Leaving Harlan Alive

"I think the only way to get out of our town alive is to never been born there." - Boyd Crowder, "Justified"

Endings are tricky. For every beautiful series finale, you get a “Seinfeld” finale. One that sticks in the craw of fans, one that doesn’t make sense, one that doesn’t fulfill the weight of fan expectation. The producers of “How I Met Your Mother” know that feeling. Ditto for the producers of “LOST,” who still, to this day years later, engage angry fans on Social Media.

Thankfully, the producers of “Justified” won’t have that problem. After six seasons and 78 episodes, the FX series based on an Elmore Leonard short story came to an end. After an explosive and engaging series, it was hard to know what to expect going into Tuesday night’s swan song. I think it’s fair to say it was unexpected and beautiful. And as it has from the beginning, the series finale came down to Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).

After getting into the show, I read the short story upon which it was based, “Fire in the Hole.” The main action of that story is about Raylan and Boyd, but I’d say a different version of them than the one we’ve seen in the series. It ends with Boyd dead at Raylan’s hands. Much the same way the pilot could have ended – but it didn’t.

From early in the series, there’s been a sense of fatalism about the characters and the setting of the show, Harlan County, Kentucky. Both Raylan and Boyd were born there, have seen their families die there, and often each wondered if that fate awaited them.

You could hear that fatalism in the song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” which was re-recorded for the show early in its run and appeared in last night’s finale.

In the deep dark hills of eastern Kentucky

That's the place where I trace my bloodline

And it's there I read on a hillside gravestone

You will never leave Harlan alive

For the better part of six seasons, Raylan and Boyd have seen chances to leave Harlan behind come and go. And as this sixth season began, and the focus shifted to their inevitable collision, it was fair to wonder how it would end. For my part I thought at least one, if not both, would leave Harlan only in a body bag.

And that was a rough pill to swallow. Throughout the series, one of the highlights has been the relationship between Raylan and Boyd. It’s been adversarial, but there’s always been a sort of mutual respect bordering on friendship that’s been just under the surface. Their interactions over the years have been a highlight, so it was difficult to imagine all that ending in bloodshed.

Which is what made the finale so perfect. Boyd and Raylan were both alive at the end. Neither got a fairy tale ending – Boyd’s in prison, back to his Bible thumping early series ways. (In fact, Raylan’s nod to Boyd repeating himself was a great joke). And Raylan is investing himself in his daughter, and in a new approach to his job back in Florida. He didn’t get the fairytale ending with Winona, but it was hard to believe that was ever in the cards.

Instead, Raylan got to do what he does best – protect those in need of saving. He found Ava on the run, and let her be. He kept his promise to make sure she came out of everything OK. And that included his lie to Boyd about her ultimate fate.

But what was beautiful about the final sequence wasn’t Raylan’s motives, it was the one last inter-play between Raylan and Boyd. It was that same sense of respect and admiration that they’ve always had. The series was about their complicated relationship, and their efforts to get out of a life they’d been born into. That was summed up beautifully when Boyd asked Raylan why he made the trip to prison in Kentucky.

Raylan: “I suppose if I allow myself to be sentimental, despite all that’s occurred, there is one thing I wander back to.”

Boyd: “We dug coal together.”

Raylan: “That’s right.”

It wasn’t a fairy tale ending, and it wasn’t the ending many expected. But it felt like the right ending for this series, and for these characters. And in the end, that’s all that matters.