Justified Recap ‘Fate’s Right Hand’: You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive

In the latest Justified recap for the final season debut, the showdown between Raylan and Boyd is brewing but who is going to get caught in the middle of this fire-fight?

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

There have been a lot of common themes, characters and placeholders through five seasons of ‘Justified’, but the one constant that I’ve enjoyed the most is the song that’s closed out just about every year of the show. The track isn’t just a part of the series, but it’s a thread and an idea that holds together the very fabric of ‘Justified’. It serves as a harsh reminder of the world where this show takes place and the machinations that are required to live in it. Or as it seems for the purpose of the debut episode of the final season, die in it.

You’ll never leave Harlan alive.

As this final season of ‘Justified’ kicks off, the stakes are already on the table. Raylan Givens is weeks away from joining his estranged wife Winona and their baby girl Willa in Florida, where he’ll start a fresh new assignment with the U.S. Marshal service, but first things first he has to help the district attorney and his new boss, Rachel, nail Boyd Crowder to the wall.

Boyd has been an antagonist on this show since the very beginning and while he hasn’t always been the monster hiding under the bed or the bogeyman lurking in closet, he’s remained an ever present threat to the law-abiding citizens of Harlan County, Kentucky. Boyd manages to slip through the system, sometimes by the skin of his pearly white teeth, but as the body count continues to rise, the law enforcement officials that have seen him operate with impunity for years are finally ready to put him behind bars.

Stuck in the middle of all this is Ava Crowder.

She was put in jail a season ago for murder and railroaded into an even steeper prison sentence. Boyd tried to protect her, but his efforts failed and she was forced to fend for herself. Ultimately, Ava found a way out but now she lives under Raylan’s thumb as his confidential informant, tasked with giving him anything and everything she can on Boyd so he can get wrapped up and delivered to the Federal penitentiary with a bow on his head when he arrives. Ava’s fear of what happens to her if she gets caught is also clouded by guilt because deep down inside she still loves Boyd, but loving him is what got her put in jail in the first place.

Now she’s stuck between a criminal and a cop and it appears whichever direction she chooses, Ava’s never leaving Harlan alive.

This Is How I’ll Get Him

While his wife and baby girl are waiting for his arrival in Florida, Raylan Givens is somewhere in the deepest, dankest part of Mexico looking for witnesses who can tie Boyd Crowder to the murder of his cousin Johnny and several other men in a massacre south of the border. When Raylan tracks down the Mexican cop, who Boyd eventually paid off to keep quiet, he tries in his not so subtle ways to coax the information out of him. The cop isn’t having it and warns the Yankee that his badge don’t mean shit down here.

Following a Tequila soaked night in the bar, the cop leaves and gets in his card (because that’s always a good idea), but just as he’s about to drive off into the street, another vehicle backs up and plows directly into him. When the Mexican cop awakens, he’s in a trunk somewhere in the middle of the desert. It looks like the kind of place he’d probably go to drop off a few dead bodies, but instead he’s staring up at Raylan, who has some rather unpleasant news for him. They’ve crossed the border and they’re back in the United States where that shiny badge Raylan’s carrying means a whole lot.

Back in Kentucky, Raylan tells Rachel and Assistant U.S. District Attorney Vazquez that the Mexican cop is currently cooling his heels in El Paso, but he did manage to give up the description of a real live witness who saw Boyd execute his cousin in cold blood and it’s none other than Dewey Crowe. Rachel has to share some bad news with Raylan to dampen his good move, however, because Dewey is just hours away from being released.

Despite confessing on a wire that he shot and killed Wayne Messer and he was attempting to steal a whole bunch of heroin, Dewey was able to get off on a technicality. Combine that with his lawsuit and the constant abuse he’s suffered — primarily at the hands of Raylan Givens — the court system had no choice but to let him go. He’s already done his due diligence and filed a restraining order against Raylan as well. Anyone want to guess how long that 1000-foot rule stayed in tact?

The moment Dewey walks out of jail a free man, Raylan is there to greet him. He tries to get the dullard to slip up and give information about Boyd killing Johnny, but for once Dewey manages to keep his lips sealed tight. He even denies ever going to Mexico. Raylan tries to tell Dewey that this is all going to end badly for him and he should try to get out before Harlan swallows him alive.

“You’re a card in fate’s right hand. Don’t you see how it’s going to play out?”
~ Raylan

Dewey has other plans for his future, but given the way this episode ends, I’m guessing he wishes he listened to Raylan’s advice.

Back in Harlan, Dewey tries to find some semblance of normalcy from his past life, but everything’s burned to the ground. Audrey’s is in shambles and has been seized by the Federal government and even his favorite ex-lay is now working as a waitress with a boyfriend behind the counter who is a cook. Nothing is right with this picture. Dewey just wants his above ground pool and trailers full of prostitutes and it will be like Disneyland to him. Unfortunately it’s all gone.

The one piece of his former life that Dewey manages to find and hold onto for dear life is his beloved turtle-dog. Remember the turtle-dog from last season? One of the two most precious possessions he has in life — along with an alligator tooth necklace — that he hands over to his two most favorite hookers, who then toss them out like yesterday’s garbage. Well, the turtle-dog survived and found its way back to Dewey and now he knows he has a purpose. This is a sign of things to come.

Old Habits Die Hard

When we catch up with Boyd Crowder to start the final season of ‘Justified’, he’s sleeping in the backroom of his bar, just biding his time until the local bank he’s about to visit will be open for business. The last time we saw Boyd in season five, he was giving up the drug trade because he was never going to be a very good kingpin, but his old partner Wynn Duffy and his new boss, Katherine Hale, remembered that before he was starting congregations and running heroin, Harlan’s most infamous criminal was robbing banks and getting away with it.

It seems Boyd is under the employ of Ms. Hale as we kick off season six because he’s opening a safety deposit box account t a local bank, but seconds later as his cohort makes a distraction, it’s clear he’s setting this place up for a robbery sometime later in the day. Boyd sprays down the boxes with a liquid while the bank employee has her back turned and the first stage of his robbery is set in motion.

When Boyd leaves the bank, a car parked just a few feet away snaps some pictures and there we see Deputy Tim Gutterson playing lookout and catching every move Boyd is making. It’s clear the weight of the Lexington branch of the U.S. Marshal’s service is behind putting Boyd Crowder behind bars.

Boyd gets back to his bar only to find Dewey Crowe there waiting on him. Dewey wants nothing more than to get back to the old days when he was running in Boyd’s crew. Never mind the fact that he came after Boyd last season, double-fisting guns and trying to take several bricks of heroin from him, Dewey believes he can make amends. Boyd has other ideas and tosses him from the bar like an empty pack of cigarettes.

Dewey’s prayers are answered a little while later when Tim and Raylan’s investigation leads them back to one of Boyd’s crew, who is also a local drug dealer. When they bust him for dealing, it leaves Boyd one man short of the job he’s about to pull that day and with options limited and time running out there’s only one man to turn to — Dewey Crowe.

Ghost Town

There’s not a ton of morality amongst the criminals in Harlan Counter, but there is always a certain honor among thieves. One bad guy will gladly take out another bad guy, steal his business and maybe even take his girl, but the one universal truth that never changes is you never rat. Listen to Jimmy in ‘Goodfellas’, because he knows what he’s talking about.

Maybe the only thing worse in life than being a rat is being caught in a corner with no options. Ava Crowder found herself in that exact situation last season when she was locked behind bars with no light at the end of the tunnel to give her anything resembling hope. Raylan offering her a deal to get out of jail in exchange for ratting on Boyd sounded like a plan at the time. She wanted out of jail. This was a way out of jail.

Now the reality is setting in, not to mention Ava’s internal conflict with how to deal with Boyd is already a puzzled mess of love and hate, lust and disdain. Now she’s being pulled in yet another direction as she’s tasked with providing Raylan with whatever information she can gather that will eventually lead to Boyd going to jail. Forever.

Ava’s dodging Raylan’s text messages, which you know isn’t going to end well for her, and she’s also avoiding as much contact as possible with Boyd whenever he’s around. Boyd has taken it upon himself to finish the repairs on her house after a shootout between the Mexican cartel and the U.S. Marshals left the place in a bit of disarray. Even Ava’s good morning to Boyd is strained and muted. He just wants to reach out and grab her, pull her close and forget that these last few months separated them at all. Ava’s convinced he knows something is off and the only way she can maintain her cover is to keep him at arm’s length. Things only get worse when Boyd asks Ava to run away with him, far, far away from this black hole that is Harlan County. She scoffs at the idea. Harlan is home. Boyd reminds her that Harlan is more like a graveyard filled with bad memories and even worse secrets. He wants to get out while the getting is good or before the good runs out.

Boyd: “I’m talking about leaving Harlan. Escaping. If we stay in this ghost town, Ava, together or otherwise, how long you think it’s gonna be before we turn into ghosts ourselves?
Ava: “You’re saying that like we ain’t dead already.”

Raylan finally tracks her down at the salon where she’s working these days and tells Ava that no matter where she goes, he needs to hear from her or the next place she’ll be calling home is the inside of that same prison cell she just left. Ava is mortified that Boyd will catch onto her and at the same time she’s gutted that to get here to this place she has given up all hope on the love of her life.

As much as Ava protests that she’s sure Boyd is going to catch onto her deception, Raylan reminds her of the day he arrived back in Harlan County several years ago. On that day, he showed up on her front porch and Ava greeted him with a big kiss and an invite to come inside where he saw a blood-soaked stain on the floor, the last remnants of her marriage to Bowman Crowder. The conversation jogs Ava’s memory something fierce and she quickly remembers that there was nothing spontaneous about the demise of her ex-husband. She knew from the moment he walked in the house that day that she was going to kill him.

So Ava set the table and laid out the forks and knives and put his favorite dinner on the plate and when Bowman sat down and stared back at his wife, he thought everything was right with the world. A shotgun blast later, he knew better.

Raylan tells her this story for the explicit reason so Ava can understand that when she wants to manipulate a man into seeing what’s on the surface while hiding the truth underneath, she’s not only good at it, she’s a goddamn master.

The Heist

Raylan and Tim are back in stakeout mode when they spot Boyd, Dewey, Carl and the rest of his crew packing up a car loaded onto the back of a $300 tow truck he just purchased. Dewey’s in charge of driving the tow truck while Boyd and everybody else head off in a different car. Boyd’s betting that the Federal agents watching his every move are willing to bet big on turning Dewey, which means they’ll have to follow him when he exits.

Boyd guessed right.

Tim tells Raylan they should trail Dewey and so they keep a tail on that poor hapless idiot as he goes driving through town without a care in the world. When he finally comes upon a roadblock, Dewey knows he’s in serious trouble, so he tries to talk his way out of it. Now if you’ve been watching ‘Justified’ for the last 45 minutes or for the last five seasons it’s fairly obvious that Dewey Crowe couldn’t talk his way into or out of any situation that requires intelligence above that of a common third grader. So as he tries to explain to the cops who stop him that he’s Dewey goddamn Crowe and he’s untouchable because he sued and won $300,000 from the U.S. Marshals and therefore they have to let him go, you an imagine where things go from here.

Dewey makes a run for it, he doesn’t get away and after Raylan smashes his face into the steering wheel for what seems like the umpteenth time already, his big getaway has been foiled. When Raylan and Tim pull the duffel bag from the trunk of the car and give Dewey one more chance to turn on his boss, he doesn’t budge. Dewey may be a lot of things, but he’s no rat. Surprise, surprise when the bag is opened, there’s nothing in it but some old clothes.

Across town while Raylan and Tim have been chasing Dewey Crowe, Boyd and his boys have broken back into the bank where he was at earlier in the day. The spray on the safety deposit boxes reveals fingerprints under black light and he quickly figures out the ones he needs to steal. A truck rips the safe off the wall and Boyd grabs the boxes he needs and makes an escape before Raylan ever knows what hit him.

Back at the bar, Boyd opens up all the boxes, but to the surprise of everyone else involved, there’s nothing inside except some papers, a few deeds and a journal that doubles as a ledger. The boys are livid there’s no cash. Boyd is as still as a cactus because what was inside those boxes is exactly what his new boss tasked him to find. But what will the ledger reveal and how will it help the people who employed Boyd to get it? Stay tuned for the first appearance of Sam Elliott next week as the new big bad in Harlan arrives.

Speaking of big bads — one other note — while Raylan is staying close to Harlan to work his contact with Ave and keep tabs on Boyd, he’s set up shop in his parents old house while quietly trying to sell it. When a bearded man shows up driving a shiny new Mercedes offering to buy the house on site without ever actually seeing anything but the land it sits on while handing over a briefcase full of cash, Raylan has good reason to be suspicious. He rebuffs the offer, but the man seems undeterred and chances are he will be back again.

Go Your Own Way

Following the end of a rather crappy day where Raylan missed his mark to get Boyd on at least two different fronts, he retires for the evening to have a drink with his old boss Art, who is still recovering from a gunshot wound he suffered a few weeks back. Raylan reveals that his instinct is telling him to find a way to get Boyd cornered and desperate, which will give him the excuse to put him down like the rabid dog that he is. There’s no chance of a long trial or getting out on technicalities if you’re dead.

Just then Art tells Raylan the hard truth in the life of a lawman. You don’t always win and when you live by the bullet, it’s very easy to also die by the bullet. So far Raylan has found a way time and time again to come out on top. Eventually, he’s going to bottom out.

Art: “Or Raylan, there’s another way it goes, where you try and you fail and the bullet finds you.”
Raylan: “Unlikely”
Art: “I know you think so. But if you’ll allow me — you get to be my age, do the job as long as you do. Sometimes it just doesn’t go your way.”

As for Dewey Crowe, he’s out of jail (again) and steaming mad that Boyd played him and set him up to fail. His anger is quickly mired in regret when Boyd tells him that it was all part of the plan and the bag full of clothes was simply a decoy so that he wouldn’t actually get arrested or in trouble. Instead, Dewey was just the perfect distraction to take the cops away while he pulled off his job.

As much as Dewey wants to understand this intricate plot, it’s all too much for him. Just like his dreams of living in a swimming pool with a woman on each arm, Dewey longs for the days when he was hanging out with Boyd at the old run down church, cooking up ways to bring the white race back to power and just being a part of Crowder’s Commandos. Boyd sympathizes with his old friend before showing him a portrait that hangs on the wall in the backroom of his bar.

It’s Boyd’s great uncle and the entire Crowder family as they settled down into Harlan County for the first time over a hundred years ago. He tells Dewey that these people were downtrodden and probably felt beaten, but they saw something in Harlan County that made them believe there was a future in this town. If you look really deep, you can see that hope in their eyes.

As Dewey leans in to get a closer look, Boyd puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Dewey Crowe is no more. Boyd tells Carl to clean up the mess, but not before he’s long gone. When Carl asks why he did it, Boyd says he could no longer trust old Dewey. The sad part was Dewey was the only person this week who wasn’t going after Boyd in some way, shape or form. Dewey just wanted his old life back. And now he’s buried in it.

He never left Harlan alive.

BEST LINES:

Boyd uses a lot of big words, but he’s also well versed in history it seems.

“I believe that banking institutions are the greatest threat to our liberties and standing armies. Thomas Jefferson.”
~Boyd

Say goodbye to Dewey Crowe one last time with this absolute gem.

“What I need is a $6 blowjob. A smarter move I cannot imagine.”
~ Dewey Crowe

REVIEW:

A solid start and set up to the final 12-episodes of ‘Justified’. One of the things I enjoyed most about this episode was the foreboding nature of finality for both Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder. The showdown between these two characters has been coming ever since the pilot happened and Raylan pumped a bullet into Boyd’s chest. What I loved was the speech Art gave Raylan towards the end of the episode that added some real gravitas to these final hours with ‘Justified’. Raylan’s hubris is such that he believes he can’t lose. But you can’t win them all and there’s going to be a time when Raylan is one-tick slower than the other guy pulling out his gun. Maybe this is finally his time.

MUSIC

Two songs identified from tonight’s episode.

“Protection” by Lucinda Williams (during the opening scene with Boyd)

“Rock N Roll Soul” by Screaming Eagles (when Dewey is driving the tow truck)