Saying Raylan Givens
has daddy issues is a vast understatement.

Raylan’s father is a criminal who works with the man Raylan is trying to apprehend, Boyd Crowder. Season three’s finale made it abundantly clear that Arlo Givens has chosen Boyd over Raylan. Arlo now views Boyd as his only family.

Playing Arlo on Justified is Raymond J. Barry, an accomplished stage actor and former standout athlete. We talked to Barry about last night’s finale, his work in the theatre and the Fosbury Flop.

How did you get into acting? When did you decide it’s what you wanted to do for a living?

I was attending Brown University and a professor approached me about being in a play. The play was William Inge’s Picnic. They were looking for a football player to play the part of Hal, who apparently was an ex-football player who had gotten old. The part was played by William Holden in the film of Picnic.

I was so blindsided by his request. I said, “I don’t know anything about theatre” and I said, “I don’t think so.” The idea of being up in front of an audience and acting was completely foreign to me.

Long story short, I kept on having conversations with him in a place where people had coffee. He invited me to audit one of his classes. I did so and next thing I knew I took one of his classes and I became interested in what they were doing. Not so much, but somewhat interested because my mother was an artist and my grandfather was sculptor. My mother was also a published writer, so there was an artistic bent in the family. I had an uncle who was a concert pianist. My sister was a painter. There was a lot of creativity in my family.

I was the jock. But I was smart enough to go to a place like Brown University. I was in the play and I was not very good in it. All the football players came to see me in it and laughed their asses off. It was ridiculous to see me up there trying to act.

Long story short, I did another play after that and the same professor, whose name is Jim Barnhill, asked me if I’d be interested in applying to Yale Drama School after I graduated from Brown. I was a philosophy major at Brown. So I applied. I was interested enough to apply. They accepted me and during the interim of the summer, I studied with Uta Hagen and Bill Hickey at Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City. By that time, I was completely committed to it and interested in learning how to act.

Actually, my interest in athletics in high school and college – I also was on the track team and I played two years of basketball at Brown – that was my first performance in front of audiences. I could perform. And there were crowds of people watching games and I was used to that. But I didn’t have to speak. That’s the difficult part when it comes to acting.

When did you start feeling like an actor? When did you feel comfortable getting on stage and talking in front of people?

I think probably somewhere in the vicinity of age 30 I began to recognize that this was my commitment and this is what I was going to be. I wasn’t at ease with myself on stage. That took a long time. But I knew I was going to hang in there at that time.

By that time I had worked with the Open Theatre, Joseph Chaikin’s company, and I had been traveling all over Europe performing. We performed in places like Algeria, Israel, Paris, London. I was doing 200 performances a year by that time with the Open Theatre and I still wasn’t what I would consider skilled at what I was doing, but I was becoming seasoned by putting my hand in the fire.

There were times when I felt I was good at what I was doing and there were times when I felt I wasn’t. It was only when I began to not care if I was good or bad that I became pretty proficient at acting. But that takes a long time.

At what point did television come into your career? And do you still primarily consider yourself a stage actor with television gigs thrown in sporadically?

That’s an interesting question. I just finished an eight-week run of my own play. I write plays and I perform in them. I did the same play for five weeks in New York at the Theatre for the New City. I do both for different reasons. I make my living from doing television. I’ve been doing the FX series Justified for three years. Now they’ve committed to a new season, so I’ll be doing it for a fourth year.

So my income comes from doing film and television. It’s a very modest income working on stage, unless you’re on Broadway, which I’ve done upon occasion. I guess I’ve done about four Broadway plays. But you can’t count on being on Broadway in terms of income. So I greatly appreciate the film and television work and I enjoy it and it does require skill and you do have to be calm inside. It requires a kind of center. You have to know what you’re doing.

Theatre is another animal. It’s blue collar work. You sweat. It’s uncomfortable at times. At times it’s euphoric. You’re out there for one and a half hours to two hours and there are no retakes. It’s tough work and you get sweaty and dirty and you’re not paid very much. But it makes you very tough in your head.

You mentioned Justified. How were you cast as Arlo Givens and how was the role originally described to you?

They gave me the role. I didn’t have to audition. By that time, I had enough work under my belt that they could just give people my tape. I think somebody fought for me. I don’t know who. There was a woman. I don’t remember her name.

But the process of getting the role was like water off of a duck’s ass. I didn’t have to do anything except a lifetime of work. They looked at tapes of things I had done, like Born on the Fourth of July, Dead Man Walking, Interview with the Assassin. Another thing that helped also was that I had done a rural character in a movie called Walk Hard. Since the character is rural, I think the parallel between the two characters helped a great deal.

And generally, I think what has happened over the decades is I’ve established somewhat of a good reputation. I don’t waste people’s time. I know the lines. I’m dependable. I give a decent performance. They know that they’re not going to waste all kinds of money waiting for me to say the right words. I’m dependable.

I gravitated to the role immediately. I liked what they had written for me, particularly the first season. It’s been a pretty simpatico relationship between myself and the producers since I’ve been working on it.

Continue reading this post

Similar Posts:

• Justified – “Slaughterhouse”: Bringing a knife to a gun fight
• Boob Tube Breakdown – Justified: The best two pumps of your life
• Boob Tube Breakdown – Justified: Everybody wants to rule the world
• Justified – What a tangled web we weave

“I ain’t my father and I don’t care to be confused with him.”

- Raylan Givens

Last week we ended with a car bomb explosion and the shooting of Officer Tom. So when I saw that the finale was entitled “Slaughterhouse,” I couldn’t help but wonder if we were in for a big ol’ shootout in Harlan.

It was an episode surprisingly light on its body count. There was no big gunfight between Boyd’s crew and Limehouse’s crew on the bridge. Errol is given his walking papers instead of a bullet. Most of the major characters – good and bad – come out of this one alive.

Instead of a metaphorical slaughterhouse, we got a literal one. The climatic battle between Quarles, Limehouse and Raylan came to a head inside Limehouse’s slaughterhouse and Bobby met a gruesome end. He was – as Raylan later put it – disarmed and left to bleed out on the floor after making the same miscalculation that Raylan did earlier in the episode. He underestimated just how protected Limehouse is on his home turf – which is turf he doesn’t leave very often.

Errol got to redeem himself by coming back and making the save. Raylan and Limehouse were able to put their differences aside for the time being, leaving their conflict to simmer until next season. And Quarles got the gruesome fate he so richly deserved as the gun up his sleeve proved no match for Elstin’s meat cleaver.

That scene also provided us with the episode’s biggest twist. We discover that it wasn’t Quarles who shot Officer Tom. It wasn’t Boyd either. Instead, it was Arlo Givens, looking to protect the man he now considers his son. As Raylan heart-wrenchingly explains to Winona at the end of the episode, all Arlo knew when he was pulling the trigger was that he was shooting a man in a hat to protect Boyd. For all he knew, he could have been murdering his real son to protect his newly-adopted one. Once confronted, Arlo confesses to the murder, taking the rap for Devil’s killing as well in order to protect Boyd once again.

In case you missed it, we have an interview up on the site today with Raymond J. Barry, who plays Arlo. Here’s his take on Arlo’s loyalty to Boyd:

Why do you think he has that loyalty to Boyd?

He is transferring his emotions in a very paternal fashion. You could even argue that he’s substituting Raylan with Boyd. Boyd has become his surrogate son to some degree. That again is connected with some kind of frailty of the mind, a kind of dementia.

We’ll see what comes of that. I’m going to jail now, starting the fourth season. I just confessed to two murders. I shot a cop and I admitted to killing Devil. I don’t know if that’s true or not. It could be a big cover up, just to protect Boyd.

He keeps on repeating in that episode, “I had to protect Boyd.” He says that over and over again. One could argue that possibly the reason he’s confessed to these murders is just to protect his surrogate son. And we shall see.

Arlo isn’t the only one to choose Team Boyd over Team Raylan. Ava, who shot Boyd’s brother, helped Raylan put a bullet in Boyd’s chest in the series pilot and dated Raylan throughout season one, is now happily in love with Mr. Crowder. (Luckily for her, if they get married, she won’t even have to change her last name again.) The two warmly embrace in the marshals office once he’s released from custody.

That isn’t the only plunge into darkness Ava makes in this week’s episode. She killed the last owner of Audrey’s for getting too rough with the girls. She saved Ellen May’s life and took over running the whorehouse in order to ensure the ladies there had a boss who didn’t mistreat them. And yet, this week she’s the one roughing up Ellen May in order to protect her own interests. Quite an interesting transformation. Also, poor Ellen May, she just can’t catch a break.

It was a strong season finale and one that gives us plenty of options for next season. Arlo and Dickie Bennet are both in jail, which means Papa Givens has a chance to get his revenge for the death of Helen. Boyd and Limehouse are both still out on the street and have officially decided to sever their ties to one another. Wynn Duffy is still in the mix, though he now seems to be a man without a country, unless Theo Tonin decides to send someone else to be his boss (since Tonin didn’t trust Duffy enough to give him the promotion). Plus, we found out that Johnny is feeding information to Limehouse, which means he could be in for a fate similar to Devil’s.

And though they left a lot open for next season, the death of Quarles and the revelation that Arlo was Tom’s killer made for a strong finale.

Overall, it was another strong season on a show that has really hit its groove. I’m excited to see what happens next.

And another thing …

• He may not have been Mags, but Neal McDonough did a great job playing Robert Quarles this season. I’ll miss all of the jokes about his distinct look, I’ll miss the gun hidden up his sleeve and, most of all, I’ll miss the crazy.

• Theo Tonin certainly spends a lot of time lounging by the pool, doesn’t he? Being the boss must be nice.

• Shelby tells Boyd they are now even after he tips him off about the Devil investigation. I wonder if it means the new sheriff won’t be in Boyd’s pocket next season.

• Rest in peace, Trooper Tom.

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.

Similar Posts:

• One on One with Raymond J. Barry
• Boob Tube Breakdown – Justified: The best two pumps of your life
• Boob Tube Breakdown – Justified: Everybody wants to rule the world
• Justified – What a tangled web we weave

“I told you just to kill him.”

- Wynn Duffy

Last week, everyone was trying to track down Robert Quarles to collect the bounty from the Tonin family and to officially get the Carpetbagger out of the picture. At the end of that episode, (soon to be former) Sheriff Napier sent Quarles into Boyd’s trap and Boyd held him captive at Audrey’s while he and Wynn Duffy awaited the opportunity to turn him over to Tonin and collect the bounty.

That quest made for strange bedfellows, but this week we get an even more bizarre coalition (in an episode fittingly titled “Coalition”). Limehouse’s man Errol convinces Dickie Bennett to recruit Boyd Crowder in his quest for the lost Bennett fortune.

Both of these coalitions – the “Coalition to Kill Quarles” and the “Coalition to Rob Limehouse” – end up being unsuccessful. At the end of the episode, Quarles is still on the loose and the $3.2 million is safe with Loretta, who has had it all along. Both coalitions fail because these characters underestimate their opponents.

Boyd – who is usually a master strategist – somehow thinks it’s wise to keep Quarles locked up with Kat, Minerva and Jimmy, three Audrey’s employees who are no match for Bobby. Within five minutes, he has a shotgun in his hands and the two girls too stoned to stop him. It doesn’t take long for him to leave the three of them chained up while he is back out on the street.

Boyd gave his whole “carpetbagger” speech to Quarles earlier this season, warning him not to underestimate the locals he was looking to fleece. But it’s Boyd who underestimates Quarles this week, despite warnings from Wynn Duffy to just kill him and take half the bounty.

Quarles is a loose canon. And right now he’s too drugged out to be at the top of his game. He’s also burned every bridge he had in Detroit and in Harlan County. But he’s still a dangerous and manipulative man. We’ve seen him talk down a male prostitute with a gun pointed at his face. We’ve also seen him kill two drug dealers in their own home. With Kat and Minerva, he manages to be charming and seem like harmless fun, but the second their guard is down, he flips a switch and overpowers them, earning his freedom.

The Coalition to Rob Limehouse also fails, but it turns out to be doomed from the start. There was never any money to steal. The whole thing was a plan by Limehouse to get rid of Dickie Bennett, Boyd Crowder and Robert Quarles in one fell swoop. but Limehouse also underestimates his adversaries, causing things to fall apart.

For one thing, his plan doesn’t account for Raylan, who figures out the whole thing is a setup from the jump and isn’t going to let Limehouse walk out of this unscathed like he’s hoping to. He also underestimates Boyd, who is suspicious and demands Errol go into the vault with him, which Errol refuses to do. And Quarles doesn’t show up at the bank because he’s too drugged out and flaky these days to follow through with a plan.

Limehouse settles for getting Dickie arrested by sending him to Loretta’s house, then tipping off Raylan about it. Raylan is there when Dickie busts through the door and is able to throw him back in jail for a variety of charges. This move gets rid of one threat to Limehouse’s holler and gets Raylan off his back, but Boyd is now onto Limehouse’s plan and Quarles is still out there as another threat, so he and his people are still very much exposed.

While Limehouse’s Plan B works, Boyd’s Plan B fails. Wynn Duffy lets Quarles get to Boyd’s bar, waiting to see if they’ll take each other out before detonating the bomb they planted in Quarles’ car. Quarles ends up en fuego, but he manages to shoot Tom and fight his way out of the chaos before Raylan can get to him.

It was an incredibly exciting penultimate episode and one that set things up nicely for the finale. I like the strange team ups we’ve had this season. It’s also been a fairly unpredictable ride. With one episode left, I would assume Limehouse and Quarles end up either dead or in jail and Boyd lives to fight another day, but I think things are still up in the air. Limehouse could survive, Quarles could flee to return next season or Boyd could end up getting charged with Tom’s shooting and could spend next season in jail with Dickie.

Also, the question of who takes down who is an intriguing one. I think Raylan will get to put a bullet in Quarles, who attempts to make good on his threat to shoot the marshal, but maybe not. Maybe Detroit or Boyd gets him first. Same for Limehouse – maybe he gets arrested or maybe he gets a bullet.

They’ve given themselves quite a few options. I’m excited to see how it all plays out.

And another thing …

• The fact that Loretta has the money changes your opinion of Limehouse, doesn’t it? We knew he was lying to Dickie about the whereabouts of the money, but knowing he did it to respect Mags’ wishes and to protect Loretta shows he is still an honorable criminal.

• The scene where Arlo talked to an imaginary Helen seemed like a bit of a departure for the show. It been a very linear show that tries to be as grounded in reality as possible, so seeing things the way Arlo seems them inside his head was a bit jarring to me.

• First Tom misses his kid’s t-ball game, then he catches a bullet in the parking lot of Boyd’s bar. That’s definitely a rough night for him. (Seriously though, I hope he survives. I like Tom.)

• I giggled quite a bit at the Platoon-Cocoon mix up.

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.

“That bear poked me.”

- Robert Quarles

Last week, we saw Robert Quarles come unhinged. After Boyd Crowder outmaneuvered him in the sheriff election, Quarles started popping pills and ended up threatening to kill the good Marshal Givens.

This week, everyone is working to get Quarles out of the picture. But with everyone tracking the same man, it ends up being a much messier pursuit than it should be. Raylan, teaming up with Art, ends up pursuing the two Detroit hitmen sent by Theo Tonin to take care of Quarles. We also get some strange bedfellows in Boyd Crowder, Wynn Duffy and Sheriff Napier, who end up working together to take down Quarles. Napier sends him to Audrey’s, where Boyd is waiting with an ambush and Wynn, looking to earn favor with Detroit, offers to go in on the bounty with Boyd.

Team Crowder ends up with a naked, chained Quarles by the end of the episode. However, I can’t help but think they’ve failed to properly secure him. Too much was made – first by Tonin, then by Duffy – about killing Quarles and settling for the $100,000. They both commented on how dangerous he is alive. And I can’t help but think the two call girls from Audrey’s are ill suited to keep Quarles locked down, even if he is naked and chained at the moment. Boyd is usually a master strategist, but this seems like a huge miscalculation on his part.

Before “Bobby” walked into Boyd’s trap, we got a reminder of just how dangerous and unpredictable he is. Quarles puts on quite a performance for Parker and Longball, the two drug dealers Napier tells him to rob. While they are somewhat suspicious of the Northerner in the suit, Quarles pretends to be scared, rambling quite a bit in order to put them at ease. Then, with a classic “Hey, look over there,” he manages to get the upperhand and send them both to an early grave.

And perhaps things would have ended well for him if Limehouse accepted drugs as payment. But this week we learn that he deals only in cash, which makes since considering his MO is to do whatever he has to to protect the holler while attracting as little attention to his people as possible.

Of course, Limehouse finds himself on Dickie Bennet’s radar once again. Dickie continues his quest for the lost Bennet fortune, trying to recruit Rodney from Memphis, Ellen May and eventually Limehouse’s man Errol. We end the episode with Errol suggesting that they’ll need Boyd Crowder to get the three million, which can’t be good for Dickie. Even if Boyd is willing to work with the man who shot Ava, you have to imagine he won’t want to let him walk out alive once the fortune has been secured.

While a lot of this episode was setting up the pieces for our final two episodes, I thought overall it was another strong week. I like that Tim and Rachel were given something significant to do. And I always enjoy Art out in the field. Teaming him up with Raylan made it even better.

I’m interested to see how long a Dickie/Boyd alliance can last and how long the ladies of Audrey’s can keep Robert Quarles under lock and key. With only two episodes left, we certainly have the stage set for a volatile season finale.

And another thing …

• Theo Tonin speaks pretty freely on the phone, doesn’t he? Consider he doesn’t really know Wynn Duffy, I’m surprised how open he was about his plan to kill Quarles and his other various criminal endeavors. He has no way of knowing if the feds (who have surveillance on his son) are listening in or if Duffy (who is informing him about his men getting arrested) has been compromised. Pretty sloppy. Then again, this is apparently a guy who carries around a human ear to intimidate people.

• That’s quite a hairstyle Dickie was rocking this week.

• The writers continue to have fun with Neal McDonough’s unique look. We have one of Tonin’s thugs saying that it “looks like he even shits blonde” and we have the next-door neighbor describing him as “Husky looking” with blue eyes she could see from across the street.

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.

“We’ve all got skin in this game.”

- Boyd Crowder

Since Mags death, there has been a power struggle in Harlan County. Boyd Crowder and Robert Quarles have been looking to outmaneuver each other in order to secure the oxy trade in the county, while Elstin Limehouse has played both sides as he waits for a clear winner to emerge.

But just as Boyd gave Quarles’ campaign a crushing defeat, a wild card emerged this week to further muddy the waters. Though he was mostly unseen, Dickie Bennett was very much the focus of this week’s episode as Raylan tried desperately to figure out a way to keep him behind bars. Unfortunately, Dickie found a way to use his forced prison break to his advantage, leveraging it to get an early release in exchange for not suing the state.

So as Raylan implodes on the stand and not only fails to give Judge Reardon a compelling reason to keep Dickie behind bars, but actually encourages him to release Dickie so Raylan can capture him again, the last remaining Bennett is set loose into an already uncertain landscape. Dickie hasn’t quite put the pieces together yet that Limehouse has stolen his family’s money, but he certainly has his suspicions. And he definitely has made an enemy in Boyd. So whether he would actually team up with Quarles or just be out on the margins looking for the right moment to strike is yet to be seen. But his presence definitely shakes things up in a really compelling way.

Of course, Quarles himself has now become a wild card too. Boyd finds a loophole in the law that ensures that even though Napier got the votes, Shelby gets to be sheriff. Quarles is so unprepared for this that it sends him into a downward spiral of oxy and bad decisions. First he laments to Boyd that he can’t leave Harlan because he has nowhere else to go. Then he lets Brady Hughes’ friend Donovan get into his trailer brandishing a weapon. And finally, he shows up at Raylan’s bar looking for a gunfight.

We also found out Quarles (very disturbing) backstory, which seemed to catch Wynn Duffy completely off guard. We learn that Quarles’ obsession with underage male prostitutes comes from the fact that he was forced to be one by his heroin addicted father. We also learn that he killed his dad at the age of 14. The fact that he now kidnaps, beats and kills boys with a similar history instead of going after the men putting them into that situations is a glimpse into his very fractured psyche.

Quarles has lost all of his ties to Detroit. He’s now lost the upper hand in Harlan and for at least the next three months, Boyd’s sheriff will be the one calling the shots, which means that any oxy clinic Quarles attempts to open will be quickly shut down. He hasn’t quite lost the will to live yet – as evidenced by the fact that he backs down when Lindsey the bartender pulls a shotgun on him – but he’s definitely a man with nothing to lose. Whatever his next move is, it’s bound to be an aggressive one made out of desperation. It seems he’s once again fixated on Raylan, so a plot to kill the good marshal with that Derringer up his sleeve wouldn’t be a big surprise at this point.

While I’m certainly excited to see what Dickie and Quarles do next, I’m also quite excited to see how Harlan runs under the Boyd Crowder regime. I’m also wondering just how loyal Shelby is to Boyd and just how willing he’ll be to go along with Crowder’s plans. He says that his story to the two deputies at the beginning of the episode is a lie, but I’m not convinced there wasn’t at least a kernel of truth in his assertion that winning sheriff is his chance to make something of himself. Whether or not he’s actually dying of cancer, he has been toiling away as a Walmart greeter, so this could be his chance to do something meaningful with his life. And the way he handled the two deputies looking to plant evidence in his truck makes me think he wouldn’t be so quick to back down to Boyd, especially with an entire police force behind him.

This was another strong episode in what has been another great season for this show. With only two episodes left, I’m excited to see where things are headed. I feel like things are very much still up in the air at this point as the battle for Harlan heats up.

And another thing …

• Like Raylan, I’m really starting to like Lindsey the bartender. Also, the ability to deputize cute girls in a bar might be the greatest pickup line ever.

• Speaking of Lindsey, her quip that Quarles looks like an “albino deer” is just another in a long line of jokes about Neal McDonough’s fair skin and incredibly light blond hair. The writers are definitely getting a lot of mileage out of his distinct look, though I worry they’re going to give the guy a complex.

• Art’s “Did that go the way you rehearsed it?” wins the deadpan line of the week.

• At this point, I really love Ellen May the hooker. Keep giving out those shots of pineapple juice, girl.

• So Raylan has been a marshal for 19 years. Has this been established before or is this the first time we’ve been given a number?

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.