Who is Raylan Givens now? Justified: City Primeval has spent time trying to answer that, and the finale, “The Question,†ends with a seemingly definitive take as we see the man in the hat turn in his badge and his gun. He has been doing this for a couple of decades, killing and saving and lawman-ing, and City Primeval declares that it’s finally the Detroit case and the Oklahoma Wildman who tip Raylan into the person he doesn’t want to be. He’s no longer that guy, the one who would do something ethically murky and think nothing of it; he’s no longer an end-justifies-the-means person. He’s now Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men, exhausted and weary. Remember Ed Tom Bell’s speech: “The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it; I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard.â€
So let me ask you another question: Do you buy this for Raylan? Take into account Clement and Carolyn, Judge Guy and the Detroit Police Department, Willa and the Albanians, Sandy and Sweety. Based on City Primeval’s writing of Raylan, these characters, and this case, can you accept this conclusion for Harlan’s most conflicted son? I keep going back and forth on this because I honestly don’t think what happens in Detroit, or even how Clement is killed, is special or unique enough to warrant this kind of reaction from Raylan. We saw him go through worse and do worse in the original Justified run, and I remain unconvinced of this being his turning point.
Especially in this episode’s final act, City Primeval skimps a bit in clarifying if Raylan is repelled/ashamed of his own actions and what they say about his old nature peeking through or disgusted by/disinterested in facing other criminals as reckless and as ruthless as Clement. Of course, it could be both, and maybe City Primeval doesn’t come down hard one way or another because it wants to nod at Raylan’s previous experiences and how they could have affected him now. I will give the show the benefit of the doubt there because I am a benevolent recapper. And regardless of that noncommittal writing, Timothy Olyphant is so good that he sells Raylan’s disquiet and fatigue, whatever their cause. The look on his face when he gets that breaking-news alert about Boyd’s escape (yes, that’s me you heard screaming) and the immediate call from the Marshals office? Raylan’s dumbfoundedness and maybe, just maybe, eagerness were excellently modulated by Olyphant, and if that had been the starting point of City Primeval, man, we would have been cooking with gas. (Or with … coal? That they dug together? I’m sorry, I’m sorry!)
Let’s rewind and discuss “The Question†chronologically because there are a number of story lines to get through before we’re tempted with a Raylan-Boyd reunion. We pick up where the penultimate episode, “The Smoking Gun,â€Â left off with Raylan and Clement being transported by Toma and his Albanian crew — to Skender’s apartment and panic room, where Carolyn is waiting. Not only was she serious about no longer being Clement’s lawyer, but she has made a deal with Toma: They’re going to lock Clement up in the room where he shattered Skender’s leg, and they’re never going to let him out. And Raylan, sick and tired of Clement’s shit, helps lower the door to the soundproof panic room, where Clement will starve and die. This is vengeance for Skender and Sweety, and “the world’s better off,†Carolyn says.
While Clement is destroying things in the panic room and showing his first real sign of, well, panic, Carolyn and Raylan are both making moves, the former by visiting Michigan’s lieutenant governor and making the case for why she should get Judge Guy’s seat (because she’s not “dirtier than the Playboy Mansion Jacuzziâ€) and the latter by joining the DPD’s Wendell and Bryl to take on Maureen. But Maureen turns out to be just as petulant as Clement, essentially throwing a temper tantrum in the meeting with Internal Affairs and laughing at how her comrades “have nothing†on her except for “some scribblings in some bullshit book.†Kudos to City Primeval for letting women be awful too — a win for feminism, I guess! — but Maureen’s meltdown here just raised more questions for me, especially because “The Question†doesn’t clarify what happens to her, to Judge Guy’s book, or to the corruption plaguing the DPD. Maybe I missed it, but in our flash-forward, Raylan’s time in Detroit is described as only “a big pile of shit.†Would it have been fulfilling to get a little full-circle conclusion here? Probably!
Instead, “The Question†spends its middle portion with Clement, described by Bryl in his best moment as “this jerk-off, Jack White–wannabe asshole.†Although Clement was surely going to die in that makeshift cell, Skender gets his masculinity and honor all in a twist and decides to kill his attacker, a choice that leaves him beaten to death and Clement free from captivity. When Raylan comes to the panic room to let Clement out — because his own moral code, to Carolyn’s “Goddamn it, Raylan,†wouldn’t allow him to let Clement die like that — he comes across Skender’s body and realizes that Clement is now going to hunt down Carolyn, Toma, and him. Raylan calls Carolyn in time to get her out of the house, but there’s no such luck for the Albanians, many of whom (including Toma) get massacred by Clement in the Venus. And then it’s time for our long-awaited Clement and Raylan confrontation, which is … fine?
Look, I agree that Clement’s awful music needed to stop being spread through this world; Raylan arguably did a civic duty by shooting him before Clement could play that cassette. And City Primeval has spent a good amount of time showing us how much Raylan cares about Carolyn, so coupled with the grudge he already had against Clement for manipulating Willa, I believe that his literal trigger would pop off. But there was something about this scene that buried the importance of this moment — maybe Raylan and Clement should have chatted more? Maybe Clement’s music-career desire never felt that serious? Maybe the pacing was off or Carolyn’s return to her home in time to see Clement die felt too tidy? Either way, Clement leaves this world asking Raylan, “What’d you kill me for?,†and that query weighs on Raylan six weeks later when he’s back in Miami and attending the retirement party of his former boss, Marshal Dan Grant (Matt Craven). Grant knows “there’s something different†about Raylan after Detroit, but what he takes as a newfound maturity that would benefit Raylan as chief is belied by Raylan turning in his gear. He’s quitting the Marshals Service, and he doesn’t tell Dan, Carolyn, Willa, or his ex-wife, Winona (Natalie Zea), why.
“If you couldn’t do it for me, I’m glad you could do it for her,†Winona says to Raylan, but is he really doing this for Willa? They’ll get more father-daughter bonding time now, but I didn’t understand Raylan’s actions as having anything explicitly to do with the worst teen to drive since Cher Horowitz. And whether Raylan will actually stick to his retirement now that Boyd has engineered an escape from Tramble during a hospital transfer, racing off to Mexico in his customary buttoned-to-the-neck shirt and with a besotted prison guard by his side … I doubt it. We can all argue, à la Inception’s spinning-top ending, what happens with that phone call. But remember this, especially with the events of City Primeval to consider: Raylan Givens always gets his man.
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• Original-Justified-cast-member-cameo count: Four! After seven episodes, finally they’re here! I’m not kidding about screaming when Walton Goggins’s Boyd Crowder showed up — because he is a man to whom I would devote my whole life. What a character! Before Boyd, we also got some of Raylan’s colleagues from the Miami office (Craven’s Grant and Deputy Gregg Sutter, played by David Koechner) and a disappointingly underused Zea as Raylan’s ex. I suppose it’s consistent that Winona was, as she always had been in the original Justified, wearing an Express going-out top and a pencil skirt in her appearance here, but I wish she hadn’t just been relegated to “concerned nag.†Remember when Winona stole all that money from the evidence room? She was so much more interesting than this brief scene suggested! Also, who’s her new guy? That’s a story thread I would have liked to close, since if you remember how terrible her husband after Raylan was, there’s only one way up from Gary Hawkins.
• A note on my rating for this episode: Until the last 15 or so minutes, when Raylan decides to hang up his hat and then gets the phone call about Boyd’s breakout, this was a solid three-star finale. The reintroduction of Raylan-Boyd tension is what bumped it up to four stars for me, and if you want to read more of my and fellow Vulture TV critic Kathryn VanArendonk’s thoughts on that final reveal, you can do so here.
• How did this finale episode compare with Elmore Leonard’s book? A fair amount of the Toma-Carolyn solution to the Clement problem is copied exactly, and dialogue is lifted entirely, including Toma’s “This way satisfies both of us. For me, it’s like Skender doing it to him, which is much better. For you, it seems the only way you’re going to get this man who kills people.†But a major change is that in the book, Detective Raymond Cruz lets Clement out of Skender’s secret room (“That wasn’t the way to do it,†he admits) without the Skender complication and then challenges him to a shoot-out. And remember in the episode “You Good?â€Â when Paul Calderón’s Cruz told Raylan that he once killed a man reaching for a bottle opener because he thought he was reaching for a gun and doesn’t regret it? That’s actually the end of the book, tweaked here for Raylan (and his later guilty conscience) when Clement reaches for the cassette tape. I will say I love how nonchalant Book Cruz is about it; that little cleaning-his-nails detail is a perfect Leonard accent.
Clement said, I don’t believe it … what did you kill me for?
Raymond didn’t answer. Maybe tomorrow he’d think of something he might have said. After a little while Raymond picked up the opener from the desk and began paring the nail of his right index finger with the sharply pointed hooked edge.
• Also from the book: After Cruz and Carolyn sleep together, they talk about Clement and Judge Guy’s book — and Carolyn suggests, hypothetically but with a little bit of implied truth (“By some stretch of the imagination,†she says), that her name might be in it. I was a big fan of Carolyn’s ambiguity and her indifference to Cruz’s shock, and while I enjoyed Aunjanue Ellis’s version of Carolyn, I also thought the show did a little too much in emphasizing that she was really a good person who just got a little dirty while advocating for Judge Guy’s seat, which she would then use to do more good. Some of her bad choices, being separate from Jamal or from Sweety, would have been welcome.
• Carolyn’s nickname for Raylan: Ray. I’m not sure I like it! Are two syllables really that much effort to say?
• Does anyone know what Skender was watching on his tablet? Was that Tony Goldwyn?
• Could we see a second season of City Primeval? I really have no idea; my understanding was that this was a “limited series,†but we’ve seen other “limited series†turn into regular ol’ dramas once their first seasons did well. If you’re looking for a Timothy Olyphant fix right now, though, you should watch Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon’s Full Circle, on Max, in which he is very un-Raylan and very good in a different way.
• Thank you all for reading and joining me for this season of Justified: City Primeval!