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.