Raylan Givens got hustled last week so things have to be better for him this episode, right? RIGHT? Let’s find out in our review of Justified S05E03 “Good Intentions”.
WINNER: Gettin’ it in with Amy Smart
FX
The one upside of Raylan Givens getting hustled by Loretta in last week’s episode is that Raylan got to meet her social worker, Allison (Amy Smart). And this week, they’re up to getting it in at the house Raylan took from the money launderer Monroe last week. But Raylan is interrupted by some random scumbag setting off a car alarm — whom he thinks is hired muscle from Monroe — with a baseball bat and, when he gets back to the house, Allison decides she has to go.
Turns out the hired muscle isn’t hired muscle but rather someone from Allison’s past, someone in fact she planted meth on to send him to jail. So Raylan tracks him down and gives him the riot act, saying that if he comes near Allison again, ending up back in jail is going to be a best case scenario for him.
Meanwhile, Monroe does some mental math and decides out that his black girlfriend must have been in cahoots with the guy to get the hidden gold out of his house. So Monroe chokes her, then snuffs her out with a pillow until she admits what the plan was. He then dispatches her to the house to get the gold herself, somehow.
LOSER: The search for Monroe’s gold
Turns out the gold is no longer at Monroe’s house and he thinks Wynn Duffy took it given that Wynn put the safe in his house. Unfortunately, when Raylan goes to talk to Wynn about the situation, Monroe makes his own move, getting gunned down by Wynn’s muscle Mikey in the process. He’s not dead, but he’s in jail for it and the feds have the gold until it’s auctioned off. Sad day to be a money launderer.
LOSER: Dewey Crowe’s family reunion
Cousin Daryl is in town to help Dewey spend his money right. Daryl got some college degrees when he was in jail and wants to help Dewey build a better business. Dewey got ripped off by Boyd when buying the brothel so Daryl wants him to tell Boyd that and demand he return $100,000 — which Daryl will take half of because of his business savvy.
Naturally, Boyd doesn’t take that so well, particularly with his ongoing missing stash problems, leaving Dewey to practically beg for money to keep Daryl out of his face. But Boyd tells him to handle the problem himself. Dewey tries to talk big to Daryl to get him to leave, but finds that Daryl and his boys have beaten Messer down. Turns out he was skimming money off the top to give money to Boyd — or so he claims — so Daryl wants Dewey to kill him for the indiscretion. Now that’s what family’s all about: Learning and growing.
WINNER: Boyd’s fidelity to Ava
FX
Boyd bails Mara out from her problems with the sheriffs, threatening one of them with a gun to get him on Boyd’s side and not Lee Paxton’s. This only draws them closer, leading to Mara asking Boyd to show her his tattoos, taking his shirt off in the process. She seems super into his swastika tattoo because what woman wouldn’t be intrigued by that.
After feeling him up and making things all sexy, Mara cuts the attention off and gets to the point…something about finding dead bodies and I don’t even know what’s going on any more. This storyline is kind of dragging.
LOSER: The search for the missing Canadian stash
Boyd Crowder’s dealer, Cyrus — the one who tipped off the shipment to the druggy ho last week — is dragged into a meeting with Wynn Duffy and Boyd to figure out who the girl is whom he told about it. She calls herself Candy but Cyrus doesn’t have any clue how she might be related to the shipment getting jacked.
Boyd finally tracks her down and somehow ties the heist to his cousin Johnny. Mystery! Intrigue! Sort of.
—
Honestly, I wasn’t into this episode at all. Happy to see Wynn Duffy get a little extra screen time and I’m moderately curious about the trouble Allison might get Raylan into — especially given that Rachel is already warning Raylan about her intentions — but the episode was just a mess. Boyd Crowder getting a ton of screen time with two slow-developing and borderline tedious plots is not the best usage of Walton Goggins’ time or ours, especially when even Dewey Crowe’s storyline seems more compelling right now. In fact, Boyd’s character as a whole is in question right now; he loves Ava so much last season and now he’s pulling away from her and getting shirtless with dull Russian chicks? Just seems like a big betrayal of the character we’ve gotten to know.
As always, you owe it to the writing team to see it through and where things are going. For now, though, I’m ready to leave Lee Paxton and the ghost of Canadian shipments in the past and move onto something a little more interesting.
Two and a half Nazi tattoos out of five for this episode. Make it better, Justified team.
0 comments:
Post a Comment