Teaser:
"Raylan squares off with a pair of merciless Detroit hit men. The battle between Boyd and Quarles comes to a head."
You’d think that with all the bitchin’ and hollerin’ going on in the Walking Dead threads about how stupid the show is, how dumb the characters are, how the writers can’t seem to remeber a plot thread from one episode to the next, etc.,…
…where was I?
Oh, you’d think with all that, that there’d be more love for a quality show like Justified.
You sorta started the thread before the episode was even shown, i am sure plenty of people will want to discuss it tomorrow 
Of course I love it - but I’m watching it !
Michael Ironside is always great.
Agreed. This episode had at least three new faces to the show: Ironside, Adam Arkin (last I saw of him was a season ago on Sons of Anarchy), and the guy who played Sean Gismonte on a few episodes of The Sopranos. I keep being impressed with the actors who get their faces on an episode or two before they get killed off.
The plot(s) is/are getting thick! Another impressive aspect of this show is how much action gets built up around such relatively simple story elements. I can think of at least three threads of intrigue and scheming going on.
But last night’s episode went by too fast! Those damn commercial breaks eat away at story time too much!
All that said, this is still the best show going these days. I was less than impressed with the Mad Men series opener and have the strong impression AMC has jumped the shark.
Is it me, or is Johnny getting a little restive with Ava essentially being #2 in Boyd’s outfit?
There does seem to be some tension there. One thing I’ve spotted with the actor playing Johnny: he seems to have adopted Dickie’s way of gesturing and using his hands. Maybe coincidence but it seems odd in a way to me.
They’re giving Neal McDonough plenty of opportunities to get himself an Emmy or at least a Golden Globe. How many more episodes before the big showdown with Raylan? Last one of the season? And will Limehouse get him first?
When/if it comes down to a showdown between Ava and Johnny, my money’s on Ava.
Has anybody done a body count on this season yet? 
I really hope that the next couple of episodes find Boyd getting knocked on his ass and then stepped on. The writers have spent way too much time trying to convince us that he’s a criminal genius, and I’m getting rather tired of seeing him out-smart his enemies in every single goddamn dust-up he has with them.
Does this dude have literally no blind spots or weaknesses or anything?
I haven’t done a body count, but I noted that it has been a long time since Raylan has killed anyone. 
This thread doesn’t get the traction of a Walking Dead thread because there is almost nothing to complain about. It’s good TV, taking a simple concept, throwing in a number of different layers, and all around good performances. Even Olyphant is growing on me, and IMO he’s always been the weak link. Goggins was very good in The Shield, but he is just knocking out of the park here. Both of them have been called out by the creator as being very generous is letting and even promoting for all the other characters to shine and have big meaty roles (despite being the stars) because it tells a better story. I call it being ‘the anti-Kirk’.
Good point. I had to rewind the scene to realize it was Art who shot Sean Gismonte and not Raylan. That was a beautiful bit right there. And I have heard/read similar things about Olyphant and Goggins being in the “head sessions” where decisions are made about which actor gets the good lines. I think their input has to have been valuable since the depth of acting in this show is unparalleled in any other show I watch with any regularity. (I’d place The Good Wife in that category, but more for the fact that there are so few “sympathetic” characters there, but they all get a chance to shine. The only other show with the care given to the “supporting” roles to match Justified is Sons of Anarchy and it won’t be back until fall.) 
One character who’s really growing on me is Errol.
You must mean besides the fact that everyone he is offering protection ends up dead…the pimp, the drug dealers. His attempt to get to Dickie in prison failed too. Lastly, he is always in a reactive role, rather than proactive, especially concerning Quarles.
Just in case y’all haven’t seen/read it yet, there’s some fun stuff in this interview with Graham Yost. There are links to earlier episodes as well.
Those aren’t personal weaknesses, though. I’m talking about Boyd being personally responsible for his own minor catastrophes, instead of having them caused by those with whom he’s unfortunately partnered. It’s never Boyd who misjudges his position in the criminal world; it’s always his lackeys, and for no other reason than so Boyd can come to the rescue, heave a godly sigh at having to deal with their incompetence, and then without even breaking a sweat, out-maneuver and out-think his antagonist and restore the status quo.
Whenever it appears that Boyd might be in a difficult predicament, it instead turns out that Boyd had an ace up his sleeve all along! See: him taking back the bar, him dealing with Devil’s double-cross, him cooking up some absurd scheme to win the election for county sheriff, him out-witting his accomplices at the coal mine in season 2, ad infinitum.
It’s tiresome.
Why didn’t he just shoot Quarles???
What? And spoil the season this soon? As I suggested above, the race is on to see who gets to kill Quarles and who all Quarles can kill before then. It would not surprise me to see Quarles in next year’s season. Can you think of any character at all who has any positive feelings toward Quarles? If there were some way to contact the writers with suggestions, I would recommend a “Polish firing squad” where Quarles is in the middle of a circle of all the characters who have some form of grudge with him and have them all try to shoot him and have most of them shoot each other.
Is the season almost over already? it seems like things are going to come to a head on the next episode.
I think there are two more episodes. I haven’t watched this week or last week yet, thinking if I wait to the end and watch all at once, I won’t get so lost in the plotting and shenanigans. It’s hard though, waiting.
Did the ice-pick guy die when Raylon shot him? I got the impression it was just a shoulder wound.
According to this interview after the season’s premiere episode