Justified: Season 4 Episode 9 – “The Hatchet Tour” Aired: March 5, 2013 Director: Lesli Glatter Writers: Taylor Elmore & Leonard Chang

“This is where I start to find out what’s what.”

– Raylan Givens

Raylan Givens has finally found Drew Thompson. Now, he just has to find him.

The revelation that Shelby is Drew Thompson played as rather anticlimactic, at least for me. I’m not sure why they tipped their hand last week, but between his conversation with Ellen May about living a lie and his conversation with Raylan about Eve Monro, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Shebly was Drew. It was so heavy handed, in fact, that I sort of expected him to be a red herring.

The baffling thing is why they had those scenes in there in the first place. What did it add? If the plan was to reveal Shelby this week, why not have it come out of left field instead of foreshadowing it in last week’s episode? Or, if you were intent on doing those scenes last week, why not just reveal him as Drew last week instead of stringing it out.

Instead, many of us were expecting Shelby to be revealed as Drew, so when he climbed into the back of the cruiser to talk to Hunter Mosley, it didn’t have the impact it should of. Hunter pausing before adding the “Drew” to punctuate his sentence actually made me roll my eyes.

That being said, I thought the rest of the episode worked really well. I especially liked everything with Raylan and Hunter Mosley. I really enjoyed the opening scene, with the bus pulling away to reveal Raylan leaning smugly against his car. (With the help of poor Deputy Dunlop, who was somehow unaware of Raylan and Mosley’s history.) I also liked their conversation at the end, with Raylan lying about his final conversation with Arlo and Mosley doing a surprisingly succinct job summing up Raylan by saying it’s Arlo’s voice in his head that drives everything he does.

In addition to that, there were a number of really great individual scenes that played almost like vignettes.

First, there was Raylan’s visit to Wynn Duffy’s Winnebago. Wynn’s confusion at having Mosley dropped off at his doorstep was great. I also enjoyed him trying to inject himself into the conversation about Raylan’s dog by talking about his own childhood pet. Perplexed Wynn Duffy is my favorite Wynn Duffy.

Then there was the return of Constable Bob. I could have watched an entire hour of him getting sassed by the drunken Lee Paxton. The shootout (and Bob finally getting to use his “go bag”) was great.

I also enjoyed Boyd and Ava getting to Pretty Woman the realtor by flashing the cash they were going to use to pay for the house. Much like when he legitimately tried to reinvent himself by becoming a preacher, I like the dynamic of Boyd trying to build a better life for his family and eventually gain acceptance as one of the elite. Of course, like the last time, I expect things to end horribly.

Finally, there was Tim’s subplot, in which he followed around Colt, looking for enough evidence to haul him in or enough justification to shoot him. We see that Tim isn’t so different from Raylan and is equally capable of having adventures that end with him and a swooning girl alone in a car together.

Outside of the Drew Thompson reveal, I thought it was a solid episode. And I’m still hopeful that know that we know who Drew Thompson is, things will really heat up. Now that Shelby is outed and on the lam, I’m hoping they have an exciting end game up their sleeve for the season.

And another thing …

• Constable Bob’s badassery convinced me to make my first animated gif, so enjoy …

• What does this revelation about Shelby mean for Ellen May? Obviously, she wasn’t in his house when Boyd snuck in there at the end, so it would seem like she is on the run with Shelby. I wonder how this will effect things going forward.

• We also learned that Shelby took the heat for Hunter back when they were partners, which is why he got kicked off of the force. That fleshes out his backstory a bit, but still doesn’t quite explain how he went from being Drew Thompson to a lawman.

• Does Shelby really not know who Wynn Dixie is or was he simply playing dumb in order to avoid suspicion?

• I’m enjoying the extra screen time Tim is getting this season, but I hope this doesn’t mean the show forgets about Rachel altogether. This week, Deputy Dunlop got more screen time than she did. But hopefully, they pay her back with her own multi-episode arc somewhere down the line.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his recaps, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.