PAUL ZINDER
Walter Metz has claimed that since 9/11, Westerns give us “classical representations of morally upright men who both save the social order from de-civilizing forces and simultaneously engineer the maintenance of traditional family values” (in Metz’s contribution to A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home, 2008). In other words, classic patriarchs.
Yet Justified is just littered with damaged or incomplete fathers who don’t amount to regular dads, let alone patriarchs. These fathers falter time and time again, their decisions often harming their own children. Daddy’s not much of a savior or guardian in the world of Justified.
Both Sides of the Law
Raylan Givens occupies an ambivalent moral ground similar to that of the men he pursues. The estranged biological son of Arlo Givens, a life-long criminal, Raylan is repeatedly drawn back to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, to respond to his father’s misconduct, although some of Raylan’s own malfeasance implies that a criminal mindset may be in part genetic. The relationship between Raylan and Arlo in the early seasons of the series serves as a handy template utilized by the writers of Justified to model the show’s patriarchal characters on both sides of the law.
In the pilot, Arlo Givens is introduced off-screen as both Ava Crowder and Boyd Crowder separately query the newly-arrived Raylan on whether he has yet visited his father, with Boyd mockingly questioning whether Raylan saw his “Daddy’s face” while shooting Miami drug-thug Tommy Bucks earlier in the episode. Like so much of the familial discord in Justified, Raylan’s difficult relationship with his father is public knowledge and ripe for comment.
When Art Mullen, Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal and Raylan’s immediate supervisor, informs Raylan in Season One’s “Fixer” that Arlo’s been arrested (like Boyd, Art uses the term “your Daddy” to refer to Raylan’s father, the childhood vernacular a reminder that you can never outgrow a parent), Raylan’s casual response, “He kill anybody?” places Arlo’s reputation in historical context. Before Arlo is even seen on screen, the viewer is informed that he has recently traded mining equipment for cocaine (“Fire in the Hole”) and been arrested (again) for driving under the influence (“Fixer”).
In years past, Arlo physically abused both his wife and the young Raylan (as revealed in several episodes including “Blind Spot,” “The Devil You Know,” and “Restitution”). In his first appearance on screen in “The Lord of War and Thunder,” Arlo is arrested for kneeing his tenant in the stomach, and after he’s bailed out of jail for that arrest, he beats the tenant’s nephews with a bat in a public diner. In the hospital following the latter altercation, Arlo asks Raylan if he remembers his grandfather, “a preacher . . . a real old-time religion man,” (and the inspiration for the title of this particular episode) emphasizing that Arlo’s childhood home “was nothing but fear.” Arlo would rebel against his father by choosing a life of crime, but Raylan’s rebellion against Arlo takes on a different guise.
Daddy’s a Criminal
In “Restitution,” Raylan surmises that he probably became a marshal to prove something to Arlo. Boyd comes to the same conclusion much earlier in “Blind Spot” when he remarks that Raylan’s helplessness in watching Arlo beat his mother was probably “a big reason why you got your gold star and your gun,” as does the malevolent Robert Quarles when he jabs at Raylan in “Guy Walks into a Bar”: “That’s why you are the way you are, Raylan. ’Cause your daddy’s a criminal.”
Although Raylan breaks the law himself from time to time in the series to achieve his own agendas (even questioning in “Debts and Accounts” whether he’s really “a criminal at heart. Truly my father’s son”), he always believes that his activity serves a worthy purpose, even when others might disagree. On a philosophical level, Raylan tries to do the “right” thing but the Arlo in him often gets in his way.
By the end of the first season, Arlo’s partnership with another law-breaking paterfamilias, Bo Crowder, leads Raylan to offer his father protection from the Marshals service if Arlo informs on Bo. In “Veterans,” after Arlo violently grabs his son’s arm, insisting that he won’t become a turncoat for the Feds, Raylan informs him that, “I came here as an officer of the law because sometimes we have to make deals with lowlifes because we have our sights set on life-forms even somehow lower on the ladder of lowlifes than they.” After Arlo slaps Raylan, the parent-child roles reverse when Raylan responds, “Use your words.” Their conflict will only escalate.
Film scholar Janet Walker, in Westerns: Films Through History (2001), writes that in “Freudian terms, . . . a boy may very well perceive his own beloved father as being eminently capable of violence against . . . the boy himself.” Despite Arlo’s sordid, abusive past, Raylan seems stunned by his father’s lack of paternal instinct in the first season finale of Justified. The deterioration of this father-son relationship reaches an early climax when Arlo sets Raylan up to be killed by Bo’s men in a seedy motel in “Bulletville” claiming that “This isn’t something I wanted to do, son.” Raylan rejects his father, responding, “No, don’t call me that,” before shooting Arlo in the arm.
A Surrogate Son?
As Arlo’s mental faculties begin to fail him in the third season of Justified, he mutters complaints to figments of his past, including his deceased wife, Frances, in “The Man Behind the Curtain,” expressing his psychological disdain for his biological family. Even in death, Frances fails to escape his wrath. Arlo’s fraternization with Boyd Crowder allows him a fresh start, a surrogate fatherhood, as Boyd’s mistrust of the law and antagonistic relationship with Raylan suit Arlo’s discriminatory nature.
Arlo even tells Boyd, “I’m proud of you, son,” to which Boyd responds, “Why thank you, Arlo. That means a lot, comin’ from you.” In “Coalition,” after Boyd prevents Arlo from participating in a bank heist by insisting “I respect your age and the place you hold in my heart,” Arlo mistakenly calls Boyd “Raylan,” a reminder to the viewer that Boyd is the type of son he always wanted.
Janet Walker states that, “the most potent of threats posed by fathers against sons is to come killing.” Such a fitting extrapolation applies to “Slaughterhouse,” the stunning Season Three finale of Justified. Arlo’s “replacement” of Raylan with Boyd ends in heartbreak, when Raylan informs his wife Winona that Arlo’s killing of a state trooper was an effort to protect his surrogate son from the man wearing a hat who had a gun pointed in Boyd’s direction. Arlo had actually tried to kill Raylan to protect Boyd and misidentified the trooper as his own son, a horrific mistake that feels almost mythical in its emotional weight. After confessing to that murder as well as one perpetrated by Boyd earlier in the series, Arlo dies in prison, estranged from Raylan, the offspring he refused to love.
Crowder Gospel
It’s no surprise, really, that Boyd so ardently appreciates Arlo as a father figure. Boyd’s own father, Bo Crowder, is as dismissive of his own son as Arlo is of Raylan. Bo, the head of Harlan County’s drug trade before the series narrative begins, raised sons that inherited their father’s predilection for mayhem. Bo’s eldest son Bowman was an abusive husband before being killed by his own wife, Ava Crowder, and Boyd’s attempts to fill the hole left by his brother Bowman (both in crime and in loving Ava) never pay adequate dividends.
Bo begins Justified as an absent father, locked behind bars for his forays into illegal drugs. After his release from prison, his attempts to regain control of Harlan’s narcotics trade clash with Boyd’s conversion into a born-again antidrug crusader. Bo threatens Boyd by insisting that if “You destroy me or my shit, it’s the same thing as destroying yourself. That there is Crowder gospel. You mark them damn words, son.”
In “Fathers and Sons” Boyd ignores his father’s warning, successfully firebombing a multimillion-dollar drug shipment with a rocket launcher. In a truly biblical response, Bo savagely murders Boyd’s followers by hanging them from trees, proving that Bo takes his own scripture quite literally.
When Boyd, heart-stricken, explains his loss to Raylan, he speaks like a shattered, betrayed little boy. “I am lost, Raylan . . . My Daddy, he killed all my men . . . He killed all of them.” But when Boyd has the opportunity to exact revenge, to murder the father that hurt him so viciously, he hesitates, informing Bo that, “There’s more than one way to kill a man. You can kill his physical body, or you can kill his spirit within.” Bo, ever the sympathizer, asks, “You gonna pull the trigger or talk me to death?” The bullet that takes Bo’s life comes from behind, sparing his son further scorn.
Weak, Stupid, and Scared of His Own Shadow
In Justified, surrogate fathers on both sides of the law prove unable to control their chosen “sons,” only to eventually abandon them. Theo Tonin, the head of the Dixie Mafia and surrogate father to Robert Quarles in the third season of the series, chooses his incompetent biological son Sammy as his successor, leaving Quarles to rebel in response to his “father’s” slight. Quarles should have known better than to rely on a patriarch. He himself is yet another absent dad, who is only seen talking to his own young son by phone, and although he claims “I love you, buddy” in “The Gunfighter” his lack of connection to his own fathers (both biological and surrogate) shapes the way he treats his own child. In “Harlan Roulette” Quarles thinks nothing of nonchalantly asking his off-screen son about his latest hockey game over the phone, telling him, “I think you’re gonna love it down here . . .” while approaching a room where a tied, gagged, and whimpering male hustler awaits.
In the same episode, Quarles offers the viewer a glimpse of his own childhood when he notes that his father withheld kids’ shows like Sesame Street in favor of Taxi Driver, a movie about a psychotic loner whose obsessions impel him to shoot up a brothel. This same dad would later pimp out the teenaged Quarles to feed a heroin addiction. Theo Tonin assumed the position of male mentor by rescuing Quarles from the abuse, earning his new “son’s” respect and affection, as noted in the episode “Guy Walks into a Bar.” But Theo, whose power and control intimidate the most hardened criminals over the course of the show’s first five seasons, in passing over Quarles as his heir in favor of his biological son Sammy, crushes his surrogate son’s confidence and spirit.
In “The Man Behind the Curtain” Quarles claims to be the son Theo always wanted, the young man “groomed . . . to take over someday.” Quarles’s drug-addled response to Theo’s rejection leads to his own symbolic castration, when he bleeds out after having his arm chopped off by Ellstin Limehouse in “Slaughterhouse,” a gruesome death directly connected to his “father’s” rejection. Sammy Tonin, meanwhile, a man described by Quarles in “The Man Behind the Curtain” as “weak, stupid, scared of his own shadow,” proves that depiction apt, as his own incompetence destroys his father’s business during Season Five of Justified.
Raylan spends most of his time chasing or in conflict with fathers like Arlo Givens, Bo Crowder, Robert Quarles, and Theo Tonin, but he consistently ignores the guidance and care of his own father figure, Art Mullen, the one male mentor on the series who tries to focus on the positive side of a son whose damaging and resentful behavior would drive virtually anyone away.
From the very beginning of their relationship, Raylan proves himself unable to follow simple orders, putting himself and the Marshals Service at constant risk. While Justified is full of ineffectual fathers, Raylan definitely qualifies as an ungrateful, rebellious son.
By midway through the first season, Raylan has already shot two people (Boyd and a hitman sent to kill Raylan) in two separate incidents in Ava’s house. The second shooting occurs in the same location because Raylan had begun an affair with Ava against Art’s advice. In “Blind Spot” Art angrily reminds him, “I tell you to do one simple thing, refrain from screwing the witness in your own shooting and you can’t even do that! You think there’s never gonna be any consequences for this?” Those consequences are harsh, in fact, as Assistant US Attorney David Vasquez informs both Raylan and Art that the affair has earned Boyd his freedom from prison, as Raylan’s tryst looks suspicious when considering that Boyd was shot shortly after Ava killed her husband Bowman in the same spot.
Later, Boyd blows up a meth trailer with an undercover cop inside, so Raylan’s affair with Ava has inadvertently led to the death of an innocent victim. This final incident prompts Art to suggest that Raylan consider quitting the Marshals Service (“Hammer”), a metaphorical rejection of his protégé.
Fathers and Sons
The vernacular utilized by Art throughout the series is patriarchal in tone, though Raylan shows minimal interest in honoring the wishes of this particular “father.” In the aptly titled episode “Fathers and Sons,” after Arlo refuses Raylan’s suggestion to wear a wire to nail Bo Crowder, Art tells off Raylan for drinking in his office before breakfast. “No, that’s enough. I’m the chief, this is my office . . . And that’s my bottle and I’m not going to let you drink it all just because your daddy didn’t hug you much when you were little.” Raylan’s relationship with Arlo may be tenuous and fraught with conflict, but Raylan’s über-stretching of the law implies an unconscious but concrete philosophical alliance with his criminal father that Art cannot abide.
In “Save My Love” Raylan knowingly assists Winona in covering up her theft of thousands of dollars from the Marshals’ vault. Art comes upon the couple in the storage room after Raylan assists Winona in returning the money, and his cold stare makes clear that he knows what’s just happened. Raylan has once again allowed his love-life to interfere with US Marshal business.
After Raylan questions Art on the state of their own relationship, Art puts him in his place. “I think what you want is to walk in here and have me go, ‘Just sit down, son. Tell me, in your emotionally crippled way, just what it is that’s troubling your heart so that we can get back what we lost’.” When Raylan, like a spoiled teenager, responds, “Forget it,” Art demands, “Get back here . . . Now you know that thing that never happened? . . . We’re not gonna talk about it . . . I’m stuck with you . . . Nothing I say has ever made a difference.” Ultimately, in “Debts and Accounts,” Art concludes that Raylan is a “problem that will solve itself.”
Even after making such a fatalistic prediction, however, Art can’t help but retake his role of mentor and savior in “Bloody Harlan,” rescuing Raylan from certain death on the Bennett farm by bringing the Marshal cavalry to the rescue. In the chaotic aftermath, Art asks, “Raylan, you okay?” Raylan’s, “It’s good to see you Art,” replaces the “thanks, Dad” one might expect to hear considering each character’s archetypal position in Justified.
Their relationship seems repaired during Season Three, with Art working hard to protect Raylan, still recovering from the gunshot wound he received on the Bennett farm. Although Art casually tells a visiting colleague, “I’ve got one boy . . . who keeps finding himself in the middle of it,” in “Cut Ties,” he eventually reassures Raylan that new feelings of wanting to change jobs will “pass” (“Thick as Mud”). But perhaps Art’s most paternal act of the third season is his parlay with FBI Special Agent Jerry Barkley, which ends the FBI’s investigation of Raylan’s ties to Boyd. After Raylan thanks Art for his help in “Watching the Detectives” Art responds, “Remember that time I told you I didn’t think you were going to make it to retirement? I think it’s going to be me . . . Having you in this office is gonna give me a stroke.”
This playful banter only lasts so long, however. As the fourth season progresses and the search for Drew Thompson intensifies, Raylan’s reckless approach to law enforcement further damages his relationship with this “father,” perhaps to the point of no return. Raylan blatantly ignores Art’s warning to stay clear of the gangster Nicky Augustine, instead catalyzing the Theo Tonin-led assassination of Augustine, blown away in a flurry of bullets inside a darkened limo in “Ghosts.” This Art cannot forgive.
Rekindling Relationships
The fifth season narrative of Justified reveals a splintered, seemingly irreparable relationship between the two men. In “Kill the Messenger” Raylan finally confronts Art about their conflict, as the latter sits drinking in a bar (this “meeting” follows Raylan’s acknowledgment in “Shot All to Hell” that he knows who was present during the Augustine hit while failing to admit any personal responsibility). Art silently glowers at Raylan before punching him in the face and walking out of the bar.
Raylan, after failing the only man who truly cared, struggles with the aftermath, a reality where Art has given up on him. When Darryl Crowe shoots Art, who was protecting Raylan’s latest ex-lover at the time, Raylan makes it his solemn duty to avenge this action, even admitting to Darryl in “The Toll” that Art is “the one man who makes a difference to me.” By the end of the fifth season, however, after Art awakens from a coma, he informs Raylan that a transfer to Miami has been approved. Finally, Art may be freed from the “son” who so often disappoints him. This announcement may function as damnation, but this time, the rejection of the patriarch may be blamed on Raylan himself (“Restitution”).
A move to Miami would bring Raylan full circle back to the city he left for Harlan in the show’s first episode. More importantly, Winona and Raylan’s baby daughter live there, and the possibility of a reunion brings Winona to tears of happiness (and relief) in “Restitution.” But as Justified proves over its first five seasons, when a father has the opportunity to do the right thing, he almost never does.
While Raylan and Winona are divorced when the series begins, they rekindle their relationship during the first season, and it’s fairly clear that Winona is the love of Raylan’s life. As their renewed connection develops, Winona claims in “The I of the Storm” that she would divorce her husband, Gary, if she felt there was any way that she and Raylan could be happy, and eventually fantasizes about “lots of little Raylans running around with toy guns” (“Blaze of Glory”). And while it appears for a time that he may be willing to sacrifice his career to make Winona happy, particularly after she tells him that she is expecting their first child, Raylan cannot be counted over the long term as either a dependable partner or a dependable father.
After Winona steals the cash from the Marshal’s vault and Raylan helps her hide the act in a cover-up, Raylan concludes that he is not “an outlaw. I helped you because I’m in love with you.” His suggestion to Winona in “Debts and Accounts” that he would transfer out of Lexington is the first of many promises Raylan makes to his former wife that he simply refuses to keep. In “Bloody Harlan,” after discovering Winona’s pregnancy, Raylan claims that if his transfer doesn’t go through, “I’ll quit,” but that doesn’t happen either. Winona eventually leaves him after concluding that “I’m done trying to change who you are” (“Thick as Mud”), an eerily similar sentiment to that expressed by Art on several occasions as well.
Deadbeat Dads
After Winona’s move to Miami and his daughter’s birth, Raylan communicates with Winona primarily by Skype, the electronic communication a regular reminder of how (literally and figuratively) distant he is from his own progeny, even though he promises that “I’m going to be here for you and the baby” (“The Bird Has Flown”). In “A Murder of Crowes,” although he has the occasion to visit Winona and his new child since he’s been flown to Florida on Marshal business, Raylan decides to rush back to Kentucky instead.
He never explains why he chooses to miss an opportunity to bond with his new child, but fear of being an unfit father feels like logical reasoning for such cowardice. And while for a moment in the Season Five finale it appears that the couple may finally reunite in Florida after Art informs Raylan that his transfer has been approved, the conclusion of “Restitution” insinuates that the opportunity to finally nail Boyd in the show’s sixth and final season will most likely relegate Raylan to the role of deadbeat dad for the foreseeable future. He’s a man who refuses to prioritize his own parental responsibility, much like the other fathers in Justified, making Raylan both a broken father and a damaged son.
In A Family Affair, Metz argues that “the end result of the American Western narrative will remain stable, culminating in the noble and happy production of the normative family unit.” Justified challenges such utopian notions of familial harmony by presenting fathers and father-figures who ignore, mistreat, battle, or abandon their children. The major male characters in the series are emotionally ruined men who find themselves unable or unwilling to be loving fathers.
Throughout the series, the patriarchal leader fails to fulfill the duties of the role, suggesting that traditional Western definitions of masculinity and familial structures are open to question in the show’s narrative construction, making Justified a postmodern, baroque comment on fatherhood in the Western.