Justified: City Primeval Episodes 6-7 - Showdown at the O.K. Corral or the Airport Radisson
It's nearing the end of Raylan's time in Detroit and personally, I can't wait for him to get the hell out of Dodge, or Ford and back to his daughter Willa and the Florida gators.
Note: Major plot spoilers. Be caught up on episodes 1-7 before reading further.
Summing up the Season So Far
A psychopath started a fire and burned down a Sweet man’s dreams in the process.
He killed a bunch of people for the hell of it, maimed another.
That psycho is Clement Mansell aka “The Oklahoma Wildman.” And there’s no real justice for a man who brags about killing his mama with a .22.
Pointless crimes committed in the name of an extortion book which held the city’s top brass and its power brokers at its mercy.
We still don’t know if the initial set of murders was intentional.
We look to next week’s finale for answers and the likely return of Willa’s high-pitched squeaky voice.
There is a price to be paid to get out of dodge, after all.
Cue bluegrass banjo music.
Hot Takes Highlights:
Sweety’s Demise
Sandy gets her Spotlight
An Almost Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Crooked Cops Who Ruin Everything Whose Evil We Saw Coming
The Murder Weapon Gun Doesn’t Go Off in the Final Act…Or Does it? (No it doesn’t)
Sweety’s Demise
If you know how Justified works, it’s fated that good people who dabble with dangerous, bad people, get hurt. Especially after they have a crisis of conscience and decide to do the right thing. If they are lucky, they may end up in a witness protection program, but inevitably they die at the hands of bad people.
Thus we said goodbye to Sweety - a deep soul who saw too much in his lifetime to be innocent, but who was loyal, had integrity and was like a papa to Carolyn. Plus, he played with Miles Davis in his younger days who apparently paid his ears a compliment. Unfortunately, when Sweety’s number was finally up, he didn’t get to choose what music was playing in his club which was the whole reason he wanted his own place (see 1988 flashback at the beginning of episode 7). Instead, adding insult to injury, when he finally went down, Mansell made Sweety listen to his cover of “7 Nation Army” by the White Stripes on cassette. Such a cruel and unnecessary end to a dude who deserved better and especially better music, even if he did make some mistakes.
Sandy gets her Spotlight
The tension is mounting for Sandy in the penultimate episode of this season. As 1/2 of the Bonnie & Clyde duo that is Clemandy, she’s been shacking up or shackled to Clement for a while and this episode we get our answer as to why.
“He’s fun.”
Oh man, I feel for Sandy. There are a lot of fun people in the world. Somehow a murdering psycho runs a little too The Shining for my taste.
As the skeletons come out of the closet and Clement learns Sandy sold the Stanley Garlick painting Clement stole from the David Cross character earlier in the season, Sandy starts to unravel a bit or perhaps just come to her senses. Either way, it’s time for her to plan her escape route.
In flight mode, Sandy encounters Raylan who tells her what’s what. “We have the murder weapon. It’s only a matter of time, etc.” I paraphrase here but you get the point. He applies the necessary pressure on Sandy to realize that her plan to jet off into the Aruba sunsets and hear Clement sing Kokomo at hotel karaoke will now not happen. Instead, it will be a solo trip and she better take all their money and get on the next flight.
Only in a last ditch attempt at hitching her wagon to yet another unreliable, gangster because old habits die hard, she hits up the Albanian hot dog empire owner, Skender, who Clement put in the hospital early in the season and which prompted the Albanian mafia to put a hit out on him. She tells him she still wants him, while he lies in the hospital bed with his broken leg. After a few minutes he tell her she’s a dead Sandy walking.
Miracles happen because Sandy somehow makes it out of this episode alive, leaving Raylan to meet up with Clement at the Detroit Airport Radisson. Clement kills Del Weems (yes he has an acting credit!) which is a damn shame because poor guy’s only mistake was hooking up with Sandy and unknowingly letting Clemandy (which unfortunately sounds a lot like chlamydia but probably works for these two) squat in his penthouse while he was away. But back to the note above, good people who dabble with dangerous people, and Sandy by association is one of them, get hurt in this universe and pay the ultimate price.
Sandy’s days are numbered.
An Almost Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Whenever Raylan and Clement are in a scene together shooting the shit, you know you are in for the best possible verbal sparring. Besides the fact that they are both skinny and tall with full set of hair, they also sound the same. Like if you were to close your eyes, you might just mistake one for the other, only one sounds a little more psycho.
The scene at the Radisson doesn’t disappoint in this respect because the most intense moments between these cowboys always takes place at hotels. See Episode 2, “The Oklahoma Wildman.”
The two Jekyll and Hyde one another, with Raylan goading Clement into touching the murder weapon so they can get his prints. Yes, we’re past doing police work by the book anymore. More on that after the jump though.
In the end, you are hard core waiting for them to draw their guns, but this doesn’t happen. Instead it’s Toma Kostia and his gang of people who habitually cut off others’ appendages.
Crooked Cops Who Ruin Everything Whose Evil We Saw Coming
Ok, so turns the Detroit police as portrayed on this show don’t totally suck at their jobs as badly as you think. I mean they do, but their ineffectiveness is intentional.
Also, the guy that I wanted to be the most traitorous bad cop isn’t the worst of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong. Norbert, the jerky officer who slammed the basement door on the alleged criminal in episode 1 causing him to fall down a set of stairs and qualified his behavior with, ‘This is how we do things in Detroit’ lest Raylan think Detroit is any different than Harlan, KY, is still on the take, blindly following his superior’s direction and putting innocent people in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. He’s just not as vile as another.
That title goes to… drumroll please…Maureen!
Yes, the police officer who made us feel like she couldn’t be bad because she opened up her home to Raylan and Willia after Willa was threatened by Clement is the actual worst. I think her husband even made them all pancakes during their sleepover, but I could be embellishing here just to show you how gracious of hosts they were. They gave off serious, “We could be family” vibes. Only they aren’t and turns out, it was all a ruse. Or people or complicated? Either way, the extortion book must have had something on her.
Norbert does something kind of redemptive in the end but Wendell, the Verizon detective, just stares on, possibly wondering about his wireless plan, as Maureen baits an innocent man to take the fall for Clement’s crimes because he just wants to cash out and go fish.
For the life of me though, I can’t figure out why Maureen does all this. Have there been any bread crumbs to reveal that she’s being blackmailed directly by Clement? Has he made any mention that he’s figured out she’s in there? Just all seems pretty elaborate for a lot of nothing. Whatever it is, it must be pretty bad, I guess?
The Murder Weapon Gun Doesn’t Go Off in the Final Act…Or Does it? (No it doesn’t)
The Albanians should have never come back. They interrupted the best scene in the whole show so far (The O.K. Corral gun fight) only to throw the murder weapon that could finally convict Clement, in the Detroit River. And I don’t think Wendall will find it there anytime soon unless he really does retire and take up fishing. These guys need to go, and in an epic NoHo Hank vs Fuches Barry showdown, no less.
When you’re done watching Justified: City Primeval, go back and watch Barry.
