The final scene of last week’s episode left the viewers with absolutely none of that eponymous “Peace of Mind,” but that was probably the point. You’ll recall Augustine’s henchman Picker was at work installing a rocking chair for Winona that she didn’t order. I spent the week wondering what the game was. Is a bomb or some other devious device planted in the chair? And the title of this week’s episode, “Ghosts,” didn’t offer any consolation. I mean, “Ghosts” doesn’t exactly scream “don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”

I’m still not quite sure how those four goons got into Winona’s house, or what the chair had to do with it, but the play fails pretty spectacularly. In fact, the finale turned out sunny for Raylan without him having to put much effort in (you know, relative to his other doings). Raylan quickly dispatches three of the thugs after one gets too close while punching him in the stomach, and he’s able to kill the last when he lifts his gun from Winona’s belly to Raylan. Classic introduced-just-to-die Justified villain move. As Raylan says later in the episode, “they always pull,” and you don’t pull on Raylan Goddamn Givens!

Once the authorities arrive at the scene, Raylan talks with Art and Assistant U.S. Attorney David Vasquez about the motivations for the attack. Raylan quickly discovers what we already knew, Nick Augustine was behind the whole thing, and the scheme’s purpose was a final, flailing attempt to get at Drew Thompson. What else? But that’s not the most interesting part of the conversation. Raylan brings up Augustine, calling him “this Nicky fella,” and Vazquez quickly responds with the man’s full name. Raylan then jokes, “oh good, you’re familiar,” to which Vasquez responds, “more than I’d like to be.” We’ve known for quite a while that the Tonins have a mole in either the Marshals’ or U.S. Attorney’s office. It’s how Augustine found out Shelby wouldn’t talk until he knew Ellen May was safe almost as fast as the Marshals who heard him say the words. Now I may be reading too much into this, folks, but I don’t think so: David Vasquez is the mole, hence his being more familiar than he’d like to be. Plus, Vasquez relays almost as much information about the Tonins to the Marshals as vice-versa. Sure, a good prosecutor might know plenty about the latest “Shakespearean” power struggle in the Tonin family. But I think he’s also got inside information. That wasn’t just a throwaway line.

After Raylan puts it together that Augustine is responsible for the attack on his wife, he immediately elects to go after him, despite the fact that he’s suspended (for real this time). In his defense, Raylan doesn’t know for sure what we do, that his delaying the suspension to close the Drew Thompson case is what put him (and his family) on Augustine’s radar to begin with. But that doesn’t make his decision to  ignore Art’s orders and seek revenge any smarter. His family is attacked, so he does the exact same thing that got his family attacked in the first place? As soon as he told Winona, “I’m gonna find the guy responsible for this, and I’m gonna take care of him,” I thought, aww here it goes.

Stupid decision or not, however, things work out for Raylan in the end. He and Boyd have a fantastic conversation as they drive to meet Augustine at the airport in which Raylan says Boyd “loves anything lets you put your head on the pillow at night thinking you a’int the bad guy.”  It’s an interesting accusation, given how things shake up for Boyd and the general Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain dynamic the show works with. What’s more interesting, however, is the accusation Boyd fires back, “What do you tell yourself at night when you lay your head down, allows you to wake up in the morning pretending you’re not the bad guy?” It’s a valid question, given what Raylan does in the episode. Unbeknownst to Boyd he’s already got things figured out. He’s called Sammy Tonin, Theo’s son and the heir apparent, as well as Nick Augustine’s biggest enemy and competitor for power. Sammy arrives at the airstrip and asks Raylan, “If you saw a crime committed against [Augustine], you wouldn’t as a lawman feel the obligation to intervene?” Raylan simply responds, “I’m suspended,” and walks away to the sound of machine gun fire as Sammy’s henchmen blow Augustine away as he sits in his limo.

While things turn out fantastic for Raylan in the finale, the same can not be said for Boyd, although the opposite could be. In a desperate move to rescue Ava, Boyd decides to go down a mine shaft that hasn’t been used since the days of his great-grandaddy to grab Delroy’s corpse, even though he himself has told Ava repeatedly that “moving a body is the best way of getting caught.” But the cops are already on the scene, and it appears someone’s told them where the body was hidden.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so Boyd plays the very last card in his deck. He calls on a man from Clover Hill who owns an undertaking business and a member of the Harlan County Sheriff’s department—neither of whom work for him anymore and both of whom he’s screwed over in the past—and concocts a plan to steal Delroy’s body and replace it with another. Things appear to go swimmingly, so Ava and Jimmy take the stolen corpse to another location. Except Ava tells Jimmy to go home, perhaps out of some odd notion that there are some things you have to do yourself or because she’s heard Boyd say “moving a body is the best way of getting caught” so many times that she doesn’t want to drag another “innocent” into the mess.

To Ava’s dismay, the very cop who was present as she lifted the body from the undertaker’s shows up with his partner to arrest her. I talked last week about the speed at which inter-gang alliances are formed, fall apart, and reassemble again. Because in the crime business it’s less about what you’ve done for me lately and more about what you can do for me now. Unfortunately for Boyd, the deputy owes him no allegiance and the undertaker owes him less. The last time Boyd and the latter got together it was so he could rip him off for a whole bunch of money and a Dairy Queen franchise. Desperate times. So both men doublecross Boyd, a likely result given his history of doublecrossing them, and Ava ends up in the back of a cop car. Boyd shows up and assaults the officer, and while lying on the ground he sees Cassie St. Cyr in the distance watching, then getting in her truck and driving away. Cassie still held a grudge against Boyd for indirectly killing her brother Billy, and it’s the preacher’s ghost that comes back to haunt Boyd. As I’ve talked about at length, that’s the way things are in Harlan, history, your actions as well as those of your father and grandfather and every other clan are leashed to the arguments and alliances of those who came before—the eponymous ghosts. Cassie St. Cyr is new to Harlan, but she was around long enough to have a beef with Boyd that came back to bite him in the ass. Although it’s no consolation for Ava being on her way to prison, Boyd’s luck changes slightly at episode’s end. Wynn Duffy returns to announce that Sammy Tonin has placed him in charge of all the family’s business east of the Mississippi, and he wants Boyd to run his Kentucky heroin trade. I can already imagine season five.

That’s it for this season of Justified, but be sure to check out my Game of Thrones blog and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Well folks, I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. And boy was I wrong about the Crowder/Givens Alliance I thought was hinted at in “Get Drew” before getting into motion in “Decoy.” We bloggers aren’t always perfect, if you can believe it. As it turned out, Boyd and Augustine’s mutual doublecrossing was a lot simpler than all that. Each side planned to work with the other for as long as they had something to gain from it and not a moment longer. Because there was no way of knowing when that moment would come, they each had contingency plans in place. Plans that moved forward even while the partnership was still (ostensibly) in place, including Colt shooting Mort, the aptly named Tonin sniper. But as we saw this week, inter-gang alliances can reassemble just as easily as they fall apart. Because in the crime business it’s less about what you’ve done for me lately than what you can do for me now.

With Drew Thompson in custody, the game should be over, but he refuses to cooperate with the investigation of the Tonins until he knows Ellen May is safe, a fact that’s relayed to the Tonins via a mole in the Marshals’ office (or perhaps the U.S. Attorney’s). So begins another game of hide and seek, only the tables have turned: this time, it’s the bad guys who have the inside scoop and the Marshals who have to do the seeking. Suddenly, Nick Augustine needs the Crowders again, so he goes to see cousin Johnny. It makes sense, Johnny is easily the most vulnerable of the bunch. Both Boyd and the Tonins have put a target on his back, the former due to his now public betrayal and the latter because betrayal or not, his last name’s still Crowder. So a new alliance is forged when Johnny calls Limehouse on Augustine’s behalf, and ends the moment he fails to broker an agreement. But Augustine doesn’t have time to waste, so he immediately calls Boyd and offers him the deal of the century: the money to get Ellen May and his cousin Johnny. He does all this with Johnny standing right in front of him, using the man’s own cell phone. As Omar Little would say, “It’s all in the game though, right?”

So Ava heads to Noble’s Holler to buy back Ellen May. She and Limehouse have one of those conversations that’s meant to get right to the heart of a person, to show who they really are. In so many words, Limehouse asks her if buying back Ellen May will really give her that eponymous peace of mind she’s been seeking all season. He tells her he’s “been wonderin’ lately what it is makes us forget who we are,” referring to the fact that he’s been forced to sell off parts of the Holler his clan has owned since Emancipation. But he’s also talking about Ava, and how he doesn’t even know who she is anymore. “I can’t do this,” he says, “and you shouldn’t either.” It’s no coincidence it’s the proposed buying and selling of a human that gets him thinking about all this.

There’s just one issue though, and it’s that Limehouse has already get Ellen May go. He’d already pondered the last question he asked Ava, “All these things you’ve done, with no mind to the consequences to other people, are you gonna have peace of mind when this is all over?” And his answer was no. Limehouse offered Ava the opportunity the make the same decision, to strive to be a better person, but she never even considered it. None of that matters though, Ellen May is gone, so the choice was purely hypothetical. Maybe part of the reason Limehouse let her go was out of fear that he’d have a harder time sticking to his convictions with the temptation of $300,000 cash being stuck in his face. But the more important factor was the similarly themed conversation he’d had with Ellen May earlier, one of those “hatchet conversations” that “cuts through the bullshit.”

Justified has milked a lot of humor—and sadness—out of Ellen May being, well, not the brightest bulb in the bunch. But as with Ava as well as Constable Bob’s torture scene last week, being forced into a corner you can’t escape, at least not independently, offers a chance to show your true colors, or perhaps it forces them out of you. Ellen May is at her most intelligent (by far) during her conversation with Limehouse because she’s convinced she’s going to die, sooner rather than later. “I don’t got no choice in the matter anyways,” she says, “you take their money and you let them kill me or you take their money and you let me go, either way I think I’ll probably wind up dead.” We get the answer to the earlier question about peace of mind from Boyd, when he quotes Emerson in saying, “Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” Through Limehouse’s conversations with Ava and Ellen May, he unknowingly proves Boyd, or Emerson anyway, correct.

So Ellen May is set free, and goes first to Nicky Kush, her former boyfriend/pimp/father figure and paranoid radical, before seeking out Cassie St. Cyr at the Last Chance Holiness Church (there’s another apt name). Ellen May, as we all know, is deeply religious, and there’s nowhere better for her own principles to triumph. When Ava finds her, she is predictably unable to pull the trigger. That all leads to the long-awaited final showdown between Tim and Colt. Tim asks if Colt killed his oxy-addicted friend, Mark. Colt calls him “collateral damage,” along with claiming “most of him died somewhere in Kandahar.” The statement makes sense, addicts don’t wake up one day and become addicts, they don’t spend their childhoods daydreaming about oxycontin. But even if Colt is right about Mark, he’s talking every bit as much about himself. He may even be including Tim as well, who we’ve been told is likely an alcoholic and suffering from PTSD. So Colt enjoys his last cigarette, and revises an earlier statement by saying, “I guess I’ll quit today,” before raising his gun arm ever so slightly. I don’t believe Colt had any intention of killing Tim, this was a simple case of “suicide by cop.”

All this and I’ve barely said a word about Raylan Givens. Well, he was as Raylan as ever, finding the clues, rescuing the girl and solving the case all in the nick of time. Which all leads to one of the most unsettling endings to an episode of Justified or any other show for that matter. Augustine’s right hand man, Picker, is seen building a chair for Winona, who told Raylan earlier in the episode that she’d be having a girl and that it was really important he sign those papers in case something happened to either one of them. Raylan, of course, hasn’t signed the papers yet. What’s more, whatever’s going down was set in motion by his excessively Raylan-ey desire to delay his suspension and finish what he started. If he’d stayed in Lexington and taken a few days off, Augustine might never have casually asked Boyd the name of the Marshal in the hat. Raylan indirectly caused whatever’s going to happen to Winona and his unborn daughter next week. The Drew Thompson thrill ride is over, and the season finale is set to bring us a classic television plotline: Don’t you dare hurt my family! What makes it less cliche is that it goes against everything Raylan is and has been, prior to becoming an almost-father. He’s the detached, sarcastic Marshal in the cowboy hat who wakes up every morning ”thinking that today was another opportunity to mess up some bad guy’s day.” In the eerily-titled finale, “Ghosts,” we’re finally going to see the real Raylan Givens, not the hat and the quips, but what it’s like when he’s the one with real skin in the game.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Last week, I predicted the Crowders and the Marshals would forge a temporary alliance to fight, or rather survive, the onslaught of their common foe: the Tonin crime family, as personified by Nick Augustine (Mike O’Malley). The logic was simple: Despite having Drew Thompon in custody, the Marshals’ game was far from over. As Raylan put it, “We’re standing in a field, we haven’t done shit.” They needed to find a way to get both themselves and their prize catch out of Harlan alive. That left Boyd and company in a similar position. The Crowders had two options: “We make a case to Theo, or we run.”

As I watched the opening scene of “Decoy” for the first time, the apparent inaccuracy of my prediction had me disappointed. Although he remained plenty bold in sticking to his demand for $500,000, it appeared Boyd was simply going to aid the Tonins in finding Drew, and as a matter of course, Raylan. I can’t say for certain, because the writers took great care in ensuring the details behind the Crowders doublecrossing the Tonins were not made explicit (yet). But folks, I’m almost positive my original prognosis was correct.

Looking back, Boyd’s inclusion of Raylan as one his plan’s necessary casualties should’ve been my first hint. But hindsight is 20/20, or so they say. Boyd will never kill Raylan, directly or otherwise, nor will Raylan kill him. And that’s not just because the writers would be nowhere without their two main characters. These are men who have known each other for a long time, and they play by different rules than most archenemies. They’re Harlan County’s version of Batman and the Joker. Their’s is the game that never ends. No matter who or what enters the fold, be it northern carpetbaggers or Black Pike Coal. Deep down inside, being a “robber” would be a lot less fun for Boyd if Raylan wasn’t the “cop” (and, once again, vice-versa).

We’ve talked a lot this season about the ways Harlan seeps into its residents’ very souls. Last week, Boyd spoke at length about why Raylan should have become a criminal along with he and Arlo. Because to Boyd, being from Harlan and being an outlaw are one and the same. One of the major elements of Raylan’s character, however, has been trying to escape Harlan, both geographically and emotionally (I’m referring specifically to the little Arlo in the demon costume that’s always sitting on his shoulder). But the roots are so deep they always tear him back. Still, the desire to get away is what makes him scoff at Boyd’s comment, as well as get a little sheepish when he had to explain that he knew about some roads that weren’t on the map. In terms of action and plot events, the secret alliance came about because both sides needed to overcome a foe greater than themselves. But the real reason the Marshals, or Raylan rather, would make a deal with Boyd Crowder is because they are both Harlan County, Kentucky to the motherfucking bone. We see it as Boyd leads Tonin’s men into Raylan’s trap (the eponymous decoy, or one of many, at least). In what has become the classic Raylan move, he lets them walk so he can (legally) shoot them some other day, Boyd included. As Boyd walks away, Raylan reminds him of promise he’d just made, that they’ll “do this again sometime.” Boyd’s response? “You can count on it, Raylan.” The game goes on.

Now back to the rest of the betrayals, the episode was chock full of ‘em. It starts with Colt. Ever since he shot Tim’s army buddy after robbing their dealer, we’ve awaited a standoff between the two. It seemed imminent in “The Hatchet Tour” until Tim decided to let Colt walk—not because all was forgiven, but so he could shoot Colt after he’d sobered up, so things would be “fair.” Much like Raylan and Boyd, Tim let Colt walk so they could fight another day. Once again, it seemed that day was today during their beautifully written back-and-fourth as Tim sat in the motorcade (yet another decoy) while Colt and a Tonin sniper watched him from afar. My favorite part of the exchange was when Colt noted in faux dismay that the cars had “circled the wagons” to protect against his threats of explosives. The line was great because he wasn’t using the common modern idiom, but the original, literal meaning: the custom of bringing wagons into a circle upon attack. The move appears to foil Colt and the sniper’s plan, until he thinks for a moment that he did in fact see Drew Thompson in one of the cars. He asks for the gun to look and promptly turns it on the Tonin man, the first in your face sign of Boyd’s plan to dupe the boys from Detroit.

With all this deception, you’d almost feel bad for Nick Augustine and company if not for the fact that they work for the “God” of murder and drug-running. That is, until we cut back to Audrey’s, only to discover they’d been planning to cross Boyd as well. Last week, we ostensibly saw Wynn Duffy flee Augustine’s wrath once he learned Thompson had been captured by the law. Duffy’s run for his life is backed up during the aforementioned opening scene, in which Augustine questions why Boyd didn’t do the same. But later, Augustine begins to goad Ava into a fight (verbal or physical, it makes no matter). He goes through all the usual lines: She’s a gold-digging whore, she’d be nothing if not for Boyd, she had no other skills so she “sucked hillbilly dick” until she found the “right” hillbilly. Johnny tells Augustine to shut his mouth, but Nicky laughs and keeps right on going. Then Johnny speaks up again, and Augustine realizes he wasn’t just playing along in the scheme. After that, well, just about every cat Johnny’s got comes out of the bag. Augustine spills the beans about Johnny’s plans with Duffy (which seems to imply Duffy’s not actually gone and the Tonins knew about he and Johnny’s plot all along, that or Duffy is actually gone and they’re just good enough to know). Then Ava points a gun at Augustine, so Johnny points a gun at Ava. Augustine directs Johnny to shoot the woman with a gun to his head and Ava yells the same to prove his treachery. Johnny can’t do it, though. And why? Because he loves Ava. First Bowman, then Boyd, and now Johnny. You can almost hear the playground chants: All the Crowders love A-va! All the Crowders love A-va!

After all these plots and betrayals and professions of love, it’s almost hard to remember the character/plot device driving them all: Drew Thompson. As Constable Bob tells us at the end of the episode, air and road aren’t the only ways out of Harlan, as we see Drew and Rachel on freight train. There are two episodes of Justified left this season, and the question remains: what the hell is going to happen? There can be no doubt that the Tonins will continue the hunt, and some time is sure to be spent revealing the causes of all those doublecrossings. So the Marshals continue their work protecting Drew and Boyd… Ay, there’s the rub. If he and the Marshals are in it together against Detroit, I suppose he and Ava are in as much danger as Raylan and Thompson. Wouldn’t it be great to see Boyd and Raylan on the same side of a gunfight? Regardless, it’s not hard to predict these last two episodes will be captivating as hell.

“Get Drew” is one of those episodes with a very literal title. When it begins, the word is out on Drew Thompson’s identity, and everyone’s scrambling to find him. It ends with Drew in the Marshals’ custody. Generally, that’d put an end to the chase. Generally putting the cuffs on the bad guy means the game is over, the Marshals won. But not this time, not with Drew Thompson. That’s why when the Marshals start to celebrate, Raylan remarks that, “we’re standing in a field, we haven’t done shit.” Next week’s episode will likely be very similar to this one, only now the criminal element will be scrambling to “get Drew” via the Marshals, who will be doing their damndest to “get out of Harlan alive.” Art’s speech on how “awesome” Drew is reinforces why his being in the law’s custody isn’t near enough to make Theo Tonin give up the chase:

First thing we’re gonna do is acknowledge that this guy is awesome. I mean he shoots Theo Tonin, fakes his own death in a spectacular fashion, pushes a guy out of an airplane while he’s flying it, parachutes into Harlan County with enough coke and cash to jumpstart the economy of a small country, and then he has the balls to get a job in law enforcement not once but two times, he spends a couple days riding around with you while you’re looking for him, and now he’s run off with a hooker that’s half his age. That’s some badass shit.

The thing is, the Marshals may not be the only ones trying to get to safety. When Wynn Duffy hears that the Marshals have Drew, he immediately prepares to run to Canada, which his extraordinarily uninformed henchman calls, “running like a little bitch.” The Crowders have been placed in a similar position. Theo may see them as having failed him and want them taken out both as a consolation prize and a small distraction until he can get to Drew. The Crowders and the Marshals now have a common enemy scarier than both of them put together. I foresee a temporary alliance so they can all escape with their lives. But that’s next week.

The major focal point of last week’s episode, “The Hatchet Tour,” as well as my discussion of it was the way Harlan’s past influences its present. We can see the way each and every Harlanite allows their fate to be determined by the actions of their parents and grandparents. That theme continued in “Get Drew.”

Early on, Boyd tells Raylan that he chose to work on the wrong side of the law. Ironically enough, he’s in cuffs when he says, “You know what your problem is, Raylan? You should’ve been an outlaw. This job has too much paperwork for a man like you. Too many rules and regulations. You should’ve been on the other side, with me and your daddy. Oh, you’d still be able to shoot people, and be an asshole, your two favorite activities. Except you’d be a rich asshole.” Raylan’s response is that he’d more likely be dead or in jail, although Boyd says he’s “doing just fine.” Rather than point out that Boyd’s wearing fucking handcuffs, Raylan instead asks, “How ’bout Arlo?” Boyd doesn’t hear about Arlo’s passing until later, so he thinks Raylan is talking about incarceration.

It’s interesting to note, however, that Raylan’s rationale for becoming a lawman rather than a criminal does not come from any moral standing or desire to do good. Rather, it’s an almost instinctual reaction: He hated Arlo, despite having a lot more in common with him than a last name, so he decided to do the opposite of what his daddy did. Even though Raylan became a Marshal in an effort to not turn into Arlo, the man still had a huge influence on perhaps the biggest decision of his life to date.

Boyd had a similarly contentious relationship with his own father. Though he became an outlaw, he commanded his own gang and worked against Bo’s interests. Although they grew to be enemies, Boyd’s current motivation is identical to his father’s: the proliferation and improvement of the lives of the Crowder clan. Recall that Boyd and Ava’s goal is to make enough money (and get set up with enough Dairy Queen franchises) to allow their family to be legitimately and independently wealthy in three generations.

Just before Boyd turns Shelby over to Colton and Johnny, who in turn will hand him over to top Tonin henchman Nick Augustine, the former Sheriff makes one last plea to Boyd’s sense of continuing family tradition. He says, “That cocaine I brought to Harlan, that made your people, Boyd. Pulled ‘em out of trailers, put’em in houses. Put food on your table, presents under your tree. That’s why your daddy protected me all those years no matter what befell him. But I wonder, after all he went through, what he’d think of you handing me over to be tortured and killed.” Boyd retorts that under the circumstances, Bo would understand just fine, to which Shelby responds, “I think maybe you didn’t know your daddy.” But Boyd puts an end to it there, because in his mind, he’s simply continuing the family tradition of using Shelby for their own benefit: “Now if it’s any solace during this difficult moment, know that your sacrifice will be providing for the next generation of the Crowder family.”

Meanwhile, Ellen May remains in the hands of Limehouse, who changed the terms of the deal he made with Boyd. Way back when I discussed ”Truth and Consequences,” the season’s third episode, I remarked that all of Justified’s major players had gotten into the Drew Thompson game, with one exception: Limehouse. Here we are, seven weeks later, and the “banker” from Noble’s Holler has finally returned. That’s where we leave things heading towards next week’s installment, “Decoy.” Tonin and Augstine are sure to be on the warpath, ready to blow through anyone, be they Crowders or Marshals, to get to the man who was Drew Thompson. But don’t count out anyone in Harlan who still has a pulse, be it Wynn Duffy, Eve Munro, or Ellen May and Limehouse. The Marshals may have figured out who Drew Thompson is, they may have him in custody, but there’s still plenty of time on the clock.

The season’s big mystery has officially been solved. The answer to the question of Drew Thompson’s identity has been answered: It’s Sheriff Shelby Parlow, hiding in plain sight this whole time. At first I was a little disappointed in this discovery. In part because I hoped all those hints last week were red herrings. It seemed silly to devote one episode to the audience figuring things out and another to having the characters do it. I felt like the writers were just serving up more delays to stretch out a storyline that really isn’t big enough to command a whole season, because it’s the best they could come up with. We know who Thompson is, all that’s left is to cuff him, and they’re going to drag out that out for four more episodes? I felt cheated.

Then, something occurred to me which put it all in perspective. This season wasn’t actually about figuring out who Drew Thompson was. Not really. As I’ve mentioned, one of the big themes has been Raylan’s preparing for fatherhood and Arlo’s influence on just what kind of Dad he’ll be. What I didn’t put together until this week, however, was how that was actually a smaller part of another, greater theme, perhaps the season’s most significant. And that’s how the history of Harlan, its people and their ancestors, impacts its future. The Arlo/Raylan/fatherhood idea is just a smaller piece of that greater puzzle.

The biggest sign pointing us in the direction of this idea was Raylan’s recollection of an old feud between the Givens and another Harlan clan. The way Raylan remembers it, Arlo got pinched for assault after he beat the crap out of a man named Johnson McClaren because his dog was shitting on their lawn. The thing escalated, the Givens are gearing up to go after the McClarens and calling on their allies, the Crowders, to go after the Sorensens, who were kin to the McClarens. That is, until Raylan’s mother Frances called a meeting for all the clans to get together and hash it out. Frances, who Raylan says had some French blood in her, once told her son that the term “hash it out” comes from the french word “hatchet,” like an axe, to “cut through the bullshit.”

Only, that old story didn’t really go down the way Raylan thinks it did, as Shelby points out. In truth, “the dog was incidental,” and Johnson McClaren had “verbally assaulted” his mother, making “implications around town as to her proclivities,” and pushed it too far. That’s when Arlo “saw fit to shove a pound of dog shit down his mouth.” But Frances “took the high road, called a truce, although she had every right to be affronted. Your daddy was protecting her honor.” Raylan looks at Shelby with a look of disbelief, saying “Arlo did that?” It goes against everything he believes his father to have been.

That old story is relevant in the present because Raylan spends the episode trying to do the same thing his mother did: He brings Hunter Mosley to Wynn Duffy, who might know why the former sheriff killed Arlo and also has skin in the finding Drew Thompson game, in the hopes that they can “cut through the bullshit.” Of course, things don’t turn out that way, and at the end of the episode Mosley says, “Raylan, you listen to your mama’s voice and not that old son of a bitch you may turn out alright. But I wouldn’t count on it. Because I think we both know whose voice it is makes you do what you do.” Raylan’s got his parents, the angel and the demon, sitting on his shoulders, whispering into his ears. But he’s only hearing one of them, which has ramifications far beyond whether or not he’ll make a good father.

But back to Drew Thompson. It’s Constable Bob Sweeney, of all people, who incidentally makes the light bulb go off in Raylan’s head when he casually discusses the way Shelby and Hunter helped him deal with the Ollie situation. Raylan returns to his car to find Shelby gone and Hunter uncuffed in the backseat, happy that despite everything he wasn’t the one who spilled the beans. There’s an infinite amount of Harlan history and feuds still weaving its way into happenings today, and one example is that Shelby, or Drew rather, helped Hunter get revenge on Henry Crowder, who raped, tortured, and murdered his niece. In return, Hunter kept his mouth shut. When Shelby told Raylan the truth behind that old feud and calling a truce, he was trying to make him understand that he can’t crack a case in Harlan, at least not one like “Who is Drew Thompson,” if you only look at the people and evidence in the present. You need all the secrets, all the history. As Hunter says, “Feud a’int done until it’s done. If you think I’d so much as piss on a Crowder if he was afire, you really are chasing your own dick.”

Speaking of Crowders, Boyd and Ava are less involved in the search for Drew this week. Instead, they’re dealing with the revelation that Colton has been lying, he never killed Ellen May. But before all that, they’re house hunting, and that’s where we see the theme of Harlan’s past influencing its future make its mark. They’re looking at a place in Clover Hill which is enough of a hint that they’re trying to stick it to the old money snobs who live there and say that a Crowder can too live in a place like this, and no, we don’t do your dirty work. But it gets even more specific when Ava recognizes the house from her childhood. She played there as a child while her mother worked as a maid. She describes how she envisions the house should be, which is how it was back then. Once again, we see that Harlan’s past, and its people’s parents and ancestors are snaking their way into goings on in the present. Ava only falls in love with the place because she sees the daughter living where the mother worked as a maid as poetic justice. Likewise, when the realtor makes implications as to what they can afford, offering to show them starter homes a little further down the hill, Boyd is quick to open his suitcase and let the bitch know that they do have money, and they’ll buy whatever house they damn well please, cash. Not exactly a wise move for a criminal mastermind to show off all his ill-gotten cash to someone they’re not even buying a house from. But he’s eager to show that he’s done better for the Crowder name than past generations. That’s just how things are in Harlan.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

I criticized last week’s episode of Justified because it didn’t seem to bring us much closer to solving the season’s big mystery. It gave Raylan an unrelated one (alright, two) off storyline while Boyd inched towards finding Drew Thompson. Well, “Outlaw,” appears to be the writers’ forcing a collective foot in my mouth. It all but came out and said that the hard-working and dedicated Sheriff of Harlan County, Shelby Parlow, is in fact the man we’ve been looking for all along. And there he was, right under our noses.

For those that didn’t catch the hints, they came mostly during Shelby’s conversation with Ellen May about reinventing one’s self, starting over. He came home to find her digging through his ex-wife’s things, namely a necklace depicting St. Christopher, “patron saint of travelers, sailors, pilots, and bachelors.” Pilots, folks. Ellen May also happened to be wearing that ex-wife’s clothes, and remarked that they made her feel like a different person while also reminding her who she truly is. Shelby’s response? “Must’ve been a year after I first joined the sheriff’s department that I could put on my uniform without feeling like I was wearing a costume.” Now who would feel more like a fraud in a police uniform than an ex-criminal? He also says that “if you pretend to be something long enough, it’s not pretending.” In other words, at this point, he really is Shelby Parlow.

Only there’s a reason they did all that without coming out and saying it. And maybe that’s because the writers just want us to think that Shelby is Drew, just so they can pull the rug out from under us later on. Nobody greeted Shelby by saying “Hello, Drew.” I’m sure there will be a scene like that next week, whether or not it’ll be Shelby standing there when the camera flips around and fades to black remains to be seen. A couple things are holding me back from being positive Shelby’s our man. First of all, his would-be ex-wife, Eve Munro, tells Raylan she hasn’t seen Drew in 30 years, while Shelby tells Ellen May his wife left him 25 years ago. Secondly, look at all these people working so hard to protect Drew from being found out: They’re giving up deals to be moved to cushy prisons, not to mention risking (and often losing) their lives. At this point, if Shelby is Drew, what kind of power does he hold that people are willing to do so much for him? It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s the last remaining piece of the puzzle.

Yet despite what I said last week about the downsides of the show dragging its feet with the main storyline, with all the other stuff that happened this week, the theoretical revelation of Drew Thompson’s identity almost seems like a sidenote. Because “Outlaw” gave us some great stuff.First of all, someone died. Not just some meaningless character who arrived on screen just in time to leave it, which is the style of most of the deaths in Justified. No, this was a real, major character: Arlo Givens. One of this season’s big themes has been Raylan’s preparations for fatherhood. Of course, Raylan’s relationship with his own father plays a large part in what he believes it means to be a father. If nothing else, Raylan’s got one play in his book: do the opposite of what Arlo did. But in spite of what a mean son-of-a-bitch Arlo was, fathers and sons are fathers and sons, so our badass marshal actually shed a tear! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The episode picked up where last week’s left off, with Raylan at the local penitentiary. Arlo rebuffed the deal to live out his days in a country club prison, so now Raylan’s moving on to another man who supposedly knows who Drew is, former Harlan County Sheriff Hunter Mosley. Mosley shoots the deal down as well, and presses Raylan as to why he even gives a shit about the case. Raylan says that finding Drew would mean he could “write his own ticket,” to which Hunter responds “bullshit, you never cared about rank.” To that, Raylan simply says “priorities change,” another reference to his impending fatherhood. Later, we get the scene where Hunter stabs Arlo, although the tough old bastard puts up a hell of a fight. Director John Dahl handled Raylan finding out about the fight in expert fashion: We’re left out in the hallway with Tim, Rachel, and Eve to hear Art whisper that Arlo took a shiv in the chest and see Raylan bury his emotion before he turns around.

So “Outlaw” ends in a similar fashion to “Money Trap,” with Raylan visiting Arlo in prison, but under very different circumstances. Raylan pleads with Arlo to tell him who Drew Thompson is, not for his son but for his grandkids, so their father can tell them grandpa was something besides a mean old bastard. But that’s exactly what Arlo is, whispering “don’t go” when Raylan gets up and then “closer.” Raylan bends down to hear his father’s last words: “Kiss my ass.” Even for Arlo Givens, that’s ice fucking cold.

Meanwhile, Boyd shows the rich pricks in Clover Hill that he is not a man to be trifled with, because although they may be criminals “I am the outlaw, and this is my world.” He hands Wynn Duffy his “enemies list” and has a Tonin button man who’s “killed more people than malaria” eliminate both Browning and Sam Keener. Then he makes a deal with Nick Augustine to become their man in Kentucky, asking if he’d rather be in business with Duffy, “the man who got took,” or “the man who took him.” So the Detroit folks do him a favor so he can get the Clover Hillers off his back, not to mention pay him a hundred grand a piece and set him up with a Dairy Queen franchise (because “it’s like California real estate, the value might dip every now and then but it always goes back up in the summertime”). The only hitch, as Augustine reminds him, is that the Tonins don’t do “favors,” every boon they offer “is a debt, which we will expect you to repay.” The prospect of it all has Ava worried, but Boyd assures her it’s “nothing he can’t handle.” But as of yet there is no one bigger than Theo Tonin in the world of Justified, so what’s Boyd going to do when repaying that debt means being asked to do something he’s not ready for—like, say, killing Raylan Givens?

A Few More Things:

-Don’t feel too bad for Wynn Duffy. He and Johnny have been planning to double cross Boyd this whole time anyway. Boyd taking the “initiative” just means they’ll kickstart that plan into motion.

-Another of Johnny’s scams led to Colton murdering the drug dealer and Tim’s friend Mark. That means Tim is about to enter the fray in Harlan. Recall what Art had to say about him early in the season: He’s probably an alcoholic with PTSD and is “always looking to shoot someone.” So now we get to look forward to a big Colt/Tim standoff to match the inevitable Boyd/Raylan one.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

During the first scene of “Money Trap,” Art tells Raylan he doesn’t have high hopes about the Marshals finding Drew Thompson. What he may as well have said was that he doesn’t have high hopes they’ll find him for another another five or six episodes. When a show builds a season around a mystery, the audience knows damn well it won’t be solved until the end of the season. What separates good shows that follow this formula from bad ones is whether the audience remains entertained by the characters’ various adventures as they inch closer to their final goal as well as intrigued by each ensuing thickening of the overarching plot. As I discussed last week, Justified’s rich dialogue and colorful characters generally ensure the former is taken care of. But I have to admit the idea that saying they’re “inching” towards solving the mystery is a bit of an overstatement. “Money Trap” didn’t seem to bring us much closer to finding Drew Thompson, and the longer it takes the less inclined I am to give a damn.

Neither Boyd nor Raylan made much headway in the hunt for Drew Thompson this week. In the aforementioned opening scene, Art tells Raylan that their only leads are Arlo and former Harlan County Sheriff Hunter Moseley, both of whom happen to reside in a local penitentiary. Isn’t that convenient? Raylan is none too eager to visit his father, so when a local cop informs him his old pal Jody Adair (Chris Chalk) is on the loose, he’s happy to take a turn down distraction avenue. Raylan even admits it, saying some people “do as much as they can to avoid [their fathers].” He’s never met the woman he says it to (Adair’s ex-wife’s house sitter), yet even she immediately understands the implication, replying, “you just showed your cards.”

You’ll recall the fugitive Jody Adair as the subject of the season premiere’s crime-of-the-week plotline. This week we found out he murdered bail-bondsman Sharon Edmunds and her associate after a filmmaker friend named Kenneth (Michael Gladis) helped him escape their custody. Things happen as they often do in Justified: Raylan saves girl from criminal, criminal escapes by jumping out a window, Raylan finds criminal, Raylan shoots criminal, Raylan gets laid. It’s entertaining, but in the end that’s really all that can be said in its defense. It has exactly zero relation to the Drew Thompson mystery. Still, if you’re going to have a major character’s subplot amount to nothing but distraction, it might as well be an entertaining distraction.

It’s only at the very end of the episode, after the criminals are dead and the sex has been had, that Raylan finally gets around to visiting Arlo. He does exactly what Art suggested to him, stuffing a file to make it look like the Marshals have a lot more evidence on Drew than they do. But Arlo tells Raylan to shove it, even after finding out the “son he never had,” Boyd, has been employed by Theo Tonin to search for Drew. The last thing Raylan wants to do is delay Arlo’s execution, which is only days away, but he’s forced to play the only card he’s got: offering his daddy a deal. The Marshals know Drew’s alive and that he’s in Harlan, so they’re willing to commute Arlo’s sentence to life imprisonment and move him to a “country club jail” if he’ll just point them in the right direction. Arlo’s got no interest in that either, so Raylan leaves. But not before saying he’s “gonna be glad when [he] hears the news” that Arlo’s been executed. Even still Arlo appears unconcerned. The episode ends with him walking down the prison halls with a look on his face that could be construed as a smile. Men like Arlo are never happy to die, so he’s sure to have another trick up his sleeve.

Meanwhile, Boyd and Ava attended a swingers party at the home of another former sheriff of Harlan County, Tillman Napier. While the undertaking was ostensibly related to the main plot—they were going to “pull them old horndogs off their women, find their history in Harlan, and see which one of them could be Drew,” as Ava put it—in truth, they took distraction avenue the whole way to the swanky neighborhood of Clover Hill.

Boyd doesn’t get any closer to finding Drew this week than Raylan. He thinks there’s a chance that two or three of the rich folk at Napier’s party might be Thompson. But in the end all he’s really left with is a few more trails to sniff. The more important development of the night is Boyd finding out he’s not as high on the criminal foodchain as he likes to think. A few of the other men at the party “ask” him to kill a man named Frank Browning, and react with near disbelief when Boyd inquires as to what he’d get in return. “I think you’re missing the point,” one man responds, “your daddy got the point. Crowders do what we say.” Another interjects, “Let me be crystal clear: Kill Frank Browning or we’ll destroy you.” Men like Boyd and Arlo don’t take kindly to threats. The fact is Boyd would likely have killed the man with a smile on his face, for the right price, but being told to do one thing might just make him inclined to do another. The problem is Boyd’s got a whole lot of enemies right now, some that he isn’t even aware of yet, it might not be in his best interest to make any new ones, especially among such powerful men.

One last thing: the jig is up for Colton. Johnny finds out from Teri that Colton’s been “tweaking” and it was him who put the beating on her, not to mention that he never killed Ellen May. Teri doesn’t need to say much before Johnny’s able to put things together. Perhaps he’s smarter than we give him credit for, and much more of a danger to Boyd than we think.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

I praised last week’s episode, “Kin,” for returning to the formula most often employed when Justified is at its best: Boyd plus Raylan equals some captivating television. And while those two characters are the key ingredients, the same idea applies to the show in general—its greatest moments come from squeezing its wide array of colorful characters together and enjoying the results. All in all, “Kin” was going to be a hard act to follow, but I found this week’s offering especially disappointing because it quickly diverted away from that tried and true formula. “Foot Chase” seemed to set everyone off on their own individual adventures (and I do mean everyone). That’s not to say it wasn’t an exciting hour of television—as I’ve said repeatedly, if Boyd Crowder’s around count me in—but it certainly won’t be remembered as one of Justified’s best. 

With so many characters off doing their own thing, most of the episode’s dialogue can be divided into two groups: First, conversations between members of the main cast who we see interacting all the time, and second, between a single regular and various one-off or rarely recurring characters. The one exception to this, and perhaps as a result the episode’s strongest plot line, was Raylan and Shelby joining forces in the hunt for Drew Thompson.

Early on, Raylan speaks with some local cops on the scene at Josiah Cairn’s house, and he acts like his usual jerk self. When one of them asks if there’s any particular reason he’s treating them, and I quote, “like a couple of bleached assholes,” Raylan considers it for a moment and responds, “not particularly.” We discover later that the disdain likely stems from his lack of respect for Sheriff Shelby, although I doubt Raylan is self-aware enough to make that connection himself. When Shelby asks if the reason Raylan doesn’t trust him is that he thinks he’s in Boyd’s pocket, Raylan quips back, “I think Lynyrd Skynrd’s overrated; I know you’re in Boyd’s pocket.” Shelby admits that he used Boyd to get elected, but that is allegiance is and always has been to the law. It’s interesting reversal of perspective, given that Boyd would say it was in fact he that was using Shelby.

Of course, the audience knows Shelby is done being used, because we know the details of Ellen May’s disappearance. But understandably, words aren’t enough to change Raylan’s mind. So Shelby sets out to prove it to him by putting Boyd in cuffs and bringing him in for questioning. Boyd warns him of the dangers of this decision, saying, “Son, you are turning a corner you can’t walk back around.” I found two things about that line intriguing: There’s what it says about Boyd (and Walton Goggins’ performance) that he can call Shelby “son,” in spite of their actual ages, and not sound silly. Because that’s just the kind of respect Boyd Crowder commands. And there’s the fact that Shelby, who reminds us himself that he was a supermarket greeter not too long ago, is tenacious enough to turn that corner so forcefully.

They release Boyd after his lawyer turns up. Raylan’s marshal sense starts tingling when he recognizes her as the same woman defending Arlo. He and Shelby trailer her home, where they find Josiah and the “two idiots” who carried him off in a panel van. Despite what the lawyer and her two idiots think, Josiah is not Drew Thompson. So all Shelby and Raylan get for their trouble is another “he went that-a-way” as Josiah points them to Hunter Moseley, the former sheriff of Harlan County who’s currently in jail for his involvement in an attempt on Raylan’s life all the way back in the first season. We’re only six episodes into the season after all, the big mystery isn’t anywhere close to getting wrapped up yet. Which means this episode wasn’t really about finding Drew Thompson, it was about bringing Raylan and Shelby together.

The real reason the characters got so split up on their own adventures this week was precisely because we’re no where close to finding Drew Thompson and they need something to do in the interim. That’s all well and good when it comes to an otherwise strong storyline like the one between Raylan and Shelby, which brought new partnerships and character development. It’s even decent when it’s as entertaining as Boyd’s, ahem, alternate path: Breaking into the homes of the area’s rich folk based on Raylan’s “hill person” cousin Mary’s hint that Drew enjoys hobnobbing with such types, justifying himself in the claim that nobody gets that wealthy “without ruining someone’s day.” It’s not a particularly efficient way of gathering information, however, and Ava is able to wrap things up in her own way. As was the case with Raylan and Shelby, she got her team in the scavenger hunt one step closer to Thompson by getting her and Boyd invited to a party at the home of another former sheriff of Harlan County, Tillman Napier.

Although Ava’s way of doing things made sense, I can’t say it was particularly captivating to watch, and that was the problem with most of this week’s little sidequests. There are some Justified fans who have been clamoring for more plots involving Tim and Rachel. I’m one of them, and as glad as I am we finally got to see Tim go off on his own (and how Raylan is rubbing off on the rest of the office), his story and the others like it came off as fractured and forced. There were way too many to talk about in depth, so I’m going to pick one, Colton’s.

Two weeks ago, at the end of “The Bird Has Flown,” Colton went into the gas station bathroom to snort heroin before killing Ellen May. It was at that very moment that I knew he would develop a drug problem which would drive his storyline moving forward. Back then, you could’ve tried to argue that Colt was no addict. Rather, he was simply uncomfortable with the task Boyd set before him and needed some powdered courage. Alright, I would’ve said, then why did the writers choose to show him using heroin, why not have him pull out a flask and take a big gulp?

You see, drug use only ends one way in the world of fiction: addiction and devastation, men turning to crime and women to prostitution so they can get a fix. Reality allows for shades of grey, like recreational use and functional addiction, while near every drug user on television is a walking time bomb. But the reason for that isn’t necessarily that the writers of Justified or any other show that’s utilized a similar scenario want to moralize or proliferate the idea that “drugs are bad, m’kay.” The thing is, anyone who’s ever written anything will tell you that the hardest part isn’t creating material but cutting it. In television especially, when writers are constricted to 22 or 44-minute installments, there is simply no time to spare for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. So if someone, especially a side character like Colton, was entirely functional despite their drinking or drug use, why waste any screentime on it? It would be like showing Colton going home to feed his cat or any such thing that has absolutely no impact on the story. So the second any precious screentime is devoted to someone sneaking away to snort heroin, you know they’re going to milk it for all it’s worth.

We can see all this is manifesting in Colton. He’s gone from needing a few bumps to take the edge off to freebasing in the bathroom at Audrey’s to pulling a freaking gun on some poor guy who’s just trying to get clean (not to mention take a piss). I wonder if it’s a coincidence so many of his addiction-related shenanigans take place in bathrooms. Oh, and let’s not forget Colt slapping a hooker around (and making quite the mess in her trailer). This isn’t just any hooker either, but one who seems to have a (presumably very open) relationship with Johnny. It’s hard to say how much time has passed since Ellen May’s escape in the world of the show, but it can’t be more than a week or to, and Colton is completely unraveling. This being television, he has further still to fall before he hits rock bottom. I’d be surprised if he survives the season.

What’s more relevant, however, is how said shenanigans are affecting his work. He doesn’t pick up when Johnny calls because he’s too busy pointing a gun at some junkie’s privates. It’s a risky choice given what Boyd said last week about not responding to him: “Next time I reach out to you, I don’t care if it’s a smiley face you text me back.” But the point is that Colton’s an addict now and addicts make risky choices. Plus it’s Johnny, so who cares, right? Speaking of Johnny, he gets angry when he sees Teri’s bruised face and demands to know who hurt her. Teri knows she can’t say it was Colton, so she blames it on Max, her “Tuesday regular.” Which leads to another interesting side effect of Colton’s new drug problem: he nearly kills this completely innocent (of this particular crime, anyway) man as a way to vent his fury.

A Few More Things:

-It seems Johnny is still planning to kill Boyd once the Thompson mystery is solved. Johnny tells his cousin that “If it were me, I’d take Drew off your hands and then I’d try to kill you.” Of course, Boyd thinks Johnny’s just speaking in hypotheticals, and he a’int afraid of no Wynn Duffy, so he responds, “Well then lucky for me it a’int you.” Boyd, buddy, didn’t you used to be a preacher? Don’t you know the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist?

-Boyd and Ava are engaged, and the proposal was even a bit romantic in a Crowder sort of way. But I’m wondering if this wasn’t a tactical move, at least partially, to take advantage of spouses not being able to testify against one another. Once they’re married Boyd couldn’t be forced to talk if Ava ever gets pinched for killing Delroy, and the same goes for Ava if Boyd’s ever in trouble for, you know, being Boyd.

-“You’re a criminal, how do you get bloodstains out of upholstery?”

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Almost every popular television drama has that character: the breakout, the one who isn’t the protagonist but becomes a fan favorite (and thus often a big part of the show’s advertising strategy). Boardwalk Empire has Richard Harrow, The Wire had Omar, The Walking Dead has Daryl Dixon, Sons of Anarchy has Chibbs, Breaking Bad has Jesse Pinkman, not to mention Mike Ehrmantraut. The list goes on. We often wish this character got more screentime, but understand that part of the draw is that we’re always left wanting more. That’s not the case in Justified (or Breaking Bad). Unlike those other shows, its story doesn’t follow one main character while the breakout badass ducks in and out. Instead, its version of the trope, Boyd Crowder, has become so vital that he’s every bit as much the protagonist as Raylan is (ok, he’s a deuteragonist if you really want to get technical about it, nerd). Pretty impressive considering Walton Goggins’ name wasn’t even in the opening credits until season two.

Those of you who know their Justified trivia know that Boyd was originally supposed to die from the bullet Raylan put in his stomach in the pilot episode, as he did in the Elmore Leonard short story on which it was based (“Fire in the Hole”). In fact, Goggins only agreed to be in the show to begin with as a favor to his friend Timothy Olyphant.  But after both creator Graham Yost and test audiences saw how electric the character (and the actor’s performance) was, it was decided Boyd would live to fight another day. The move was even approved by Leonard, who tends to get upset when adaptations of his work stray to far from the source material. It’s not unusual for this kind of character to have their death cancelled—Jesse Pinkman, for instance, was originally meant to die at the end of the first season of Breaking Bad.

So where am I going with all this? Here: As Boyd has slowly risen through the ranks from one-off to co-protagonist, the writers have generally woven him into the story pretty gracefully. He had his side adventures and independent activities, but the first three seasons each had a single decidedly main plot, and Boyd always played an important role in its events. That is, until this year, when they’ve had nary any interaction at all. Until this week.

Prior to “Kin,” the writers appeared to be floundering for both a reason and a method to keep Boyd around. Save an interaction here or there, you could’ve edited his and Raylan’s plotlines into two separate shows that happened to share a setting, assuming you already knew all the characters. It seemed the two were each along their respective merry ways, and despite Boyd having very little to do in what was meant to be “Raylan’s show,” he was simply too good a character to toss out the window for a reason as “trivial” as not having anything to do with the plot (not that I’m complaining, I’d watch a show that was only about Boyd). But Justified’s bread and butter was, is, and will always be the intersection of the two characters.Whether it’s Boyd versus Raylan or Boyd and Raylan forming a tenuous alliance to take down some common foe, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Boyd himself put it best (as usual) when he and Raylan found themselves locked in the hill people’s makeshift cell, “You wanna start a fight, Raylan? Nine times out of ten I’d be more than happy to accommodate. But right now I think we got more pressing concerns.” What made “Kin” such a special, exciting episode is that Boyd’s entrance into the rat race to find Drew Thompson delivered a return to that basic, ever-electric formula. We even got both versions of it: Boyd and Raylan have different reasons for wanting to find Thompson, but they work together against the aptly-named hill people.

Speaking of the Truth/Thompson mystery, we got a bunch of long-awaited exposition on the details of the case, and some real plot development while we’re at it. Mike O’ Malley’s character tells us, “Drew Thompson shot Theo [Tonin] in the eye and left him for dead on a runway in Panama. He stole $2 million worth of cocaine from the outfit. Losing that cocaine put Theo in a jam with some very nasty people.” He then hires Wynn Duffy and the Dixie Mafia to be Tonin’s chief local agents in finding Thompson. Duffy also makes a deal to secure Boyd’s help, offering first $20,000 and later half of the heroin trade in the state of Kentucky. Of course, Duffy only made that deal with the expectation that Johnny will kill Boyd and accept a less significant piece of the narcotic pie.

Meanwhile, Raylan gets a clue from Josiah Cairn, the step-father of the brace-fraced blonde teenager who likes to flash people. The girl and her boyfriend only made one hole in Arlo’s wall, which is how Raylan knows she didn’t go there looking to strip the place for copper wire. It turns out Arlo and Josiah are old pals, and the former had the latter send his step-daughter to grab the bag. Raylan gets Josiah to give up Thompson’s alleged whereabouts: hiding out with the reclusive hill people, who don’t much care for outsiders or anyone who isn’t “kin.” Duffy has Boyd sniffing the same scent, which is how the two end up in the aforementioned makeshift cell.

Raylan promises that if he doesn’t find Thompson in the hills, Josiah’s place will be his first stop. Well, Raylan only barely escapes with his life, let alone Thompson in tow. Josiah’s not around when Raylan shows up to make good on his promise, which is curious, considering Josiah was under house arrest. What’s even more curious is how Raylan finds Josiah’s ankle bracelet unbroken. Raylan’s confused as to how Josiah could accomplish such a feat, until he finds a severed foot, at which point we realizes the trick wasn’t exactly on par with Houdini. That tells us two things: one, that whoever Thompson’s working with are powerful, not to mention hardcore, and two, there’s another significant force at work here that we haven’t been introduced to yet.

What else is going on? Well, Boyd’s facing rebellion a number of fronts. First of all we’ve got Colton, who told Boyd he killed and disposed of Ellen May without incident. This one appears benign—Colton’s just trying to cover his own ass—but think about how Boyd will respond to being lied to given how he responds to being ignored: “Next time I reach out to you, I don’t care if it’s a smiley face you text me back.” The truth is Ellen May’s under Sheriff Shelby’s protection. The sheriff means to cut ties with his campaign’s criminal benefactor for the sake of both his reputation and his conscience. It looks like Shelby will get the truth about Ava killing Delroy out of Ellen May, and the knowledge will be his main weapon when Boyd finally figures out the truth. Boyd and Ava have truly fallen in love, which is good for Boyd the person but bad for Boyd the criminal mastermind. Love, or even caring what happens to somebody other than yourself is a weakness for the latter. And let’s not forget that Johnny’s still planning to kill Boyd and partner up with Wynn Duffy. When he discusses his cousin’s whereabouts with Ava, she abruptly states that if Boyd wanted him to know where he was, he would’ve told him. You can see and hear the latent anger when he responds that he’s “forgetting his place.” Then, he gets upset that Duffy has apparently reneged on their deal by seeking Boyd’s assistance in finding Drew Thompson. But when Duffy tells Johnny he’ll be free to kill Boyd once they’ve found Thompson, Johnny actually looks scared by the proposition for the first time. That seems to raise the question of whether or not Johnny really has mutiny in him.

A Few More Things:

-Winona (Natalie Zea) made her first appearance of the season for a visit with the baby doctor. I’ve been seeing her all over the place lately, so was she just not needed in the first four episodes, was there a scheduling conflict, or both?

-Wynn Duffy, upon being told Theo Tonin wants him to find Drew Thompson, oh, and the last guy Tonin asked to do that just got shot in the head while sitting right next to him: “It’s not a problem.” And he fucking said it with a straight face! It makes sense though, after the whole Quarles debacle, Duffy’s seen some shit.

-Tim knowing Colton was a military man just from his boots and their subsequent bonding was a nice touch.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Justified has always walked the fine line between serial and episodic storytelling. There are times when a full episode that doesn’t add to the season’s overarching plot can seem like filler, no matter how much awesome dialogue there is. But some of the show’s best episodes have come in a “crime of the week” package. How could you forget season one’s “Long in the Tooth,” in which guest star Alan Ruck played a cartel accountant turned dentist for the downtrodden? Justified’s fourth season has continued to walk the tightrope between those two formats.

In the two episodes prior to this week’s installment, the more serialized Waldo Truth mystery featured prominently while Raylan’s various episodic(ish) comings and goings made their presence known but, for the most part, blended into the background. The reverse was true in the premiere as well as “The Bird Has Flown,” in which a situation that’s been developing in bits and pieces over the last three weeks—the Raylan-Lindsey-Randall love triangle—was finally given center stage.

“The Bird Has Flown” is thematically linked by the ideas of choices and consequences, cause and effect. First of all, there’s the question at the center of every love triangle: which one will she choose? Until last week’s closing scene, it seemed pretty clear Lindsey wanted nothing to do with her ex-con ex-husband. Or it did up until Raylan returned home to find his place ransacked, anyway. After that things seemed just as clear: we (and Raylan) had only been led to believe Lindsey was interested in Raylan because it was part of her and Randall’s scam. But when we returned this week, all clarity had gone from the situation. You could say Lindsey made a series of choices throughout the episode as her loyalties wavered back and forth between Raylan and Randall. You could also say that all that wavering wasn’t a series of choices but her failure to make just one. Either way, you’d be right.

As it turned out, nobody—including Lindsey—knew who she would choose until Rachel’s beanbag shotgun entered the equation. She shoots Raylan once, to Randall’s delight, only to turn to her ex and unload once, twice, and after being greeted by an empty click on the third pull, she decides to turn the gun into a melee weapon. The answer was just as murky as the question. Lindsey didn’t pick A) Raylan or B) Randall, but C) none of the above (or perhaps D) me, myself, and I). Nonetheless, when she tells Raylan where the money is—although she’s actually referring to what they bought with the money—he smiles and says “I knew you liked me.” And when Randall asks how many times Lindsey shot him, Raylan replies, “a couple more times than she shot me.” That’s Raylan for you, no woman could ever dislike him, Lindsey was just too smart to risk the legal consequences of being around when he came to.

Meanwhile over in Harlan, Ellen May returned to Audrey’s looking for work now that her favorite preacher is out of commission, and the Crowders had to decide just what to do with her. When Ellen May asks why Billy St. Cyr had to die the way he did, Boyd puts the “choices” theme into words better than anyone, just like you’d expect: “I will not deny my culpability, Ellen May, the tempter bears as much guilt as the tempted. But when it’s all said and done, it was a choice he made that led to where we are now.” The serpent was made to crawl on its belly, but Adam and Eve were cast out of paradise.

Ava fears Ellen May’s lips may have been a little too loose during her time at the Last Chance Holiness Church, particularly regarding one particular incident: the murder of Delroy, Ellen May’s abusive former pimp. I must say that Ava’s intense fear of retribution for this one crime didn’t feel entirely earned. Delroy is hardly the only man to die at the hands of a Crowder. Most of what they do is illegal. They are running a criminal enterprise, after all. And with the sheriff in their collective back pocket to boot! I guess you could make the argument that Ava’s worried because this is the one “truly serious” crime that Ava could get put away for, but it still seemed more like a plot device than a valid story beat. Come on, everyone in Harlan is afraid of the Crowders. They’d probably find it more strange if they found out Ava hadn’t killed at least one person.

Anyway, Ava isn’t sure whether to keep Ellen May within arm’s reach to keep her in line or just remove her from the equation entirely. Or as she puts it, “Either I gotta worry about this thing, or I gotta do the other thing.” Choices. But Boyd proposes another solution: sending Ellen May to work at his cousin’s sleazy motel in Alabama, “the kind that has HBO and no ice.” Once Ava settles on the banishment option, she tries to cast it in a good light, telling Ellen May she’ll be around good Christian folk and won’t have to work as prostitute any longer, which is what she ostensibly wanted following her conversion. Ava even offers her a hefty looking envelope filled with cash.

It wasn’t initially clear whether all that was a display of genuine affection or if Ava was just trying to ensure Ellen May remembers her fondly (and thus won’t snitch) in the days to come. There’s no question that Ava cares for Ellen May, I mean, she did kill a man to protect her. But Crowders tend to have ulterior motives.  Ava is no Boyd—who as Sheriff Shelby put it, is “unfettered by conscience, absent any moral compass that your or me might reckon by. If he thinks he has reason to he will kill you quick as look at you twice”—but she is a Crowder, even if she did have to marry to get the name, and it shows in her final choice. In the end, Ava’s sense of self-preservation outweighs any goodwill she might have held towards Ellen May, as she instructs Colton to “do the other thing.”

When asked what the call was about, Colton says Ava had decided to let Ellen May come home, in the same tone you’d use to tell a child their dog had “gone to live on a farm.” Ellen May is certain that Ava changed her mind because of what she said during their final conversation, insisting she would never snitch. She has no idea how right she is. There’s just one problem though: she disappears before Colton gets a chance to do the deed. Boyd’s new right hand man is clearly shaken after being given his orders, and heads to a gas station bathroom to sniff some powdered courage (more on that in a moment) before he can do the deed. So did Ellen May put the pieces together and bolt, or did someone else snatch her up? My money’s on the latter. Ellen May never was the brightest bulb, and she genuinely seemed to believe her words had convinced Ava to let her stay.

About Colton’s white powder: it came out of one of those same chocolate chip baggies that the Dixie Mafia heroin dealer was pushing his product in, which set a bunch of possibilities racing through my mind. Could Colton be in league with Wynn Duffy selling heroin in Harlan County? Could he be the real reason Boyd’s oxy sales have dipped? Was the man Duffy executed a patsy? Or perhaps Colton’s decided to back Johnny (who recently met with Wynn Duffy regarding a partnership) in the soon-to-come Crowder Civil War? It may just be that those were the only baggies they had on set, or that Colton picked one up and put a personal stash of cocaine or some other substance in it, but I don’t think so. Based on what little we know of him, sniffing heroin seems out of character for Colton (recall his speech about always being able to recognize a junkie during his time as an MP). It seems to me that both Boyd and the audience know a lot less about Colton than we thought, and someone out there decided to take advantage of Boyd’s soft spot for his wartime amigo.

Check out the preview for next week’s episode below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.