Justified: Follow Me

You know what I realized watching the latest episode of “Justified”? We haven’t actually seen very much of Boyd Crowder in full-on outlaw mode.

Sure, the very first time we saw him in the show’s pilot he was blowing up a church and by the time that episode ended he’d come close to killing sister-in-law Ava. (Will ya look at how far those two have come?!) But after that, Boyd had his religious conversion for the rest of season 1 — which turned out to be mostly sincere — and he’s spent the entirety of this season fighting off multiple temptation to return to a life of crime.

Indeed, Boyd’s reputation as a VERY.BAD.MAN was mostly earned off-screen and before the events of this show. That’s made it a little easier for us to root for him because the Boyd we’ve seen is the one who trades witty banter with Raylan and struggles to do the right thing.

That’s why it was simultaneously tragic and a little electrifying to return to a life of crime after being offered the non-weed criminal business in Harlan by a grieving Mags Bennett.

After seeing the end of last week’s episode, it would’ve been perfectly reasonable to expect Mags to declare an all-out war on Raylan and the Givens. Instead, we got a great, sad scene with two concerned mother figures when Mags met with Helen. Helen (like us) was concerned about Mags striking back against Raylan. Instead, Mags agreed to squash the family feud, lest more blood be spilled.

In case you were afraid that Mags was going soft, she coolly slapped and threatened to kill that boor from last week’s party after he gave her crap for selling out to Black Pike. We also learned that she holds Dickie responsible for Coover’s death, since Dickie was the one who told Raylan were Coover had taken Loretta. As punishment, Dickie got to keep the weed business, but he was banned from all other criminal activity (now under Boyd’s watch) and cut off from the rest of the Bennetts. (I don’t think he’ll be getting Black Pike money in his Christmas cards.)

Poor Dickie. He almost gets choked to death by his own brother, then the man who crippled him kills his brother. Now, not only has he been prohibited from exacting revenge, but he’s been isolated from his family. No wonder he’s making the extremely foolish decision of taking on Boyd, his cousin Johnny and new muscle Devil/Milkshake.

To be completely honest, I’d completely forgotten that Johnny Crowder — the cousin that Boyd shot and mostly crippled during last season’s finale — even existed. It’s weird because I remember liking the relatively sensible character in season 1. Now, he’s literally a broken man, so it didn’t take very much for Boyd to sell him into joining him on his new criminal enterprise (make no mistake…Boyd WAS selling him) since Johnny had experience working with Boyd’s father, Bo. Also, I enjoyed the aggressive Devil. (Too bad he’ll almost certainly be killed very soon.)

Even though Boyd would probably list “full-time criminal” as his occupation, he’s not completely letting go of his life as a decent guy. As soon as he showed up at Ava’s house and Ava approached him, we knew they were going to kiss.

I’m not saying that Ava is ONLY attracted to bad boys — although her ex, Bowman, was no prize. I just think it’s curious that there wasn’t any kind of heat between the two until after they started lying to the police together (after Boyd’s heist) or Boyd went back to being a crook. When Boyd was being “good”, Ava naturally seemed distrustful…but also completely turned-off by him.

But enough about the criminals: let’s talk about the lawmen in this episode.

The scene where Raylan confronted Art with what he knew/didn’t know about the money Winona had stolen was probably my favorite scene in the episode. Art never seemed more like Raylan’s disapproving dad than when he was scolding him for being so stupid and telling him how disappointed he was in him. These guys give each other a lot of crap as boss/employee, but seeing how angry Art was with Raylan (and seeing how embarrassed Raylan was to let Art down) gave us a great look at how much they care for each other.

In fact, for a guy as relentlessly decent as Raylan, he has some considerably psychological scarring that Timothy Olyphan fantastically keeps under the surface. We saw it again during the great scene in which he told Winona that he’d been afraid that he’d helped her with the money caper because he was an outlaw at heart (like his dad), but it turned out that he just loved her.

The Raylan/Winona scenes in this episode were pretty great. I loved the way they ping-ponged between Raylan still being pissed with her to Winona trying to use humor to diffuse the situation (joking about needing a ride to rob a bank). Their no-fuss “I love yous” were also pretty refreshing.

I also liked that the writers allowed Winona to admit that maybe she’s just openly messed up in the head. In movies and TV shows people (including me) usually demand that characters do things for very clear reasons that make sense. In real life, sometimes stress causes people to not think clearly and do truly stupid things. (Like steal money from an evidence locker.)

With Art upset with him, Raylan didn’t see a terribly compelling reason to stick around his job, so he agreed to transfer to Glynco, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center where he could teach people how to shoot and Winona wouldn’t have to worry about him being killed in the line of duty.

Unfortunately, the two guys who Raylan had schooled earlier in the episode (“I got right, you go left = badass) resurfaced, crashed into Raylan’s car and initiated a shootout. Raylan took out a guys’ legs before killing him. He got the other guy right as he was about to shoot Winona, who was making a run for the exit.

I think it’s great that, after not shooting anyone all year, Raylan has now shot three people in the last two episodes. With the season coming to a close, I have a feeling that number will continue to go up.

So what’d you think of this episode? Have we seen the last of Loretta this year after Raylan talked her into giving her foster home a chance? Finally, who hired those guys to try and kill Raylan? And are we entirely sure those guys were after Raylan? (All I’m saying is that Winona happened to be in the car with him both times they showed up. Also, the scene with Winona and Gary at their divorce proceeding felt inessential.)