‘Justified’ Season 5 Episode 3 ‘Good Intentions’ Recap: A Snake in the Bar, A Wolf Across Town

Raylan finds out Monroe’s real motive, Boyd walks a dangerously fine line and cousin Darryl proves what he can do for Dewey…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Raylan Givens — for all his criminal justice prowess and ability to take down the bad guy — he’s certainly not the best when it comes to picking his ladies.

Now Winona was probably the most sensible choice and eventually he had a daughter with her (are we ever going to learn her name by the way?), but she had her own criminal side when she tried to run off with hundreds of thousands of dollars locked away in evidence. Then there was the bar maid Lindsey, who seemed like a fun distraction in a post-Winona world until Raylan discovered she was a long time con artist and grifter playing him for some cash. Don’t forget his brief fling with Ava Crowder, who was fresh out of jail after gunning down her abusive husband.

That brings us full circle to Allison Brander — who makes an ass slapping second appearance in the series this week while getting ready to hop into bed with Raylan when a car alarm goes off outside that just won’t let them get down to business. Allison is Loretta’s social worker, but now she’s also Raylan’s latest conquest, but he’s got the worst timing when it comes to getting down.

Following a few attempts to subdue the car alarm, Raylan heads outside to find a rather large man sitting on top of his borrowed Mercedes with a baseball bat in hand. Raylan discusses the finer points of ding dong ditch, which doesn’t seem to quite get through to our new brutish friend making his first appearance while drawing the Marshal out of his palatial estate.

“Here you are, all growed up still dinging and donging, don’t have the sense to ditch,” Raylan says to the man.

Raylan is convinced this guy is there to put the pressure on him after he offered so graciously to house sit the place from Charles Monroe, who is currently sitting in a jail cell awaiting word on his case for money laundering under the direction of the Detroit mob. After a few choice words with the man he saunters off into the night, and just as Raylan is ready to go back in and get some alone time with Allison, she decides it’s time to say goodbye and off we go.

Henry Junior

Back at the station, Raylan finds out from Art that thanks to his run in with the baseball bat brandishing thug the night before that he will have a new roommate at the house because Rachel is moving in and she’s not there to keep him company.

Monroe gets released from jail while awaiting trial where he runs right into Raylan waiting for him outside the courtroom. Raylan issues him a friendly warning about the thug that showed up banging on his Mercedes bumper, but clearly Monroe has no clue what he’s talking about. They banter back and forth about Monroe’s beginnings in the mob where he was responsible for extortion masqueraded as debt collection and other nefarious activities, but the long and short of the story is he has no clue who came calling at his house a night before.

Rachel has her own theories going back to Raylan’s bad luck with women. She wonders if Allison didn’t possibly have something to do with this. Her inquiry works like this — what better way to find something locked away inside the house than to get the guy protecting the joint outside, good and distracted while she’s up to no good? Of course, Raylan scoffs at the idea until Alison shows up a moment later and he tells her for the first time about the thug from the night before and she recognizes him right away.

Meanwhile, Monroe has met back up with his ‘maid’ and he’s working on the same exact theory. Someone wanted to get into his house to find what he had hidden in a secret safe (installed by Wynn Duffy mind you) and he believes she had something to do with it. Monroe then engages in a brutal game of almost suffocating his companion first choking her with his bare hands and then stuffing a pillow over her face before allowing her to finally draw breath back into her lungs. There’s one thing clear — Monroe is just this side of Quarles when it comes to ruthlessness, but is he smarter than our now armless assailant once was?

So as it turns out Allison was a case worker with the bad wielding thug and she took his son, Henry Jr. out of their house after he was showing up to school with bruises and they apparently found meth crystals mixed in with his GI Joes (Duke and Flint would have totally taken that meth dealer down). Raylan pays him a visit to pass along a rather stern message to leave Allison alone, but the reason he’s so angry is the fact that he believes she planted the drugs to give her cause to pull his son out of the home. He uses some not so friendly words to describe Allison, which lands him with a couple thwacks from the bat courtesy of Raylan.

“I should have been clearer. Standing up ain’t the only way to get me to take this bat to you. Calling her a bitch will get us there, too,” Raylan warns Henry.

Henry gets the message but it appears as if he’s planted another seed of doubt about Allison’s virtuous existence. Maybe she’s just another Lindsey/Ava/Winona wandering into his life. Maybe this is just Raylan’s life for better or worse — spend all day putting criminals either in the ground or in jail and the nights cosied up to a much sexier version of the same criminals in bed.

What’s In the Safe?

Monroe really wants what’s hidden inside his safe — turns out he has a lot of gold bars stashed away in there. Following his interrogation of Gloria (the maid) and deducing that she had nothing to do with the incident the night before with the man drawing Raylan out of the house, he sends her back in to actually retrieve the gold. To her credit, Gloria makes a compelling case to Raylan and Rachel about the coy in the pond needing to be cared for because they were worth upwards of $100,000, but luckily our U.S. Marshals are smarter than the average bear.

They bust her and then plant the seed with Monroe that the gold was already gone, thus giving him the idea that Wynn Duffy, the man who installed the safe, was behind it all. Raylan shows up at Wynn’s mob RV to warn him that Monroe would most certainly be on his way to kill him now. Wynn’s gratitude is short lived because he realizes the entire reason Raylan is there is because this is a plan he set in motion in the first place. Before they can discuss too much, shots are fired outside.

Mikey (Wynn’s ambiguously gay partner in crime) actually did something for once! He shot Monroe as he approached the RV and Rachel was there to witness the whole thing. It’s hard to tell if Monroe is alive or dead, but chances are he won’t be back any time soon.

Raylan solves another case while still sitting a little bit suspicious of the new lady he’s invited into his bed.

BB Guns Get Answers

Boyd is still reeling from losing another shipment of heroin to hijackers and he wants answers and he wants them now. Boyd and Wynn decide to question all the tweekers/dealers in the room last week when they announced a new shipment would be coming in soon. That leads them to Cyrus — the dealer who shared the heroin secret with his prostitute friend Candy towards the end of last week’s episode.

“Wanna tell me why you had Captain Fauxhawk drag me all the way over here,” Cyrus asks while describing Carl in his own special way.

Boyd wants answers and the way Wynn will get them is by using the BB gun they found on Cyrus when they scooped him up. Wynn’s use of the pump action weapon was a stroke of brilliance as he peppered poor Cyrus with pellets repeatedly while Boyd came to the conclusion that this old boy wasn’t smart enough to pull a heist on his own and a woman had to be involved.

“Come on now, son. Pussy is a powerful thing,” Boyd says to Cyrus.

Cyrus gives Candy up and so Boyd sends Carl out to find her, but he wants her alive because she has the key to who is actually stealing from him.

Tattoo Tease

Paxton is awake and ready to take out his vengeance on Boyd so he sends Mooney out to kill him. Mara warns Boyd straight away and they turn the tables on Mooney when he shows up at her house. Boyd’s plan is simple — Mooney just needs to tell Paxton that he did his job and Boyd is dead, he’ll take care of the rest.

A brief visit in prison with Ava shows Boyd’s frustration is reaching a boiling point. He wants his lady out behind bars, but instead of the slow burn he felt a couple of weeks back while rubbing her engagement ring that now sits chained to his pocket watch, Boyd is now lashing out when Ava accuses him of not doing everything in his power to free her.

Boyd reminds Ava she’s the one that killed Delroy. She’s the one that moved the body. And she’s the one that tried to do this all by herself. Ava’s obviously had enough of the jail life and Boyd’s sanity is slipping away without her around. It appears his fidelity might be the next thing to go.

Back at the bar, Boyd sits with Mara to figure out a way to convince Paxton he’s dead. Her idea involves a look at Boyd’s shirtless torso because he has more than a few recognizable tattoos and she wants to examine them. Mara coils around Boyd’s arm while noting his Nazi swastika, the sealed bullet hole in his chest courtesy of Ava’s shotgun blast, and a few other ink spots on his dark, leathered skin.

The tension was palpable as Mara drew Boyd even closer to her own body before she finally pulled away and decided his hand would serve as the best candidate for their purpose. She decides to take a dead hand (remember her husband does run a funeral home) and tattoo it with the same ink Boyd has on his digits. The end result will be Paxton convinced Boyd is dead and whatever plan they’re cooking can reach the simmering stage. Boyd is walking a fine line now because his anger with Ava’s incarceration grows and while he tried to put the blame back on her this week, there’s little doubt it’s an internal rage he’s feeling that he ever allowed her to get in this situation in the first place. Now he’s got a viper in his midst whose bite seems so lovely — how much can one man resist?

You start to wonder if Boyd’s words don’t almost seem prophetic for his own situations now — because Mara surely is a powerful thing.

Darryl’s Business Plan

Cousin Darryl’s arrival in Harlan was not a welcome sight to Dewey, who just got Audrey’s up and running after purchasing the establishment from Boyd for a cool $250,000. Darryl offers Dewey a deal — since he got ripped off buying this place, go ask Boyd for $100,000 back and give his cousin $50,000 as a service fee for his advice and he will gladly slink back to Florida from whence he came. Otherwise, Dewey needs to stop worrying about Darryl’s intentions quite so much.

“Cousin Dewey you worrying about me like you my bitch. You my bitch?”

Needless to say when Dewey confronts Boyd there’s no chance he’s going to get a dime of his money back, but instead he’s offered some valuable advice — stand up for yourself, Dewey Crowe.

So Dewey wanders back to his bar and tells Darryl he has to go. That’s when Darryl lets his wayward cousin know what’s really been going on at Audrey’s. It seems Messer has been skimming the profits all along and paying Boyd with the money. If you remember back to the first episode when Messer was trying to get the money from Dewey’s office, now it’s all coming together. Darryl reminds Dewey this is what family does for each other. He also offers up Messer as a prize — because remember this money stealing scumbag didn’t wrong Darryl Crowe, he wronged Dewey Crowe so it’s up to Dewey to make him disappear.

It should be a very exciting time in the next few episodes when Darryl finally goes toe-to-toe with Boyd because that confrontation is coming soon.

Boyd Finds His Man

While Boyd has a snake in his bar and a wolf across town quietly stalking towards him, he’s more concerned with the person responsible for stealing his herion. Carl shows back up at the bar with Candy secured in a trunk, still very much alive and scared for her life. Boyd convinces her the best way to see tomorrow is to give up the man she informed of the shipment today.

Boyd grabs her phone, places a single call and when the voice on the other end picks up, right away he knows who has been dipping into his pocket with both hands.

“Hello, cousin Johnny.”

It appears Johnny Crowder isn’t dead, he’s very much alive and still trying to put his cousin out of business once and for all. Expect that showdown next week when Justified returns for a new episode at 10pm ET/PT.