For an episode that nearly ends twice with people getting shot in freshly dug graves while stranded in a desolate desert, “No Country For Two Old Men” sure is a whole mess of fun. Most of the credit for that goes to Jeffrey Tambor as Juliet’s stepfather Lloyd, a reformed gambling addict-turned-accountant who goes a long way to settle his final debt and wipe his slate clean for a new life with Juliet’s mom. Shawn’s insistence that his father and Lloyd become new best friends gets Henry caught up in that mess, and the way Corbin Bernsen plays off of Tambor makes up the foundation of a lighthearted if unsubstantial episode full of chuckled, not belly laughs.
Once Henry picks up a package meant for Lloyd, it starts an extended chase sequence—running away from two unknown gunmen—in a stolen Cadillac, to a tiny plane that Lloyd illegally flies over the Mexican border to Baja, in order to deliver a special set of cufflinks to a Mexican man who obviously isn’t into much legal business activity, considering all the armed guards he has around to force people into digging their own graves. The best parts of the episode have Bernsen and Tambor yelling at each other incredulously. First Henry doesn’t want to get in the plane, then he can’t believe they’re crossing the border, then he’s irate that Lloyd doesn’t know how to land a plane. He’s so mad that he turns down a sopapilla before he and Lloyd get kidnapped.
Meanwhile, Shawn and Juliet pick up the trail in Santa Barbara after Lassiter gets a call about the shooting that started Henry and Lloyd’s adventure. Gus tags along, constantly flip-flopping on whether he’s excited about being in a committed relationship with a woman who has a young son, or utterly terrified and suffocated because of it. Tough Gus, we’ve all been there (in a romantic situation oscillating between committing and ditching). I didn’t really care about the subplot that Juliet knows about Lloyd’s gambling past, or Gus’ relationship wavering, or the twists throughout the case. Jeffrey Tambor elevates everything he’s in with such a solid presence that all I could do was focus on him.
“No Country” makes fun of Mexico—in a gentle, elbow nudge to the ribs kind of way—without making fun of Mexicans in a mean way (except maybe Shawn’s terrible attempts at speaking Spanish), the same kind of general humor used to make fun of Canada for being “America’s Hat,” or all the joke material in Weird Al’s parody of Green Day’s “American Idiot.”