Belly of the Beast

With all the hysteria pro and con about the Cadillac spot with Neal McDonough strutting through a McMansion laying down his I’m-American-and-I’m-not-sorry rap, why has nobody mentioned the Justified connection? You see, McDonough’s character—slick, nattily dressed, unrepentantly alpha—didn’t come out of nowhere. He played the exact same character for two seasons on Justified, the Appalachian Gothic procedural on FX. Except for one thing: Robert Quarles, his character on the show, is a sadistic, closeted gay psychopath who, when he’s not slinging heroin and meth, is torturing and killing his boy toys. No matter. He’s well-dressed, articulate, confident and totally bought-in to the American dream. One of the Cadillac creatives was watching this monster rampage through Harlan County, Kentucky and thought to himself:  Yes. That’s our man.