Justified Recap ‘Sounding’: The Black Damp

In the latest Justified recap, Ava’s had enough and she tries to run, Raylan goes on the hunt and Boyd calls on his Harlan roots to get at Avery Markham’s money….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

A large part of the final season of ‘Justified’ has been about moving the pieces in place for what will surely be the three-sided chess match of all time.

On one side there’s Raylan Givens and the U.S. Marshals service, determined to use all necessary means to bring down Boyd Crowder while the wild haired gangster sits on another side, trying to finally prove he’s capable of building a criminal empire all his own and then finally on the last side is weed kingpin Avery Markham, who wants to buy up all the land in Harlan so when marijuana becomes legal in the state of Kentucky, he’s ready to cash in with a whole new kind of cash crop.

Sitting somewhere in the middle with a blonde crown on her head is Ava Crowder, who seems like the real prize. She’s either wanted dead by her enemies, wanted for love by her fiancé or just wanted from her former beau and current handler after turning confidential informant.

The latest episode titled ‘Sounding’ is another episode where things continue to build without any real action taking place. It’s not a bad thing by any means. So many series out there try to rush into the explosions and buck shots and they fail to explain why things are blowing up or who is pulling the trigger. ‘Justified’ is about the long game this year because the end of this season is the end of everything. There’s no reason to leave any pawns on the playing board.

This final season of ‘Justified’ is about kings and queens and the last man standing. And rest assure my friends, when it’s all said and done, it’s hard to believe any more than one of those chess players will be alive when this series comes to an end.

Runner, Runner

Following a strange coke filled lunch date with Katherine Hale, Ava is spooked and ready to get the hell out of Dodge. Raylan can tell his No. 1 informant is scared so he sets up a road blocked disguised as a search for a missing fugitive so he can get some intel on Ava’s mental state. The cops say she looks shaken, but that’s not the least of what’s going on in that pretty head of hers.

The next morning Ava is a ray of sunshine cooking a full country breakfast for her man before she heads off to work. She even promises to cook some of her famous fried chicken for dinner in celebration of Boyd’s new plan of attack (one side note — considering she cooked this same fried chicken before killing his brother Bowman, I’m not sure he should be requesting that meal). It seems Boyd is more convinced than ever before that he can buy up all the land in town using funds he’ll steal from Avery Markham and then he can be the big swinging dick in the weed trade inside Harlan county. And the best part is if marijuana is legalized, so is his new business. How he gets there at that point is inconsequential.

The moment Boyd leaves the house, Ava decides her best move is to go on the run. She’s tired of lying to Boyd one minute and getting her strings pulled by Raylan the next. It’s time to move on. She calls Raylan to set up a meet, but instead tosses her phone out the window and drives on up the road.

So she calls up an old friend for assistance — enter Ellstin Limehouse, who returns to ‘Justified’ for the first time since season 4. He’s Ava’s only hope in finding an escape from Harlan County and getting out under the thumb of Raylan and out of the reach of Boyd once he finds out she was an informant. Limehouse agrees to help in exchange for a large sum of money Ava promises is hidden somewhere back in town. But to get her escape car, Ava has to lead his guy Errol to the money first.

Once Ava no shows the meeting, Raylan calls in some back up in the form of our favorite toy cop Constable Bob, who traded in some sealed ‘Star Wars’ figues and some other merchandise so he could upgrade his car to something more respectable. Raylan asks Bob to find Ava in town and when he does, the Marshal meets up with him outside a hardware store where she’s gone in with Ellstin’s boy Errol to do a little shovel shopping.

Raylan knows he needs to grab Ava without Errol ever seeing him because otherwise her cover is blown and this whole operation sinks like a stone. So he tells Bob to use his ‘badge and his balls’ to get Errol to step outside as a distraction so he can snag Ava from the back door. Well, Bob isn’t a real cop for a reason because as much as he tries, Errol isn’t going anywhere with him. Thankfully, Bob is a quick thinker and he decides to distract Errol the best way he knows how — by shooting him with a taser and knocking him unconscious.

Raylan grabs Ava, tells Bob to apologize to Errol when he wakes up and they are headed back to Harlan to take her home where she belongs. Of course everybody should know Ellstin Limehouse and his Nobles Holler crew aren’t going to be satisfied with an apology and coming home empty handed. Remember his warning to Ava just before sending her off with Errol to collect the money.

“So long as you ain’t playing me. That wouldn’t be wise.”
~ Ellstin Limehouse

He’s not done with Ava yet, and Limehouse will collect his payment or she’s going to pay in ways far worse than a little money.

Black Damp

One of the central themes of ‘Justified’ since the very beginning is the real occupation of many citizens of Harlan County, Kentucky via the coal mining industry. The entire premise of the show was based around Raylan and Boyd’s relationship as former friends after they mined coal together in Harlan many years ago. It’s a dark, damp and dangerous business, but one of the few that provides a steady income for the families around Harlan. It’s also one of the only businesses that continues to survive regardless of recessions because coal is a resource that this country requires like air no matter who has to suffocate to get it.

Boyd talks a lot of about suffocation when it comes to mining in this week’s episode as he takes a new course of action when discussing plans to go after Avery Markham’s millions in the basement of the Pizza Portal restaurant. His original strategy to go in the front door and rob them already blew up in his face (literally with pieces of Wiz still sticking to his clothes) so now Boyd is going to go through the back door.

Behind the Pizza Portal is an old mining shaft that’s been closed for years. Boyd wants to put his experience to work to dig back through the 187 yards that separates the opening of the mine and the safe inside the Pizza Portal to get at Markham’s $3 million dollars. Boyd tries to explain the dangers of this mining operation to his crew because while he grew up on Harlan coal, they never did. He mentions something called ‘black damp’, which is a mining term for carbon dioxide and nitrogen filling the air where oxygen no longer exists. As your lungs gasp for air and get filled with deadly gasses instead, it’s like drowning without ever feeling a single drop of water.

To get this job done, Boyd is going to need to some experienced help, but the only man for the job is a man named Zachariah Randolph.

“That’s Ava’s uncle. He and the other Randolph’s never did forgive my deceased brother Bowman for how he treated Ava.”
~ Boyd

Boyd tries to coax Zachariah into listening to him with a bottle of Kentucky’s finest bourbon, but all that earns him is a trip to the front porch without getting shot. Finally, Boyd calls in the big guns — he offers Zachariah $10,000 just to hear him out. Zachariah concedes and even offers to help after hearing about the plan, but only because he thinks the mine shaft is probably going to cave in and kill Boyd in the process.

At the opening of the mine shaft, Boyd has his guys cutting through the steal door that sealed the hole up years ago. Unfortunately, metal cutting through metal results in sparks and when there’s methane seeping up to the surface just begging to find a way out, an explosion or two will happen. Boyd’s guys are nearly blown to bits, but once they find out everyone is whole, he turns his attention the big hole that leads down into the mine shaft that will hopefully help them take Avery Markham’s money before he ever knows what hit him.

Zachariah teases Boyd that he promised during his last trip down a mine shaft that he would never go in one again without a proper sounding. That means, testing or knocking on a roof to see if it’s stable enough to work under. Boyd is already operating with an anvil hanging over his head and now he might just be walking into a 187 yards of unstable Earth just begging to cave in on him.

A Charging Locomotive

What started out as an exciting enterprise to buy up all the farm land around Harlan County has quickly turned into turmoil as all the land owners targeted by Avery Markham have suddenly stopped selling. Little do they know Boyd Crowder sent all his boys around town to make sure the owners were well aware that they are not to sell to anyone but him. As scary as Ty Walker or even Mundo (aka the human choo-choo) are at times, the town of Harlan is always more worried about the devil they know and around these parts, Boyd Crowder is the man.

Walker knows he’s in trouble with the boss after the latest set of families turned down their offer and all Seabass can do is sit there and look concerned while Mundo is more worried about the head waitress at the restaurant skimming $40 a night from the register. When Markham arrives, Walker goes to talk to him while wondering if he’ll walk back up from the basement with a job or even his life.

He informs Markham that the land owners are officially not selling and there’s only two people in town with the kind of weight to keep them from taking their piles of cash — it’s either Marshal Raylan Givens or Boyd Crowder. Of course, Markham knows those are two entirely different kinds of problems that require different solutions so he tells Walker to find out how somebody knows the exact land owners in town they are trying to buy out.

Walker sends Seabass and Mundo to brace shady realtor Calhoun, who was just about to slip away from the weekend with his paid escort. When Seabass and Mundo arrive, they sit Calhoun down in a chair and regale him with tales about what they learned about torture while working at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In particular, Seabass tells him the story about one particular inmate who got beat on for seven days straight before finally giving up the information they needed. He could have saved himself all the pain if he just told them in the beginning.

So Seabass starts out the process by having Mundo give him a ‘starter tap’. The problem is Seabass forgets who he’s dealing with because Mundo doesn’t have slow, medium and high speed. He only has one speed. Full steam ahead. And when his punch not only knocks Calhoun out, but knocks him dead, this dynamic duo is going to have a lot of explaining to do to Mr. Markham when they get back to the Pizza Portal.

Poor Little Fekus

Following a lunch meeting with Ava that leads Katherine to even more suspicion about her exit from jail, she puts Wynn Duffy on the case to track down Albert Fekus, the guard who accused her of stabbing him only to recant months later, which led to her release from prison. Katherine is in a foul mood — so much so that she threatens to stick her grandkids in a closet for making too much noise. Wynn isn’t doing much better despite his best efforts to relax with a game of Scrabble played with Mikey. He looks so aplexed after the game is over, but he has bigger issue to deal with right now like tracking down Albert and finding out why he changed his statement in the first place.

Luckily for Albert, Tim and Rachel get to him first and set him up in a hotel room conveniently placed where he can be discovered by Wynn and Mikey and they can keep an eye on everything from the next room over.

Wynn questions Albert ad nauseam about his involvement in Ava’s imprisonment and subsequent release. When Mikey presents a cattle prod as motivation, Albert still refuses to say anything more than he changed his mind because he loved Ava and couldn’t stand to see her suffer any longer. Finally after about the 10th strike with the cattle prod, Wynn is convinced and they leave the room to report the good news back to Katherine.

Tim and Rachel applaud Albert for standing up under pressure and it seems Ava’s secret is safe for at least another day.

Salvation

Raylan returns Ava to her house after picking up the necessary groceries to make Boyd his fried chicken dinner because anything less would raise yet another suspicion. She’s done everything in her power to convince Boyd she’s on the level. From seducing him in bed to accepting his ring back around her finger and still Ava’s paranoia keeps her from ever truly feeling safe.

She wants some kind of security blanket once this whole thing is over and that means a one-way ticket out of the country and $100,000. Raylan says she’s better off asking for $50,000 because that much she might actually score.

Ava’s fear is only trumped by Raylan’s need to protect her. What started out as a cold relationship between two former lovers predicated on Raylan’s desire to put Boyd away by any means necessary has now drawn him closer to Ava than he ever expected. It seemed at first as if she was just another expendable weapon for him to take Boyd down, but now Raylan is fighting tooth and nail to make sure Ava comes away from this entire situation whole.

Maybe for the first time since this whole ordeal started, she’s noticing Raylan actually cares and he’s showing his hand. It’s almost like the day he showed back up in Harlan after she shot and killed her husband Bowman and he promised nothing bad was going to happen to her. The moment gets to the both of them and Ava leans in for a kiss and Raylan doesn’t exactly pull away. The buzz of a phone means Boyd is on his way home, but Raylan turns and tells Ava that he’s going to stick around for a little while longer before he leaves. Does that mean he wants another kiss before exiting? Does he just want to make sure Ava doesn’t bolt the minute he’s out the door? Or is Raylan really concerned that Boyd is onto Ava and he needs to make sure she sees tomorrow?

Whatever the case may be, things just got a lot more complicated.

Best Lines of the Night:

Maybe Scrabble isn’t your game, Mikey? Then again I bet money I use the word aplex in conversation sometime in the next month.

Wynn: “I’m pretty sure aplex isn’t a word, Mikey”
Mikey: “Of course it is. I don’t like that guy, he aplexes me.”

Mikey: “You okay? You look aplexed.”

Mundo is onto the skimming waitress stealing a whole $40 a night from the register!

Seabass: “Hey maybe the bartender is the one interfering with us buying those properties”
Mundo: “You think?”
Seabass: “No”

No words are necessary for this one.

Raylan: “You got a badge and a set of balls don’t ya? There you go. Use those.”
Bob: “Hell yeah I got a badge and I got balls like Death Stars.”

Mundo don’t pull punches, didn’t you know that?!?

“You want him slapped like a little girl, you do it. You ask me, he gets Amtraked.”
~ Mundo

Tune in next Tuesday night for the next episode of ‘Justified’ at 10pm on FX where Ellstin Limehouse starts looking for his payoff after Ava left him in the lurch.