Written by Ryan DeMarco
Sounding Plot Summary:
In “Sounding”, a frightened Ava (Joelle Carter) runs off with Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and an old source tries to track her down. Meanwhile Boyd (Walton Goggins) and his group try another method to cracking Avery Markham’s (Sam Elliot) safe.
Well, where to begin.
This week was sort of a mixed bag from Justified. It was sort of like eating a spare rib at a Chinese restaurant. Some small parts were good, but the rest was fatty and therefore useless. I loved the first three episodes of the season. Last week things cooled down which was fine, but this week was just a sinker.
Filler episodes are never a fun experience for me. It’s a waste of time for the writers and the audience really. Especially in the final season, the writers should be utilizing the characters as much as they can. Given there is about 10 episodes left of the show are the writers just stalling to stretch out the season? Whatever the reason I can allow it to pass this once, as I said some parts of this episode were enjoyable and that’s why I’m not completely writing off the episode as a waste.
Up until last night, all of the characters and their stories were filled with a lot of tension. I predicted that the wire was stretched to its limit and within the next few episodes we would experience the push that would cause the shit to hit the fan. Well that’s still coming, but this week took a little detour centering on Ava. When last we saw Ava she was having a girl’s day out with Katherine Hale (Mary Steenburgen) — which was fine and dandy if you’re into doing lines and stealing glass from jewelry stores. Glass is code for diamonds, so I learned from watching Reservoir Dogs. Anyways, towards the end of the outing, Hale briefly mentioned about the prison guard that dropped charges against Ava while she was in prison. Well that freaked Ava out so she left town scared for her life.
The Ava story was the entertaining due to the return of a couple classic characters. Ava goes to see Limehouse (Myketi Williamson) in order to safely get out of town. In return he wants some serious money, which he knows Ava has. Limehouse making his return seemed appropriate. Now that Ava has reached out to him I have no doubt that he will get stuck in this Avery Markham business as well. In what capacity I don’t know. Another call back was Constable Bob, played by the very talented Patton Oswald. Raylan reaches out to Bob in order to locate Ava since he happens to be good at that sort of thing.
Outside of the callbacks the story just wasted time, and ended on a peculiar note with Ava kissing Raylan. Her cards are still so close to the vest that we still don’t know who’s side she really on. Is she planning to try to work Raylan and Boyd so she can get away unscathed? From the looks of it that’s where I’d guess it’s leading. Yet again, all of the characters still haven’t exposed much more.
Boyd had a rather lame story this week. He and his crew sought out cousin Zachariah (Jeff Fahey), who basically showed them an old coal mining tunnel. Not sure how that will come into play, but it seems the find was a success for Boyd. Yay for whatever that means. Again, the writers won’t spill the beans on much.
Overall, ‘Sounding’ was a much slower episode than needed. This was just an hour of garbage that I would have otherwise chose to forgotten. If a fan missed this particular episode it’s no real emergency, just watch the “previously” segment before each episode. My hopes for next week is that we dig back deep in this whole Markham mess.
Rating 6/10
http://youtu.be/gx5twe-97E8
Justified airs every Tuesday night on FX.
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