S2E13 Bloody Harlan

Justified Season 2 Episode 13 'Bloody Harlan' aired May 11, 2011 on FX as the finale of what critics and audiences consistently identify as the finest year the series produced. Season 2 achieved a perfect 100-percent Rotten Tomatoes score built on the Mags Bennett arc - Margo Martindale's Emmy-winning performance as a crime matriarch whose authority derived from family loyalty, local knowledge, and an apple pie moonshine that was also a murder weapon. The A.V. Club described the finale as 'both explosive and unexpectedly moving,' capturing the dual register the episode operates in: the Harlan violence the show had been building toward, and the grief that followed it. The apple juice scene and its callback - a piece of foreshadowing that lands with devastating weight in the finale - is the most discussed single moment in the season's run, cited by critics as evidence that Justified at its peak was encoding emotional payoff into scenes that appeared to be procedural texture. The IMDb series rating of 8.6 reflects a show whose Season 2 gave its audience a year of television that most crime dramas don't produce in six.