Justified – “Good Intentions”: Ding dong ditch

Justified: Season 5

Episode 3 – “Good Intentions”

Aired: January 21, 2014

Director: Dean Parisot

Writer: Benjamin Cavell

“I’m not your bitch.”

– Dewey Crowe

Ever since Cousin Daryl announced his plans to head to Harlan in episode one, I think we all assumed that he was out for Dewey Crowe’s new-found fortune. That’s why I found it so fascinating this week that Daryl is actually trying to help Dewey, who was unwittingly being ripped off by Boyd. Sure, he wants a cut of the money for helping, but he is savvy enough to figure out that Audrey’s should be making Dewey a lot more cash than it is and that Messer and Boyd are the reason he’s making $500 a week instead of $3,000.

Of course, Dewey probably would have been happy to live a quiet life as the owner of an underperforming whorehouse, spending his days with the girls blissfully unaware that his righthand man was funneling money to the previous owner. It’s a much simpler existence. And one that doesn’t involve unsuccessfully confronting Boyd or killing Messer.

And obviously, this is only the beginning of Daryl poking his head into Dewey’s affairs. It’s likely to only get worse from here. I would have to imagine that, after taking out Messer, his next logical step would be to deal with Boyd.

Speaking of Boyd, he’s racking up quite a number of enemies this season. He’s still dealing with Mooney and a revived Lee Paxton. Plus, we find out that Cousin Johnny is the one who stole his shipment of drugs. If Daryl comes after him too, he’s going to have trouble fighting three different wars, especially with a dried up drug supply and limited cash.

I haven’t touched on Raylan’s storyline yet, which dealt with the fallout from him staying at Monroe’s house. What I found interesting about the story was how a series of miscommunications lead to Monroe’s downfall. A guy with a bat sets off the car alarm at Monroe’s house while Raylan is there with Allison. Raylan assumes Monroe sent him, so he goes to confront Monroe about it. Since Monroe didn’t send him, he assumes that someone else did in order to break into his safe. So he accuses and attacks Gloria, before ultimately sending her to the house to check on the gold. She gets busted by Raylan and Rachel, who get her to lie to Monroe, saying the gold was missing. He assumes it was Wynn Duffy, the guy who installed the safe. And it’s when he shows up at Wynn’s trailer that he is first shot by stone cold killer Mikey, then arrested for kidnapping and attempted murder.

Like I said, a series of miscommunications. Monroe was about to walk. And if it wasn’t for someone from Allison’s past showing up to threaten her and all of the dumb luck that followed, he would have. It may be the least Raylan has ever proactively done to get someone behind bars (though obviously everything that happened after Gloria showed up to check the safe was part of Raylan and Rachel’s plan).

This season still seems a bit disjointed as a whole. It feels more like a collection of random tangents than any one major overall arcing storyline at this point, but I’ve been enjoying the individual stories enough not to really care.

I will say that the one reoccurring theme seems to be a growing mistrust of Raylan among his fellow marshals. Last week we had Art checking out on Raylan’s connection to the Tonins. And this week, his “chaperone” Rachel openly questions what Raylan would do if Allison was a criminal, saying that she has doubts about Raylan’s moral judgement as of late. With only one more season after this one, they could be setting Raylan up for a fall.

And another thing …

  • Your mileage may vary, but I for one never get tired of the running joke with Ava’s lawyer mistakenly removing his headphones.
  • We finally have a clear sense of who Mara is. She seemed pretty genuinely upset about Paxton being beaten into a coma and her reluctance to turn in Boyd still could have been read as self preservation instead of greed. But now that Lee is awake and she’s spending her nights getting Boyd shirtless in bars, it’s apparent that she really is just out for money (and possibly Boyd).
  • Rachel is finally given something to do. Could a Tim storyline be far behind?
  • After Wynn Duffy’s utterly uninspiring pep talk to the troops last week, I was happy to see him look much more in charge as he peppered Cyrus with shots from the BB gun during the interrogation this week.

Written by Joel Murphy. If you enjoy his recaps, he also writes a weekly pop culture column called Murphy’s Law, which you can find here. You can contact Joel at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *