When you hear the phrase “the man behind the curtain,” you think of someone big, don’t you? You think of The Great and Powerful Oz, or Emperor Palpatine.
We got Max Perlich. The guy who played a meek port security guard on Burn Notice and overeager cameraman J.H. Brodie on Homicide: Life on the Street.
My first reaction was, “Are you serious? You’re expecting me to believe this is the guy who’s holding the purse strings for Quarles, who happens to be played by Neal McDonough, who has made half a career out of truly frightening villains?”
Then I stopped and thought about it.
And I realized that the fact that Perlich’s casting was so jarring might be the point. No, he wasn’t at all what I expected when I heard that Sammy, the son of the Detroit mob boss whom Quarles answers to, was visiting Kentucky. But there is that certain expectation, or stereotype if you will, when a show introduces a character in that role. We expect big and bad. So what if the titular ‘man behind the curtain’ wasn’t big and bad, but relatively weak?
That’s certainly different and definitely raises all sorts of questions — such as why does Quarles tolerate this guy? Is it because he can manipulate him, as we saw? Or because his father is someone bigger and scarier than Neal McDonough? Does that person even exist? Because McDonough is pretty damn scary.
Speaking of surprises, who thought we’d see Gary (William Ragsdale) again? After the relatively thankless sendoff he got last season, I expected the writers were happy to be rid of him so that Raylan and Winona could live happily ever after. But Gary likely remains a tool in advancing the Raylan and Winona story, especially since Winona has to be relevant to the story somehow, being that Natalie Zea is still a series regular. What better way to strike at Raylan than through Winona, and what’s an easier way to get to Winona than by squeezing information out of her loose-lipped ex-husband? And once that’s accomplished, I’m sure Gary will be cast off a second time, possibly killed. Sorry, dude, but you can’t compete with Timothy Olyphant.
How neat is it, though, that the Justified writers know their cast well enough that they’ll bring back minor characters like Gary, or Ella Mae the prostitute, or Boyd’s old friend from the mine? Most TV writing staffs probably couldn’t remember the names of characters like those, let alone use them again. That’s keeping track of your continuity, and it keeps the universe feeling real. Just because we don’t see a character doesn’t mean their story’s over … unless, of course, they’re dead. And as I mentioned last week, just about anyone can end up dead.
But it wouldn’t be Justified if we weren’t thinking about the body count. Or wondering who’s pulling the strings.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Feb 29, 2012 @ 08:55 EST5EDT
