Longmire |

Episode Guide

VIDEO

• BONUS CLIP | 2:15

  

  Branch Operates In Gray Areas

• BONUS CLIP | 2:12

  

  Walt and Vic Have Feelings For Each Other

• BONUS CLIP | 2:22

  

  The Cast Wonders What Might Have Been

• BONUS CLIP | 3:02

  

  Ferg Steps Up for Cady

• BONUS CLIP | 2:44

  

  Branch and Cady Want Each Other

• BONUS CLIP | 2:01

  

  Deputy Ferg Finds His Confidence

• BONUS CLIP | 2:12

  

  The Bond Between Henry and Longmire

• BONUS CLIP | 2:21

  

  Longmire Cast Debates the Sheriffs' Debate

• BONUS CLIP | 2:02

  

  Katee Sackoff on Getting Her Ass Kicked

• BONUS CLIP | 3:01

  

  Vic and Her Secret

• BONUS CLIP | 2:10

  

  Searching for the Truth with Cady Longmire

• BONUS CLIP | 2:05

  

  The Cast Introduces the New Season

A Good Death is Hard to Find

Episode: 12 Premiere Date: August 19 2013

GO INSIDE THE EPISODE EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS TALK ABOUT IT

Walt is surprised when he receives a strange package in the mail. It seems a convicted robber named James Notley had a severed finger in a safety deposit box left with instructions to deliver it to the Absaroka County Sheriff in the event of his death. The finger was duly delivered after Notley was stabbed to death in prison just two weeks before he was to be released. Walt learns that Notley was arrested back in 1989 by Branch's uncle, and the former sheriff, Lucian Connally.

Walt heads to the Red Pony where Lucian is performing in a Cowboy Poetry Slam. It takes some convincing, but Lucian eventually reveals that he had arrested Notley for stealing a triceratops skeleton. Unfortunately, Notley sold the skeleton before Lucian could catch him, and the money was never recovered.

Guest Stars:

Louanne Stephens as Ruby

Katherine LaNasa as Lizzie Ambrose

Peter Weller as Lucian Connally

Lee Tergesen as Ed Gorski

Robin Lively as Connie Mallery

Brad Carter as Riley Manning

John Ales as Dr. Tony Moten

Cory Tucker as Hank Thompson

Production Notes:

This episode begins with an unusual scene; a cowboy poetry slam. Writer Tony Tost explains the inspiration behind this idea.

"My inspiration for having some cowboy poetry in this episode came from being on location for episode 202,'Carcasses'. The house we used for 'carcass lady' Holly Whitish had this amazing backyard that we didn't use for the episode - lots of cowboy trinkets, old cooking ovens and sculptures. I would wander around there between shots admiring the place and thinking about the kind of person who would live there. First thing that came to mind: a cowboy poet. (In fact, the house belonged to an artistically-inclined cowboy couple, one of whom made highly intricate hand-made sculptures out of aluminum.)"

"The executive producers - especially John Coveny - seemed to like the idea of somehow getting a cowboy poet into an episode this season. I liked it as well. My background and training was actually in poetry. I did a masters in fine arts at the University of Arkansas in poetry and then went on to do a Ph.D. in literature at Duke University (focusing on the work of American poet Ezra Pound). Which is to say I spent a good decade of my life reading and writing poems and going to poetry readings. This included poetry slams. At many of these, I had to drink heavily to survive."

Peter Weller playing Lucian Connally in his element.

"Of all the characters in the Longmire world, Lucian Connally struck me as the most likely to be a competitive poet. (With Ruby being another intriguing candidate.) Walt, of course, is an avid reader, but I see him as having more of a private, solitary relationship with the literary. So it had to be Lucian. And it was fun to think of all the things the fiery Lucian keeps himself busy doing during his retirement."

"A poetry reading is an interesting way to get a peek into someone's psyche. Sometimes a bigger peek than the poet would wish. I've been to countless poetry readings where the poet was absolutely delighted with him or herself, oblivious to the boredom and suffering of the audience. But I've also been to readings where the poet revealed depths and dimensions beyond what their social self suggested. This was my hope in writing poems for Lucian to perform: I wanted him to give a deeper acknowledgement of his own mortality and his loneliness in the episode than we'd normally expect him to."

"The artifice of something like a poetry slam (or a dramatic monologue, or a piano performance, or even karaoke) gives some people a chance to reveal sides of themselves that they don't normally let out during ordinary conversation. Because it's such a performance, I think poetry is a safe way for Lucian to show his vulnerable side. Likewise, Walt uses the great epic poetry of Homer's The Iliad as a way of giving Ed Gorski a fierce ultimatum without having to spell out the ultimatum explicitly."

Words have their own power, as these spellbound cowboys could attest.

"That's another thing I wanted to introduce in this episode - the idea that men like Walt and Lucian aren't powerful simply because they have a badge and a gun. They're also powerful because they are smart and careful in their use of language. Well-read people are by necessity also people who spend a lot of time alone with their own thoughts. And there's a confidence and a power to be derived from such solitude and self-knowledge."

Cowboys spouting poetry wasn't the only unusual aspect of this episode. It also features a dinosaur skeleton heist. It's not everyday you hear about someone making off with triceratops bones, but there was a good reason Tost decided to pursue this unusual storyline.

"After the emotionally heavy stories of season two, particularly in the wake of Cady's accident in Election Day, the executive producers wanted me to write a story that could be strange and interesting but not necessarily emotionally devastating. The murder of someone Lucian arrested decades ago seemed like a good way to get into Lucian's past and to give Walt a mystery different from a lot of the small tragedies he's been faced with this season."

Sure, this isn't emotionally devastating. Unless you know a dinosaur personally.

"We're also always digging through news stories or hitting up contacts to find stories or characters or worlds that are unique to Wyoming. Because Peter Weller was available for this episode, we were brainstorming possible crimes that could be linked to Lucian's reign as Absaroka Sheriff. I was interested in smuggling. John Coveny and I exchanged a lot of possible smuggling scenarios: Cheyenne art or artifacts, drugs, cigarettes, etc."

"But we both were most excited about dinosaur bone smuggling, since that dips into a unique feature of Wyoming that we hadn't seen yet on the show. After some research, I came across numerous instances of dinosaur bone smuggling, with many of the fossils going onto the Eastern European black market."

Look at all these enormous bones. Now think about the fact that people used to smuggle these.

"In a number of these thefts, the fossil thieves would raid unattended dig sites at night. But we figured a sheriff like Lucian, with his immense respect for the life of the mind, wouldn't allow such brazen thievery in his county. So a different scenario presented itself to us: stealing the fossils once they were in transit. This also gave us a chance to introduce a character like Dr. Tony Moten, a somewhat neurotic academic not unlike many of the academics I encountered who inspired me to depart from my academic career. It's always fun to pair a cowboy like Walt or Branch with someone who has a very different outlook on the world."

It seems that during Lucian's reign as sheriff, numerous scofflaws found themselves short a finger or two. In this episode, we meet two local residents who lost their fingers without Lucian's assistance. Special Makeup Effects Artist and Designer Steve LaPorte explains how these two full-fingered actors were made to look digit-less.

Dr. Moten (John Ales) and Riley Manning (Brad Carter) model their missing fingers.

"For the missing finger actors," LaPorte says, "I made 2 separate prosthetic pieces that when added to a bent finger and filmed from the proper angle gave the illusion of a stump beyond the knuckle."

Multiple versions were required for the actual severed finger that was mailed to Walt, in order to portray the digit in its different states of moistness.

We're pretty sure that no fingers were harmed in the making of this episode. Probably.

LaPorte says, "The severed finger is actually from a cast of my index finger. I made a copy, sculpted two versions; one withered, one hydrated and then made silicone copies for the shoot."

In this episode, we also get a longer look inside Vic's house. Unfortunately, her paranoia about her old foe Ed Gorski means she doesn't stick around for very long. Especially after discovering someone has taken a bite out of her bar of soap. You can thank Prop Master David Baumann for that creepy effect, as it was his chompers that actually took that bite out of the soap.

There so much room for stalking activities!

Here we get a look at Vic's house in a less creepy moment, courtesy of Production Designer Dave Blass. It looks pretty relaxing, until you remember a creepy ex-cop from Philadelphia has been lurking around the joint. Still, it's a lovely home she's made.

Photos and production notes courtesy of David Baumann, Dave Blass, Jessica Dias, Steve LaPorte, and Emily Thomas.