Check out the snippets I picked out from TVFanatic.com and YourEntertainmentCorner.com‘s review of tonight’s episode. So far all I hear is great things. 🙂

Boyd was just fantastic in this entire episode, though. Between the cell phone to house phone call, stealing the crew’s cell phones and having Ava call one to give himself time to switch the bomb – and then shooting the bad guys that didn’t get everything but their feet blown up by the bomb, Mr. Crowder definitely got his groove back.

But the question remains: is Boyd for good or for evil? Yeah, he stopped those jerks from blowing up and robbing the mine, but he ended up killing the three of them and taking the money to give to Ava. When Ava asked him why he agreed to the job in the first place, Boyd responded: “Because it’s what I do. It’s who I am, Ava. As hard as I’ve been trying to pretend otherwise. Everybody else seems to know that but me.”

The man knows that he is a bad egg, he just didn’t want to believe it.

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I won’t go into detail about the exact moments leading up to the scheme Kyle (Michael Mosley) wrangles Boyd (Walton Goggins) into. You need to watch each moment because there are subtle details, which will inevitably play a larger role in future episodes. “Just remember your ABC’s – Always Be Cool.” ~ Boyd Crowder

The conversation between Boyd and Ava (Joelle Carter) afterwards is very telling.

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I highly recommend reading the full review of the episode over at HitFix, you can find the link below. It’s definitely worth the read.

And I remain floored by how the show has convincingly pulled off this transformation with Boyd in only a season and a quarter. I knew from “The Shield” what a great, charismatic actor Walton Goggins can be, but the Boyd of the pilot was so loathsome that it should feel like a cheat that he’s now someone we’re cheering for. But it doesn’t. You can’t forget the terrible things Boyd did before – which Kyle brings up in explaining why Boyd should be the one to kill the guard – but he’s trying another path now, his own twisted take on Raylan’s path, and one that’s likely to bring him together with Raylan’s ex, and Goggins and the writers are all making this work. He was so on fire throughout the episode, in fact, that I was willing to overlook just how dumb Kyle was to give so much responsibility – not just planting the explosives, but handling the money, etc. – to Boyd, which was the only way he was able to pull off the triple-cross.

Boyd’s ABC adventure was so compelling, in fact, that it would be easy to overlook how strong the rest of “Cottonmouth” was. But by putting the unrelated standalone stories on hold for a week, we got to spend a whole lot of time on the growing beef between Raylan and the Bennetts(*). And we got another glimpse of the cold, unapologetic ruthlessness of Mags, who barely paused for a moment – more out of fatigue than regret – after hammering Coover’s non-gun hand(**) before returning to talk more business.

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You can read the full review for ‘For Blood or Money’ over at TV Buzz.

Meanwhile, in the delightfully bucolic hamlet of Harlan, Boyd is (perhaps) contemplating a return to bank robbery. Walton Goggins keeps bringing layers to his performance that can seem sinister or sincere, sometimes in the same sentence. Although his relationship with Ava has turned out to be purely platonic, a tentative connection seems to be growing. Their easygoing conversation on the porch about wig styling and rock stars was truly charming. Of course, she did shoot his brother dead, so there’s that obstacle to romance.

Be sure to check out Brittany’s full recap & review of ‘For Blood or Money’ over at StarPulse.com

This is not to overlook the continually great work of Walton Goggins and Joelle Carter, who are slowly but steadily forming a very interesting relationship between their characters. Goggins is always good no matter what’s thrown at him, and the Ava Crowder character has grown on me in season two, principally because Carter has seized on the opportunity to make Ava more than a stubborn damsel in distress. She’s not constantly in trouble this season, and she’s exerting some serious authority this season; the two of them together are intriguing to watch, holding their own even as their characters are not directly involved in the major plotlines. While I can guess at what Boyd will do, it’s a testament to Walton Goggins that I know what I want him to do, and I honestly am torn about it.

It’s a testament to the quality of Justified. Even the characters not at center stage are still compelling, even if they’re only with us for a few minutes. Episodes that might be plot-advancing filler on any other show are so much more here. I never feel like I haven’t gotten something out of my forty-odd minutes. And that’s the kind of show that keeps me coming back, because I know that I’m always going to get something back in return.

Be sure to check out the entire review of 2×04 ‘For Blood or Money’ here at HitFix.com

Outside the main plot, the most interesting scenes involved, not surprisingly, Boyd. He remains a wildcard – it’s hard to say whether he’s actually considering the robbery scheme, or if he’s just trying to keep things calm for now – and Walton Goggins is such a compelling presence that I would just as happily watch an episode that was largely composed of Boyd and Ava chatting on the porch about hairdressing and “Of Human Bondage.” (An episode featuring just that and the drunken office scene would be a pretty huge stylistic departure, I know.) Goggins works as well with Joelle Carter as he does everybody else he’s paired with, and I’m wondering where to set the over-under on the episode in which he tries to make them be something more than just roommates.

For a guy who’s supposedly changed, you sound a lot like you always did.” -Dewey

One of the inherent advantages that a TV drama supposedly has over a movie is that characters can grow and change far more over many seasons than they can over the course of a two hour film. But what often fascinates me are the TV shows that choose, for one reason or another, to not let their characters change much, if at all. Sometimes it’s about preserving the status quo (“Dexter” for many years), sometimes about the show espousing a belief that people – real or fictional – aren’t capable of great change (“The Sopranos”), sometimes a combination of the two (the middle seasons of “House”).

With “Justified,” Raylan mainly is who he is. He might be capable of incremental change – being a mite slower to draw his gun just to avoid the paperwork, occasionally telling Winona how his day was – but he is who he is and his code is his code.

Boyd Crowder, on the other hand? He seems to change by the minute. But the key part of that sentence is “seems to.” As Raylan told us in the series pilot, Boyd has a history of trying on new identities as part of his usual pursuit of thrills. And because of that, there’s always this doubt – certainly for the other characters on the show, and to a lesser extent for those of us at home who get to see Boyd in his most private moments when he has no reason to role-play – of just how sincere his latest change is. Continue Reading →