Justified, Ep. 3.06: “When the Guns Come Out” avoids past mistakes and pre-empts new ones
Justified, Season 3, Episode 6: “When the Guns Come Out”
Written by Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Dave Andron
Directed by Don Kurt
Airs Tuesdays at 10pm ET on FX
I’m out adventuring in Chicago this week, so this week’s review is a little more curt than usual.
If Justified‘s second season had an agreed-upon nadir, it was pretty obviously the two-episode mini-arc involving a certain Winona Hawkins and the theft of some money from the county’s evidence locker. It was one of the few times on the show that it felt like drama had been artificially concocted rather than arising naturally from the characters and their conflicts. So when “When the Guns Come Out” opens with an unexpected callback to that plot, it’s a little surprising – are they really going back down this well? Thankfully, with the revelation that the guard is the one responsible for the theft (and apparently gets away with it!), we get confirmation that we’ll not see any such mistakes repeated.
