Justified Season 4 Episode 9

As the season winds down we saw a lot of storylines come to the forefront here. And while the ending with Raylan busting Boyd seems so uneventful at this point, there were a lot of dramatic scenes, from the inaccurate shootout, to the gun being in Colt's face for a change (twice, actually).



Solid episode.

Raylan jumped on Hunter's transfer to Leoville Super-max after killing Arlo to transport Hunter himself. Raylan plans to scare him to get him to reveal who Drew Thompson is. Art has a well staged freakout over Raylan's picking up of Hunter and Raylan even gets pulled over by Shelby who says that there's a Bolo out on him or an APB in law enforcer talk. It was great to see Patton Oswalt back as Constable Bob Sweeney in action again helping Raylan out. Raylan pays a visit to Wynn Duffy's trailer with Hunter suspecting that the Dixie Mafia may have hired Hunter to kill Arlo but Duffy's surprise over hearing that Hunter knew who Drew Thompson was kind of ruled him out since finding Drew is much more important to his organization and killing Arlo would've stopped the identity from coming out. We also learned a bit of backstory on Hunter's reign as a Sheriff and how Shelby had taken the fall for him in a feud between Hunter and Henry Crowder and Hunter had killed Henry who had "disappeared" and the Feds got involved and that's how Shelby got into Coal Security. Funny how if Boyd hadn't saved him back in season 2 this whole storyline would've never come to pass and Tonin would never know if Thompson was in fact dead or alive. I enjoyed how this episode had much less bloodshed and also managed to get Tim into the mix even holding Colt at gunpoint while he's still trying to find Ellen May. This plot of finding her is very tedious by this point since we know now that she's off the grid, but Boyd finds out from Johnny that Colt never in fact killed Ellen May. I think it's a much more interesting choice to have Boyd not kill Colt and he can possibly atone for his crimes. Tim bonds with Cassie after letting Colt leave their now defunct church alive and a possible romantic flame has been kindled through that. I thought in that moment that Colt and Tim were going to draw on one another. But the light part of the episode was Constable Sweeney waiting outside Lee Paxton's (one of the Clover Hillers, not Copper Hiller's like I've been writing my bad) who may have hired Hunter to kill Arlo. Raylan was clever to take Hunter to Duffy since an impending green-light on his life would come out when he got to Leoville. Sweeney using an automatic weapon opening fire on the two Clover Hills men was funny with their bullying of calling him "midget While inside Shelby confronts Hunter for keeping his secret (spoiler is that Shelby is Drew Thompson) and he uncuffs Hunter and flees. Raylan comes out of the house and finds his tires cut and Sweeney's car gone and Hunter uncuffed in the back. I enjoy the fact that Hunter didn't run and how he was just too lazy to try and that he had accepted his fate. His and Raylan's back and forth really helped flesh out a post-mortum picture of Arlo as well and the part where Hunter almost gets hit by a truck could've ended really badly for Raylan. Boyd looking at houses is a good thing to see him and Ava finally working towards the dream home. The stuck up real-estate agent assuming they couldn't afford the house was really pretentious and Boyd is right to walk out on her although it is a really nice house. Boyd piecing together that Shelby had Ellen May and knew that she was alive was a great to get him introduced to the Sheriff's department and the Marshal Service are sitting on his place. Boyd's deduction of them cuffing him by exclaiming, "Drew Thompson" was a nice bit of irony since he had been hired to find Thompson and he had been right near him the whole time. Now all eyes turn the Shelby next week as he chooses to run, hopefully Ellen May gets put into the ground sooner than later because this whole Colt screwed up storyline really doesn't interest me at all anymore, however Tim continuing to pursue Colt will be great to see. The episode ending with Raylan telling the other Marshals, "Let's go find Drew Thompson," was a great way to end now that there are no more punches to pull to not reveal Drew's identity. Shelby being Thompson is a little surprising with how little back-story we had had on him previously especially during the time when Drew would've been hiding out in the Hills but it wasn't as obvious as other twists in the world have been (The Sixth Sense of course). While not as explosive as the episode before seeing Hunter take a prime place and giving us a dose of the season arc and some decent side-plots, with the exception of Ellen May, made this a very enjoyable episode of Justified.