He's back!!!
There was a lot of callbacks to the pilot and some hat-touching in the episode (especially towards the end during the Raylan/Art scene), which was great, but of course the episode left me devastated.
Poor dumb Dewey. Damon Harriman was again terrific in all his scenes. Dewey's send off was poignant and beautiful. I loved the detail of his rubbing his eyes, like the child he was deep down.
Boyd started this season showing off his nazi tattoos in the opening and eventually committing the absolute sin, by killing the loveable Dewey. I don't think it's supposed to be read as a merciful kill for a Dewey who longed for days that wouldn't come back and who was "so tired", even though it does recall Of Mice and Men. I read it as echoing Boyd's first kill on screen in the pilot, except that we didn't care about the guy he shot from behind them, while Dewey was a fans' fabvourite. And Dewey was crying a few seconds before Boyd shot his brains out. Oh the irony for stupid Dewey to die from such shot in a very little use brain!
Dewey broke the law and was morally challenged, but he was so sincere and so obvious, there was something so pure about him.
In contrast the other characters looked even more devious. And Boyd Crowder is the most devious of them all.
Boyd is a sinister villain, a cold blooded killer who dispatches people he does no longer trust -- Devil experienced it before Dewey --...and his watching Ava sleep in the end tells us that she might become his victim too. His victims never saw it come in. The conversation between Raylan and Ava on the bridge, about the way she played Bowman on the day of his death, actually foreshadowed Boyd's way of offing Dewey...just after he had told him he was his friend. This episode reminded us what Boyd really was.
It also reminded us that Raylan might end up without his badge, and we saw him crossing big lines again (he can't get away with car-hitting and abudcting a Mexican cop, can he?). Raylan is a flawed lawman but still our white hat.I don't expect him to end up neither dead nor in a penitenciary, but he's singing his swan song as a deputy marshall, and he knows it.
Timothy Olyphant is having fun playing Raylan Givens for the last time this seasoin and it shows. We got classical Raylan scenes (my favourite must be the shovel scene!) and one-liners but also moments in which Raylan is less of an icon and more of a layered character, like during his conversation with the newcomer (played by Garret Dillahunt) or with Ava on the bridge. I wish the Emmys would notice how subtle Olyphant's acting is.
He must have been laughing inside during the scene in which Dillahunt showed up. "I've never seen him in my life". Raylan's inner Seth Bullock must have smelled both the coward McCall and the dangerous Francis Wolcott in the bearded man when he refused to sell Arlo's land to him. Of course if you've never seen Deadwood you won't get my references.
But let's go back to Dewey Crowe, whom we won't see again.
I think that aside from being a comic relief and bringing out true warmth, Dewey mattered in the way the main characters(our hero and his antagonist) treated him and what it said about them.
There's a big difference between Raylan and Boyd there. When Dewey told Boyd that Raylan broke his jaw, Boyd asked "why?" and Dewey whined "I don't know!". Boyd used to like Dewey, I think, and he wouldn't harm him -- or anyone else-- without a good reason -at least a reason Boyd would consider good enough!), hence his question.
Raylan isn't like that and he never liked Dewey, probably because he saw through him. He "knew" him the same way he "knows Ava"; he saw the crimes and the stupidity. The people Raylan likes are smart and "good", they are worth his respect; but he enjoys toying with the criminals before catching them, so he behaved with Dewey like a big cat with a mouse...and Raylan is a violent big cat, so yes he beat Dewey because he could, abusing him over the seasons...In a way Raylan is his father's son -- especially if we consider Dewey's childlike personality--, he can be a bully towards those who are on his way, and Dewey definitely brought out that side of him. That said, Raylan would have never shot Dewey Crowe to get rid of the annoying little man, and when he asked him "are you all right?" I believe he was sincere.
Boyd had much better manners with Dewey and never made fun of him and yet he didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. He reminds me a great deal of Tony Soprano, another criminal who loved his pets, seemed to genuinely like the people around him but still offed them without blinking, when he thought they were endangering his business or his safety.
In a way Dewey was the show's Adriana, except that Dewey was even dumber and never saw his death come in, while Adriana eventually figured it out, and felt the terror of her upcoming execution before she felt the final bullets.
Speaking of previous prestige shows, I found that there were a lot of BrBa-like pov-shots in that episode of Justified!
One last thought. If there's one thing that didn't work for me in that first episode, it's Ava. I can't tell whether it's the writing or the acting, but I didn't buy her lines, especially in her conversations with Raylan.