals in the Kentucky office. Because they have to kill a couple of bad guys in the show, Art now feels that Raylan is having an adverse affect upon them. In other words, they’re picking up Raylan’s bad habits of shooting people. That’s another reason Art wants him out of the field office.

Joelle Carter as Ava Crowder and Natalie Zea as Winona Hawkins show how tough and resilient Kentucky women are. Ava takes a bullet for Boyd and Winona gets pregnant by Raylan. I don’t know which of the two is worse….being pregnant or shot.

The new folks in Season 2 certainly raise the ante with their brilliant performances. Margo Martindale definitely shines as Mags Bennett. She can also bellow out a tune with the best of them. Jeremy Davies plays the crippled Dickie Bennett, the middle child with the least respect in the family. Jeremy has Dickie’s character down pat and makes him come alive in all of his meanness and sadness at not being loved by his mother. Joseph Lyle Taylor as Doyle Bennett probably has the most unappreciative role in the show, yet also one of the most important. There’s both good and bad in him. The fact is he loves his family and tries to do what’s best for them, playing both sides of the law to achieve his goals. Brad William Henke as Coover (for the first several episodes, I thought he was being called Guber) is the only one brave enough to go up against Raylan hand-to-hand. It doesn’t hurt that he’s about 6’4” and weighs 300 pounds. And, we know how Raylan is, don’t we? He doesn’t care. You can see that Coover’s just itching to have a go at the U.S. Marshal and does before the season is over with.

Last, but not least, is Kaitlyn Dover as fourteen-year-old Loretta McCready. This young lady does a fantastic job of displaying the conflicting emotions that fill her at no longer having a mother, the lost of her daddy, and the compelling desire to get revenge. In the mountains of Kentucky, blood is everything and revenge is one of the rules the people live by. Kaitlyn makes Loretta live and breathe in ways that make you care for her and understand her need to kill those who hurt her family.

Justified is one of the best police dramas on television today. It’s been described as a western that takes place in modern times and Raylan Givens as a lawman who dispenses his own brand of hard justice.

Though most of the show was filmed in either Pennsylvania or California, the locations are great stand-ins for Kentucky. The performances by all the actors are top notch, the direction is right on, and the writing makes author Elmore Leonard smile. You see the series is based on the character created by author Elmore Leonard. Raylan Givens is a U.S. Marshal who first appeared in the novels Pronto and Riding the Rap, plus the short story, Fire in the Hole. Justified is one of the few adaptations from his work that gets it right for a change, and Elmore Leonard is tickled pink by it. In fact, his newest novel, Raylan, has Timothy Olyphant on the cover with his white hat and Sig Sauer 9mm pistol.

The Behind-the-Scenes extras are okay. You get a couple of commentaries, a look at the new characters and the actors portraying them, and a sit down with Graham Yost, who created the series. I wish there had been more stuff about the show. Maybe it was saved for the Blu-Ray edition.

Justified is in the Top Three shows playing on television now. The series will one day be a classic. If you like police dramas with stellar acting, lots of action, and a wry sense of humor, this is for you. Highly recommended!