Justified: The Hunt

March 4, 2015 5:00 AM - Season 6, Episode 7

A visit from his baby daughter threatens to pull Raylan away from the hunt for a dangerous fugitive. Boyd takes Ava on a hunting trip where she spills the beans (no plate). And it's a bad day to be an EMT.
posted by Thorzdad (13 comments total)

The star of this episode, though, is the staff of stunt babies they had to have had on set in order to do the scene with Raylan and Winona trying to talk over a screaming Willa. My wife and I remarked how amazing it was that they managed to have the baby crying throughout the scene.

Also...Why did Boyd change clips in his gun after his conversation with Ava? The first clip appeared to be full, as was the second clip.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:24 AM on March 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Why did Boyd change clips in his gun after his conversation with Ava? The first clip appeared to be full, as was the second clip.

My guess was the first was empty or blanks or something (but I don't know enough about guns to know a full clip from empty). He's smart enough not to give a loaded gun to the woman who killed his brother.

A lot of this episode felt like filler, though. Mostly I was guessing if they were setting Raylan up for a happy ending or a tragic ending. He already had Miami and a baby waiting for him when he finishes this one last case, but now his ex-wife has completely changed her mind and will take him back too. I'm assuming he is also going to buy a winning lottery ticket right before he has to chase Boyd into a mineshaft.

The conversation between Art and Avery was quite good. As were the scenes with Avery's henchmen.
posted by Gary at 12:11 PM on March 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

I thought the first clip was empty (but I'm Australian, so..)

My feeling on the whole baby thing was that it was a tortured way for Avery to discover Raylan has a family - I can't think of any other reason why Avery would be in the Marshal's office, either, other than to see Raylan with a babbeh. I entirely expect Avery to kidnap wife'n'child and etc...
posted by coriolisdave at 2:42 PM on March 4, 2015

First clip was empty - shows black; second clip was full - shows brass cartridges. There's got to be a TVtropes entry for 'I hand you my (empty) gun to see what you'll do with it'.
posted by bartleby at 9:51 PM on March 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

As a person with a baby the same age as Willa, I am not surprised at all- the baby has stranger anxiety, so they placed her in the arms of a strange actress while her parent is just off camera- you can see the baby is just trying to claw her way towards her parent and away from the actress. NOT TO MENTION the bullshit Raylan-takes-the-baby-for-the-afternoon but doesn't take any milk with him? What? Or is my baby the only baby for which this would just be impossible?

Sorry.

I hope Wanda & Willa don't get kidnapped- they already went a very similar route when Wanda was pregnant.
posted by aabbbiee at 9:20 AM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

I assume they wanted to set up a parallel between Ava/Boyd and Raylan/Winona (and even Katherine/Avery) -- clearly the Ava/Boyd axis of trust/betrayal isn't settled, but I assume they wanted to tie off the Ava kiss scene neatly by completely telegraphing that Raylan was ready to be a daddy (because he had fun with a baby for all an afternoon!), since I expect the final eps aren't going to a leave a lot room for nuance regarding the home life. Fairly rote calm before the storm stuff.

I think there was also some desire to force resolution on Winona because no matter how much admiration I might have for Leonard, his women have a very cardboard foil aspect to them and her tortured I understand and accept you bit was just ugh. It's like reading a freshman seminar paper on Joseph Campbell. Everyone in Justified has to make peace with who Raylan really is for to everything to function just seems like a cop out.

Really appreciated the quality of baby wrangling / acting. That must have been hell to shoot.

And even though Justified has gone to great lengths proving that restraint on Winn's air time makes him all the better, with only a little time left, even a cut away of him just watching some tennis would have been appreciated.
posted by 99_ at 12:26 PM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

NOT TO MENTION the bullshit Raylan-takes-the-baby-for-the-afternoon but doesn't take any milk with him? What? Or is my baby the only baby for which this would just be impossible?

I'm assuming he didn't take the diaper bag either. If he had, I'm pretty certain we would have seen some Raylan-changes-a-poopy-diaper-in-the-us-marshall's-bathroom comedy relief.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:33 PM on March 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

First clip was empty - shows black; second clip was full - shows brass cartridges.

Thanks. I was watching on a small tv from bed and it wasn't legible to me. Of course, not being a gun guy, I obviously didn't know to look for that.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:36 PM on March 5, 2015

I thought there were a couple moments of Clueless-Raylan comedy relief in the hotel room.
He's holding a wadded-up diaper and starts walking it over to the wicker trash basket, then turns and gives Winona the 'Yes? No?' eyebrows. And the 'so you've got to take her to the ....OB?' 'Pediatrician'.
Those are either amusing 'at least you're trying' moments, or 'goddammit you're useless' moments, depending on Winona's patience level. So showing that she just let them go by without a remark or even a tone showed something of where Winona was at.
posted by bartleby at 1:56 PM on March 5, 2015

I'm not a woman with a baby and an unreliable man, but I thought Winona's speech was actually rather plausible, at least for television. It wasn't just a blanket 'I understand and accept you', as I was watching it (because I could see it coming and was preparing to groan at that kind of thing).
But her "I used to be unhappy with the Uncertainty of never knowing if one night you might not come home (getting killed being cowboy Raylan); now that I've left you, I'm unhappy with the Certainty, knowing that you'll _never_ be home. I've had these last six months to think about it, and I've decided I like the Uncertainty better." sounded pretty reasonable and well, Winona. (as well as pretty Elmore Leonard)

If you put that against Ava and Boyd as a parallel, Ava's in a much worse 'I never know when you might decide I'm a liability, murder me, and drop my corpse down a mineshaft'...
You've got Winona who might end up feeling betrayed and abandoned if Raylan gets himself killed, which is pretty likely.
You've got Ava, who is pretty likely to get killed, if Boyd ever feels betrayed or abandoned.
I know which bet I'd take.
posted by bartleby at 2:09 PM on March 5, 2015

Upon reflection, Raylan taking a daddy day and Tim shrugging off the manhunt doesn't seem very cute after the two paramedics got killed.

My feeling on the whole baby thing was that it was a tortured way for Avery to discover Raylan has a family

This, too. They know they don't have anything real to pin on Avery. So why are they wasting resources pulling him in? The only reason for that is if they also had cops searching the pizza joint while he was gone, but they didn't show us that. I also hope it doesn't come down to Avery threatening the baby because they already did that pretty well in season 4.
posted by Gary at 2:15 PM on March 5, 2015

i quite enjoyed the "demon baby" remark by Winona.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 11:56 PM on March 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I took issue with the wardrobe department's choice to put Winona in her work clothes while baby wrangling in the bathroom at Raylan's -- especially the white blouse. That blouse would be filthy in about a minute.
posted by hush at 9:43 AM on March 26, 2015