https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1312931146779561984.html
1. Long thread on S 6 of Justified.
Ava Crowder is under pressure to be a C.I. on the basis that if she fails in that or refuses, then she’ll be sent back to jail by the U.S. Marshals.
2. Which means her release from prison has been concocted by their efforts.
3. But in Episode 5 of Season 6, Fekus is cattle prodded by Mikey at the behest of Wynn Duffy but maintains his silence, while both Marshals Brooks and Gutterson are in an adjoining room.
4. They come to Fekus only after the prodding and congratulate him on not spilling any beans. But they acknowledge knowing that Fekus stabbed himself so that Ava didn’t and so that she is innocent of that. But, big but, that’s the reason she’s in jail.
5. How can they in good conscience and lawfully put Ava in a life-threatening situation as a C.I. with the whip of sending her back to prison for a crime of which they know she’s innocent?
6. How can Raylan do the same thing, since he presumably knows as well that Ava is innocent? Or does he not know?
7. I must be missing something for it seems to me a massive hole in the Season Six story line concerning her.
8. I’ve read the Fire In The Hole stories a while ago but don’t remember whether in them the Marshals or Raylan do such a dastardly thing as I’m complaining about.
9. My reading of Justified tells me that while in it corners are cut, short cuts are taken and the edges of what’s ethical get frayed and blurred, there’s still an underlying streak of straight stick righteousness in the Marshals, especially Raylan, the most righteous of all.
10. In all cases the benefit of getting the baddest guy is never outweighed by or is less sharp than or costs less than the cut corner, the short cut or the frayed and blurred edge.
11. So, as I see things, putting a relative innocent, Ava, and I’ll stress “relative,” in death’s way as a C.I. on the fraudulent pretence of her guilt in stabbing Fekus shaves little dramatic ice with me. I don’t think it works artistically, which is to say, it’s not justified.
12. I just finished for the second time—first time 5 years ago—Season 6. And I’m even more convinced that Ava’s basic innocence at least to the knowledge of some of the Marshals, namely for sure Rachel and Tim, is a flaw in the narrative.
13. When the thought is that she’s burned as a C.I., the near to unanimous response is that she’s got to go back to prison. Not a word is spoken of the fact of her innocence. It simply, like the Ghost in Hamlet, disappears from all reckoning.
14. The Marshals expend a lot of energy thinking about where to draw ethical lines. Is it ok for Raylan to work with a C.I. with whom he’s slept, which led early on to a botched case?
15. How does Art balance the reporting of transgressions at the cost of blowing a case, Rachel asks him and then answers her own question, saying Art would lean towards working the case to conclusion.
16. My point is that these instances are of a fundamental quality different from:
16(1) putting an innocent person in a deadly situation on the leverage of her trumped up guilt; and
16(2) considering sending her back to jail when she’s burnEd as a C.I., while knowing she’s innocent.
17. I know she does criminal things after Episode 5 of Season 6 but they seem to me irrelevant to the flawed premise of her being sent back to jail for a crime the Marshals know she didn’t commit.
18. If I was a deconstructionist, then I might see this flaw as what Derrida calls an “aporia” and go from there. But I’m not and I don’t. I more simply think it’s a mistake that got away from the writers and never got resolved.
19. Though, to be sure, Season 6 is wonderful despite it, as is all of Justified.
The End
Brilliant analysis!
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