The Justified: City Primeval Roundup is a weekly recap feature where we take the various people, places, and things from the new limited series and score them on a scale from one to five cowboy hats. We play fast and loose with the rules here, similar to the way Raylan Givens handles an investigation. A real loose cannon situation over here.
EPISODE FOUR — “KOKOMO”
Getting your leg crushed by your own huge metal panic room door
Real tough stretch for this mob-adjacent Albanian hot dog tycoon who thought he was about to get married to a pretty blonde casino hostess and ended up getting his lower leg smushed like a pretzel rod by the massive metal door in his own panic-room-slash-man-cave by the actual boyfriend he thought was her brother. I mean, think about the worst day you’ve had recently. Can you top this one? I sincerely hope not. Poor guy woke up in love and ended the day heartbroken and legbroken in a Detroit hospital with a mob war breaking out over it. Kinda puts your own troubles in perspective a little bit.
Getting your teeth extracted with pliers by a pair of Albanian henchmen
Some notes:
- Also not ideal
- If a pair of pliers-wielding Albanian henchmen were holding me hostage and threatening to yoink my teeth out of my face with something they pulled out of a rusty toolbox, I would probably not talk quite as much trash as Sandy’s roommate did when they were looking for her to get to Clement Mansell
- “Rusty Toolbox” would be a great name for like a professional bass fisherman
Moving on.
Getting dangled off the roof of a multi-level casino parking garage
Are you picking up on the theme here? I can spell it out for you if not: This was a very bad week to be associated with Sandy Stanton. The people she lives and/or works with are getting roughhoused by the Albanian mob because the Albanian goof she tried to hustle got his leg mangled by her psycho boyfriend. The lesson here is pretty straightforward: If you see Sandy Stanton, at a casino or at your hot dog stand or really just anywhere, turn around and run in the opposite direction.
Clement Mansell
This is unfair. I’m not being fair. I’ve watched the first few episodes of the show and I just can’t make myself dig this character. Not as much as I want to, at least. And I can’t tell if it’s the fault of the show or if I’m just holding him to a borderline unreasonable standard of previous Justified villains. Clem is smart and crazy and violent and chaotic and basically like if the Joker were from Oklahoma, but I miss the country eloquence of dudes like Boyd and Limehouse. Maybe I’ll feel differently as we keep going. But right now I kind of just want someone to hit him with a hammer a little bit.
Sandy Stanton
Sandy is in way too deep. It’s her own fault, really. She had outs and options along this route. Lots of them, probably. But she liked the action and she liked the danger and now she’s an accomplice in Albanian leg crunching and responsible for former friends getting amateur dental work done in their apartment. She’s almost definitely about to get fired from the casino, just on account of those goons roughing up her boss. Bosses hate that. And one of the two Albanian henchmen who spent the episode scouring Detroit for her is now dead at the hands of a Detroit cop who is somehow more trigger-happy than Raylan, which will not help her cause at all.
There are very few situations where any of this ends up working out great for Sandy Stanton.
Raylan Givens
Raylan:
- Is meeting with high-ranking organized crime figures and throwing his weight around a little bit
- Is actually behaving kind of like a real lawman instead of a cowboy, which is a change I’m going to chalk up in equal parts to 1) maturing a little bit as he grows into the role of father, and 2) not having decades of contentious personal history with the people and places he is policing
- Is drinking expensive bourbon in cars with high-powered defense attorneys he is kind of trying to protect but also kind of making googly eyes at
We’ll come back to this last one.
Willa Givens
ON ONE HAND: Nowhere to be seen, mostly on account of Raylan shipping her back home after Clement showed up at the hotel and put his arm around her. This is a bummer for a few reasons, with the main one being how fun it is to occasionally watch Raylan get thwarted by a teenage girl who could not be less impressed with his whole deal.
ON THE OTHER HAND: She is in Miami. Which is probably better than being in Detroit. I kind of hope the next episode just halts the action temporarily and follows her as she does little schemes and scams in Coconut Grove. That would be fun.
Sweety
Sweety is my favorite criminal on the show so far. He seems like an okay dude, too, at least as far as “dudes who are all tangled up with psychopath serial killers and are currently in possession of both a murder weapon and a crooked judge’s ledger of crimes and/or bribes” go. I hope he and Carolyn team up to help Raylan put Mansell away and I also hope his bar starts hosting fun events like a doggy beauty contest or maybe even a bunch of wild bachelorette parties. I don’t know. I just like him. I do not consider any of this unreasonable.
Carolyn Wilder
Carolyn has problems, man. She wants to be a judge but she’s facing a double whammy of hurdles that includes “her scoundrel former partner did shady financial stuff that has her in a very bad spot that looks very bad in a judicial review” and “the murderers she defends keep kind of threatening her.” Goons are tailing her on the orders of mob bosses. Her clients keep putting their gross feet on her desk. None of it is going super great but she seems to be handling it all pretty well. Lanky fellas in cowboy hats showing up at her office and home helps a little. If only for a little thrill.
I hope we get to see her in court someday. I bet she gives a powerful closing argument. And I bet she’s really good at slamming the desk and shouting “OBJECTION.” These are important lawyer things.
Kokomo
Is it the best Beach Boys song? No.
Is it kind of corny when deployed by some beach-themed bar in some landlocked town in the hopes of providing shore-adjacent vibes? Kind of.
Am I bringing any of this up just to remind you all that John Stamos plays the drums in the music video for the song and has a really incredible story about how he met The Beach Boys? Yes.
“I never even dreamed of meeting the Beach Boys, let alone playing with them,” he told an astounded Kelly Clarkson. The actor/musician, who was then appearing on “General Hospital,” attended one of the band’s concerts, where his friend was playing guitar. But he got recognized — and chased, and ended up hiding backstage where he ran into the band.
“The show was over; they were still going to do the encore,” he related. “And these cheerleaders chased me (backstage) and (band co-founder) Mike Love turns to my friend and says, ‘Who’s that?’ And he says, ‘That’s John Stamos; he’s on ‘General Hospital’ and always has girls chasing him.’ And Mike Love, without missing a beat, says, ‘Get him onstage.’”
As Stamos recalled, he took the stage to play with the band on their 1965 hit “Barbara Ann,” and the rest is history. “It’s over 34 years now, something like that,” he said.
As far as stories go, “I became friends with the Beach Boys while fleeing and hiding from lust-crazed cheerleaders” is a pretty good one to have in your pocket.
Robes
One of my great dreams in life is to become a Robe Guy. I don’t see it happening. I don’t think I have the right energy for it. And there’s not much creepier than a dude with bad robe energy trying to pull off a robe. Especially a daytime robe. Things can really go south quickly if you’re not making it work. I have a lot of opinions about robes, it turns out.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll become a Robe Guy someday. It’s nice to have goals.
High-ranking organized crime figures who go on long monologues about the difference between order and justice
I always like to picture these guys practicing speeches like this in the mirror. Possibly while wearing a robe. I swear I’ll stop talking about robes soon. Probably. Maybe.
The series of increasingly smoldering looks Raylan and Carolyn are shooting at each other
