Justified 6.01: Season Premiere “Fate’s Right Hand”

Previously on Justified: Art got shot (noooooo!) and Raylan promised (yet again) to be there for Winona and their daughter and promised with somewhat more vigor to help the Marshals’ Service and ASA Rodriguez take down Boyd Crowder. Meanwhile, Katherine Hale (Mary Steenburgen) told Boyd Crowder that his true superpower was robbing banks, Ava Crowder turned informant for the US Marshals, and Dewey Crowe confessed to murder.

We open with Winona wondering what in the world is worth Raylan’s missing the graveyard shift with his adorable baby daughter Willa.

The answer is taking down Boyd Crowder. Raylan’s in Mexico, trying to get the Federales who found Johnny Crowder’s body to tell him who witnessed that murder. The chief, Aguilar, is unimpressed by Raylan’s Marshal badge and tells him to piss off. Raylan is uncharacteristically restrained, saying only “see you around” and the chief returns to his drinking buddies. When Aguilar emerges from the bar, extremely drunk, we find out that when Raylan’s parting words meant that he was planning to kidnap Aguilar and bring him back to the US where he’d be more likely to talk and more respectful of the Marshals’ service.

Meanwhile, Boyd sweet-talks to a bank official by quoting Thomas Jefferson’s low opinion of banks to her, and rents a safe-deposit box so he can get into the vault and mark some of the boxes.

At the Crowder household, a troubled Ava asks Boyd why he’s making the repairs to her house that she paid someone else to do. She’s just woken up, and offers Boyd coffee or a Coke. When he asks for a beer instead, Ava helps herself to vodka and broods over the fact that Boyd will kill her if he finds out she’s informing on him.

Raylan returns from his Mexico trip with news that Aguilar has given him the name of a witness to Boyd’s murder of Johnny Crowder and that witness is our old friend Dewey Crowe. Rachel and Vasquez inform Raylan that Dewey is about to be released thanks in part to Raylan’s history of casually violating Dewey’s civil rights. Dewey’s lawyer also has a protection order filed against Raylan so he’s supposed to stay a thousand yards away from Dewey. Of course Raylan visits the prison from which Dewey is being released and spins a story about how the Mexicans want Dewey extradited for the murder of Johnny Crowder. Dewey just wants a $6 blowjob.

Alas, poor Dewey! His whorehouse has been impounded by the state of Kentucky. All that’s left of his dreams are a poignant pair of purple lace panties hanging on the washing line and some sort of wooden charm bracelet. Dewey visits a local restaurant where Abigail, one of his former employees and the owner of the bracelet, is gainfully employed as a waitress. After he tries to “seduce” her and she refuses, Dewey sees the hand of fate at work.

Boyd shares his plans to leave Harlan, a “ghost town” in his words, before he and Ava turn into ghosts themselves. He tells Ava he’s about to come into some money so they can leave for South America, even though Ava pleads with him that she can’t hear this right now. (Or possibly ever, because she’s going to have to spill it all to Raylan.) Somehow, I too don’t see Boyd content on a beach in Costa Rica, to be honest. There wouldn’t be anything for him to blow up!

Ava is back at her old job at the hairdressers, a perfect cover for her undercover activities. Raylan seeks her out and says she needs to make sure to contact him when he reaches out to her. It’s Informant 101. Ava tells Raylan that she’s afraid that somehow she’ll give herself away and give Boyd a reason to put a hole through her head. Raylan asks if Boyd has made any new big plans, and Ava, playing both sides against the middle, doesn’t mention Boyd’s emigration talk. Raylan asks Ava to keep an eye on Dewey, whom he thinks will be coming to see Boyd soon.

Just as Raylan predicted, Dewey comes to Boyd’s bar. Boyd hasn’t forgiven Dewey for robbing him at gunpoint, but Dewey shows Boyd Abigail’s bracelet explaining that just as his “turtle-dog” came back to him, Dewey is coming back to Boyd. Boyd wants to know exactly why Dewey isn’t in prison while Dewey wants to be part of Boyd’s family again. I think he should maybe remember what happened to several of Boyd’s actual family members before he gets too chummy: remember when Boyd shot his dad in season 1 and shot his cousin in Season 5?

Raylan and Tim chat about their surveillance of Boyd and Co. and what they should do about Cyrus, when a bearded man played by Garrett Dillahunt shows up in a white Mercedes with Maryland plates. The hirsute stranger offers Raylan a briefcase full of money, Raylan’s asking price for the Givens’ family home. Raylan is a bit suspicious of fact that the guy doesn’t even want to see the house he’s willing to pay for in cash, (and by “a bit suspicious,” I mean Raylan flat out tells the guy he’s unimpressed by a stack of stolen money) and refuses to sell to him. The man leaves, telling Raylan that if he has second thoughts, he’ll know where to find him. “You have no idea!” Raylan says to his car. (I just want to mention that the most sympathetic character I’ve ever seen Garrett Dillahunt play was a killer robot, so I don’t trust this guy either.)

Raylan and Tim go visit Cyrus; Tim goes in the front door and when Cyrus runs, Raylan conks him on the head with a shovel. It’s nice to see that teamwork between Tim and Raylan again!

At Boyd’s bar, Carl reports that Cyrus is missing, and asks Boyd how they’re going to get away with their plan. Cyrus’s loss is Dewey Crowe’s opportunity, though I have to think that Boyd needs to hire a recruiting agency if Dewey is the best he can do for henchmen.

Raylan and Tim watch as Dewey drives away from Boyd’s group in a towtruck; they decide to follow Dewey rather than Boyd, in the hopes that if they pick Dewey up, he’ll agree to be their witness against Boyd. Dewey hilariously runs a Kentucky State Police roadblock, saying that he’s saving the state of Kentucky $300K for “malfeasance” by doing so, and then crashes his towtruck. Raylan and Tim “rescue” Dewey, and find a suspicious looking black bag that turns out to contain a sizeable portion of Boyd’s wardrobe.

Meanwhile, freed of both the encumbrance of Dewey and the surveillance of the Marshals’ service, Boyd and his crew prepare to rob the bank. This is no ordinary bank robbery, however, as they target four very specific safety deposit boxes — the ones Boyd had marked earlier.

Ava meets Raylan on the bridge, and is confused (or feigns confusion) when he asks her about why it was just the safety deposit boxes. Raylan paints Ava a bleak picture of her future: either she knew about Boyd’s plans and didn’t tell Raylan, in which case she’s a criminal co-conspirator, or else she didn’t know anything (which Raylan believes) but then she’s of no use to the Marshals’ Service, so she’s going back to prison.

Poor Ava says she’s having a nervous collapse, and Raylan tells her she needs to pull herself together and do her job. When she doubts her acting abilities, Raylan reminds her about how she plotted to murder her abusive husband Beauman Crowder back in Season 1 and how he never saw it coming. After this little pep talk, Ava realizes she is actually really good at getting Crowder men to believe in her good intentions while she’s planning to take them down. (What Raylan’s forgotten to mention, of course, is that Boyd is a lot smarter and sneakier than his brother was. Poor Ava!)

Boyd’s gang is disappointed by their haul from the bank, which consists of some deeds and a ledger. Carl complains that “this isn’t money” and Boyd gives him a staredown; given what’s coming, Carl should zip his lip.

Raylan goes to see his surrogate dad, the convalescing Art, fills him in on what’s happening, and brings some awesome bourbon. Hilariously, Raylan tells Art that everything has to be “by the book” so they can finally take down Boyd. I’m sure it’s only the lingering pain that keeps Art from cracking up at Raylan’s delusions of acting “by the book” here. (Unless the book is called “Kidnapping Mexican Officials and Running CIs Who Used to Be Your Lover” in which case Raylan is totally by the book.)

Art draws out Raylan who admits that he’d prefer to shoot Boyd, rather than do this slow and painstaking investigative work. Art reminds him that if he does that, he’ll probably be seeing his daughter through the bars of a prison cell. He also tells Raylan that he might try and fail to get Boyd, that sometimes no matter what you do or how good you are, things just don’t go your way. That’s a message Raylan doesn’t want to hear!

Dewey comes to find Boyd, angry that his job entailed carrying Boyd’s underpants. Dewey tells Boyd that he’s tired of Raylan beating up on him and asks if Boyd’s his friend. He mentions the word “Mexico” and Boyd draws back like a snake about to strike. Dewey tells Boyd that he wants to go back to the good old days when Boyd ran “Crowder’s Commandos” but alas, the past is another country, and there’s no way back to the simpler times of neo-Nazi hijinks. Boyd too, can’t resist a little nostalgia for the past, telling Dewey that his ancestors’ hardscrabble lives in the coal mines were bearable because they hoped for a better future. Then he sends Dewey to the cut-rate whorehouse in the sky with a bullet to the brain. Nooooooo!!!

Raylan: His description fits you to a T: Nazi tattoos, funny hair, stupid-looking.

Dewey: That could be 10,000 people.

RIP, Dewey Crowe! And you couldn’t have been more wrong: you were unique with your funny hair and your Nazi tattoos and your four kidneys and your child-like gullibility and longing to belong. I’ll miss you!

Regina Thorne is an avid reader of just about everything, an aspiring writer, a lover of old movies and current TV shows, and a hopeless romantic.

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