The Man Behind the Curtain (Justified)

In February 2012, it was reported that the seventh episode of the third season would be titled "The Man Behind the Curtain", and was to be directed by Peter Werner and written by story editor Ryan Farley.[2]

Series developer Graham Yost teased that Raylan's and Boyd's relationship would play a pivotal role on the episode.[3] Raylan's new home was adapted from Elmore Leonard's 2012 novel Raylan, with Yost commenting "he had Raylan living above a college bar and doing bouncer work but not really being a bouncer. It's more that it's nice to have a marshal living above the bar."[4][5][6] The choice was also done in order to make shooting in the office easier as it took many days to film scenes there; Yost also said, "part of it is we need a place for Raylan to be where he can talk to people. That was one of the limiting things, frankly, about the motel. You're not gonna hang out in the motel. So this gives us a little more freedom to do bigger scenes with more people."[6]

When Quarles realizes that Sammy Tonin will arrive at their town, the character says, "I'm just gonna put a smile on my face and eat a nice plate of steaming shit unsalted." The line was inspired by a story involving Yost's father, Elwy Yost, while working on Saturday Night at the Movies. After conducting an interview with Richard Brooks, Brooks told Elwy Yost that the hardest thing about working in the film business "it's all this shit you have to eat unsalted."[6]

Despite being credited, Erica Tazel and Natalie Zea do not appear in the episode as their respective characters.

In December 2011, Jim Beaver confirmed that he would return to reprise his role as Shelby Parlow on a multi-episode run for the season.[7] The episode also introduced Jenn Lyon as Lindsey Salazar, with Yost teasing that a new woman would enter Raylan's life.[8]

The episode was filmed back-to-back with the follow-up episode, "Watching the Detectives", in order to save time for filming. Yost said, "we knew that 308, and 307 to a certain extent, needed to have a lot of Marshals office stuff."[9]

In its original American broadcast, "The Man Behind the Curtain" was seen by an estimated 2.15 million household viewers and gained a 0.9 ratings share among adults aged 18–49, according to Nielsen Media Research. This means that 0.9 percent of all households with televisions watched the episode.[10] This was a 6% increase in viewership from the previous episode, which was watched by 2.02 million viewers with a 0.8 in the 18-49 demographics.[11]

"The Man Behind the Curtain" received generally positive reviews from critics. Seth Amitin of IGN gave the episode a "good" 7.5 out of 10 and wrote, "The writing is certainly solid and the acting is far above the average show. There was a time when action movies used to be like this, where the criminals were gruff but clever, the bad guys smart and fox-like and the plot unfolded before us. While action movies haven't quite matched the Total Recall or Die Hard era, action/thriller television shows have taken their place. It's amazing. Justified is definitely earning its place among those shows."[12]

Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B+" grade and wrote, "As with too many episodes of Justified this season, 'The Man Behind The Curtain' is more concerned with moving the pieces around the board for what should be a thrilling endgame than in delivering an hour with its own satisfying, self-contained arc. But few shows move pieces as entertainingly as Justified."[13] Kevin Fitzpatrick of Screen Crush wrote, "Boy, that Gary's fate is dare I say... Justified! Few thought the gun-slinging series would ever be able to top last season's Mags Bennett as a villain, but so far the combined threat of Neal McDonough, Mykelti Williamson, and this unseen Detroit mob boss have all of Harlan county running for their hills! And with Raylan running increasingly off the rails without Winona, how will the second half of the third season finish out without at least a few body bags?"[14]

Alan Sepinwall of HitFix wrote, "'The Man Behind the Curtain' was the midpoint of season 3, and as such, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that it didn't bother with any standalone stories. Instead, it moved a lot of chess pieces around the board for the season's second half. Those are necessary sometimes, particularly with as many villains and storylines we have this season, and it helped that the hour also told us so much about our well-dressed new friend from Detroit."[15] Luke de Smet of Slant Magazine wrote, "For two episodes with very little action, 'The Man Behind the Curtain' and 'Watching the Detectives' wind up revealing quite a bit about Justified's representation of violence."[16]

Ben Lee of Digital Spy wrote, "The third season of Justified has been undoubtedly strong, but 'The Man Behind the Curtain' takes a step back from the usual excellent villains-of-the-week to focus on Quarles. The end result is another good episode of FX's critically acclaimed drama, but one that is more transitional in nature and as a consequence, perhaps lacks a satisfying payoff at the end - despite the return of Gary in the final few minutes."[17] Joe Reid of Vulture wrote, "Does Raylan Givens look like a dirty cop to you? I don't even know how I'd quantify the appearance of a lawman who's on the take, but certainly you took one look at Sheriff Napier tonight and you knew he was just waiting to be bought."[18]

Todd VanDerWerff of Los Angeles Times wrote, "'Curtain' is an episode that mostly exists to make sure all of the pieces are at the right place on the show's board as the season hits its midpoint, but it's a remarkably assured version of that sort of episode. It's easy to make these sorts of episodes feel mechanical, like the writers are pushing the characters around, rather than letting the characters do their own walking. But 'Curtain' is vivid and funny and shot through with great scenes just dripping with conflict. Something big is coming to Harlan, and I'm not sure everybody's going to have what it takes to survive it."[19] Dan Forcella of TV Fanatic gave the episode a 3.5 star rating out of 5 and wrote, "So there were a lot of moving pieces during 'The Man Behind the Curtain', and there was certainly a healthy amount of new information on Robert Quarles, but was this one of your favorite episodes of the season? It wasn't mine, but maybe I'm just as crazy as Arlo Givens when he's off of his meds."[20] Jack McKinney of Paste gave the episode a 8.5 rating out of 10 and wrote, "Somebody should have warned Quarles before he came down to Harlan County and started stirring up trouble. There are certain rules and regulations to dealing with folks in Appalachia, but there's only one that you really need to remember. Never make things personal. It seems that from here on out, everything on Justified is going to be personal."[21]