Justified Season 3, Episode 7

• Courtesy of FX
• SAY, WEREN’T YOU IN ‘MINORITY REPORT?’ Neal McDonough, William Ragsdale, Jere Burns

Frequently cop shows and movies make their heroes out of hot dogs. Mavericks. Lone wolves who don’t play by the rules or by the book. This week’s “Justified,” “The Man Behind the Curtain,” indicates what a pain in the ass it is to work with someone like that. With Winona severing their relationship, domesticated, respectable Raylan is backsliding into a sketchier character, more reminiscent of “The Wire’s” loose cannon Jimmy McNulty than “Gunsmoke’s” Marshal Matt Dillon.

We find Raylan shacking up in the back room of a bar and paying the rent by working as a bouncer, a detail from Elmore Leonard’s novel Raylan. While the hotties at the bar tease Raylan for his age, Robert Quarles unexpectedly shows up in a black leather jacket and propositions him: “Whatever Boyd Crowder’s paying you, I’ll double it.” Raylan’s extremely ticked off that Quarles assumes that his history with Boyd means corruption, and deflects the mobsters offer. He also reveals that Quarles’ “propensity for tooling up male hustlers” has sent him into “exile” in rural Kentucky. That guy Quarles has trussed up in the bedroom apparently isn’t his first.

Raylan shows up at Boyd’s bar, sucker-punches Boyd and smacks around the guy in the wheelchair — how heroic! He expresses his fury to Boyd that Quarles thinks he’s a corrupt cop, and Boyd deadpans “Well, I can see how that might be very upsetting.” (Goggins deadpans his dialogue like nobody’s business.) Boyd also confirms his belief that Quarles is a carpetbagger and that Southerners shouldn’t turn on each other.