Carolyn Wilder, accept my apologies. I thought Clement would keep pushing her around, and I underestimated Carolyn’s fortitude. But Aunjanue Ellis has rarely (never, probably) played a pushover; she has too much dignity and steeliness for that, as in When They See Us, Lovecraft Country, and 61st Street. She brings that same inner core to the opening scene of “Backstabbers,†as Carolyn’s frustration at another of Jamal’s betrayals (a federal-tax-lien notice from the IRS in the amount of more than $106,000) is interrupted by Clement blaring music in her driveway. The bloody and bruised Oklahoma Wildman readily admits that it was “our friend the Marshal†who beat him up, and he also admits — this surprised me too — that it was after he “chatted up†Willa. He wants Carolyn to go after Raylan for assault, and when she doesn’t take the bait, he goes back to his asshole antics: He flicks his lit cigarette onto her lawn. He makes no promises to stay away from the Givenses. He’ll keep doing “whatever I want,†and what that turns out to be in “Backstabbers†is pissing off Detroit’s surprisingly sizable Albanian mob.
Before then, the DPD and Raylan are still on Clement’s trail. When “Backstabbers†begins, Raylan is furious about Clement weaseling his way to Willa’s side and, I think, disappointed that Willa saw him beat up Clement; their dynamic the morning after feels a little underwritten. Raylan is frustrated by Willa’s silence, but I can’t quite glean what Willa wants from him either. The whole scene reminded me of the season-six Mad Men episode “The Crash,â€Â in which Don’s daughter, Sally, lets a woman claiming to be Don’s Grandma Ida into the apartment because she, knowing so little about Don’s life, believed that this Black woman could be his relative. Sally’s susceptibility to someone else’s lies about her father proved how thin their familial relationship was and how his secrecy is fundamentally damaging: “I realized I don’t know anything about you,†she tells Don afterward. I longed for a confrontation like that during Raylan and Willa’s breakfast, something more than Willa bringing up Raylan’s emotional conservatism and Raylan emphasizing that Clement is a murderer. Vivian Olyphant’s line delivery of “Am I even in it?†when she asks Raylan about his life is revealing, and her threat that Raylan “better not go backstabbing me†was intriguing because it hinted at her emotional depths — her beliefs in loyalty and honesty. But I think more of a sense of how she actually felt about Clement would have added texture, too. Alas, “Backstabbers†is more interested in the danger facing Willa than her actual response to it, and before we get to how Raylan deals with that, we spend some time on the ongoing Judge Guy investigation.
Things aren’t going well; the media is slamming the task force on its seeming lack of progress. So with Clement’s aggression against Raylan as its inspiration, the task force decides to go all-in, arresting Clement, Sandy, and Sweety and dividing them into separate interview rooms. The task force tells Sandy and Sweety that it recovered Clement’s gun from Sweety’s bar; it tells Clement that it has an eyewitness and Sandy turned on him. But no one talks and nothing sticks. Instead, all the task force gets out of that effort is Clement demanding a tape recorder and then belting out “We’re Going to Be Friends†into the room’s two-way mirror. I don’t think Clement is some criminal mastermind for assuming that Raylan would be watching and singing that song to rattle him, but I also don’t think Carolyn is wrong for telling Raylan that he needs to prove Clement murdered Judge Guy and Rose in a way that will actually stick. She clearly resents Clement’s presence in her life, and she knows they need something irrefutable against Clement to put him away. It’s her job to defend him and the task force’s job to gather enough evidence to prove he did it. Everyone has their part to play.
That applies to Sandy and Skender, too, though the latter isn’t really aware of it until the final minutes of this episode. When Sandy and Clement are let go, the two decide not to waste time and go after Skender, who Raylan learns is ready to propose to Sandy. (I would be more sympathetic to this man if we didn’t see him mistreat the other employees at his hot-dog restaurant.) Sandy warns Clement that the Albanians escalate slights into huge familial blood feuds, but her mention of Skender’s secret room intrigues him more — so the two go out for dinner with Skender with Clement posing as Sandy’s protective elder brother. They get Skender drunk, Clement loses the DPD tail (because Norbert is very bad at the parts of his job that require any kind of actual skill), and in Skender’s penthouse, Clement loses his temper at the contents of the Albanian’s safe. A bunch of guns but no money? That’s not useful for Clement or Sandy, who saw Skender as their next big mark — and who enact “some damage†on the man for not fulfilling their expectations, as Maureen tells Raylan in the call he picks up while dropping Willa off at the airport.
City Primeval is getting more interwoven: Sweety has the gun Clement used to kill both the judge and the five people involved in the Wrecking Crew killings in 2017 and is thinking about leveraging it for a deal; the DPD is still desperate to reclaim Guy’s little black book, which looks mostly like a list of bribes; the “hard-ass†Albanians are presumably about to be on Clement and Sandy’s case. But it’s the seeming end of the road for Willa, who returns to Florida at the elder Givens’s insistence, and, honestly, I didn’t expect her exit. I assumed the show would belabor her fraught relationship with Raylan by having her stick around, and as with Carolyn standing up to Clement, I’m glad to be wrong. There is no way Raylan, protective father that he is, would keep Willa in danger when she could be safely back home with Winona. Without her hovering over his shoulder, though, who knows what Raylan will do?
Cat Videos, Maybe
• I appreciated Raylan’s henley-flannel-denim jacket uniform as he caught the DPD up on Clement’s intimidation attempt, but wasn’t this trip to Detroit fairly impromptu? Are these all new clothes that Raylan bought in the last couple of days? Were we denied a Raylan Givens shopping montage?!
• I’m assuming we’re supposed to hate the DPD’s Norbert, a walking-and-talking cop-shit cliché whose driving motivation seems to be lording his police authority over others. I’m also assuming he’s supposed to serve as a sign of Raylan’s growth because all of Norbert’s proposed vigilante, extrajudicial stuff (“black bag in a cornfield,†throwing Clement off a roof to see if he can fly) is meant to remind us of Raylan’s old antics. I get the purpose of the character, but, man, he’s an annoying little brat, isn’t he?
• Another assumption: That Trennell (Joseph Anthony Byrd), who works with Sweety at the bar, is also his lover? The show hasn’t explicitly pointed that out, but there was a familiar intimacy and physical closeness between them that I think is meant to suggest a romantic relationship.
• There’s another “City Primeval is pointing out Raylan’s white-guy-in-law-enforcement privilege†moment when Carolyn says, “I’d be angry, too, but everybody doesn’t get to be angry the way you do,†in response to Clement’s altercation with Willa.
• “I cannot do my job and take care of you†and “Mom does†was a very relatable father-daughter exchange between Raylan and Willa and made me more curious about whether we’ll eventually see Winona. Is she angry or unsurprised that her vacation with new guy Richard — we have a name to go along with “the ’Stache†— got cut short? What’s her relationship with Raylan like after all this time?
• “We’re Going to Be Friends†in this episode, “Seven Nation Army†in the premiere — I must admit that Clement’s fondness for the White Stripes might be his most likable quality.
• Original-Justified-cast-member cameo count: Still! Zero!
Some nice acting from Ellis as she sits in Judge Guy’s empty chair, looks out on the courtroom, and hits the gavel. How often do criminal-defense attorneys become judges? Is that a normal career pipeline?
• On the flip side, I’m not sure we needed that imagined sequence of Clement and Sandy’s fake mother disappearing into a tornado. This isn’t Fargo! Wrong FX crime series!
• Book-comparison time! A lot of the conversations between Clement and Sandy — including his “We don’t have to kiss†rejoinder when she asks him to brush his teeth before they sleep together and his “What the hell is an Albanian anyway?†— are lifted pretty much entirely from Elmore Leonard’s novel.
• Sandy … is the sex with Clement really worth all this? Really?Â