Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

ELMORE LEONARD – TIMOTHY OLYPHANT – JUSTIFED – 2010- . . .

THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON – 2010

This second season does not bring the big surprise we could have expected. The Bennett family who have been controlling Harlan County for two or three generations, this Bennett family being in the hands of the mother, with no father available, but with three sons the mother uses as her direct servants and hit men, let’s say slaves in crime because that is what it is, this family,has to come to an end one day and generally it happens with a lot of pain and suffering.

Why does it have to come to an end?

Because the power of this family is based on crime: illegal cultivation of marihuana at a very high level, grand style and all, for tremendous amounts of money. Because the power of this family is reinforced by one son who is the local sheriff and has turned the local police force into a gang to enforce and reinforce the power of and the decisions of the mother. Because the other two sons are plain criminals and nothing else, killing for fun and torturing for kicks. Because some company from outside decides that the tremendous amount of coal that is hidden in these Kentucky mountains has to be taken out and the Bennett family is an obstacle to this industrial venture and has to be either bought, or even bribed, or eliminated. Since the sons are die-hard criminal minds there is no other way but to eliminate them, and get rid of the mother.

The agents of that cleansing mission will be the Deputy US Marshall Raylan Givens from the Givens family, a rival family to the Bennetts, and the Crowders, another rival family to the Bennetts. Raylan is the only one who is on the side of more or less legal means, the use of force if it is justified. The other members of these two families are on the side of justice for themselves, vengeance for their dead, revenge for their businesses and lives. So they want the Bennett empire to be split up into pieces and the viable pieces to be entrusted, or recuperated, by them. 

So the brothers have to go one after another. One is shot dead by a girl he tried to molest and whose father he had killed, the second ends up in prison, the third, the local sheriff, ends up badly too and the mother has her own fate on her own hands. The chief of a tribe, or a clan, of a gang deserves some modest reward in their ends, in this case her end, face to face with Raylan.

The details you’ll have to get from the 13 episodes, but we knew from the very beginning that this second season was the end of the monstrous criminal corrupt dictatorship or a dumb mother and her three slaves of sorts, and sons by name.

There are tricky moments to eliminate secondary corrupt dummies, and some sensitive moments about the girl whose father was assassinated by the Bennetts. There are also some surprising moments concerning the two female characters, Raylan’s ex-wife who became his new girl friend, and his high school lover of sorts who is connected to one of the last surviving Crowders. Not to speak of Raylan’s step mother he calls his aunt. A very strong woman but to be strong is nearly a disadvantage when confronted to unethical criminals.

But I am sure you will enjoy the suspense. At the end, which could have been the end of the series, Raylan has applied for some promotion out of Kentucky or the Marshall service, he has just learned some good news about his ex-wife and we do not know what will happen. That’s not a cliff hanger but that will be a new start next season.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU