Justified Season 6 Episode 3 Review: “Noblesse Oblige”

Last night’s episode of Justified, “Noblesse Oblige,” was all about power and the different ways in which characters can wield it. While others appear to have all the power in the world, Raylan, Boyd, and Ava all struggle to find the ways in which they can exact control over their lives, and all three of them come to equally interesting places by episode’s end.

With essentially no power or control in his personal life (since both Winona and his daughter are down in Florida), Raylan does his best to take charge of the RICO investigation against Boyd, especially after Vasquez and Rachel chew out Ava for not supplying them with any useful information yet. Feeling powerless when it comes to the protection of his CI, Raylan attempts to take down Boyd by getting Tyler Kent, son of Raylan’s old coal-digging buddy Luther, to rat out Boyd, saying that it was under his orders that Tyler and his friend Earl, one of Boyd’s three main guys, stole the Emulex from Luther’s mines. However, even after Raylan captures and arrests both Tyler and Earl, Luther steps up to take the fall for his son, saying that he won’t risk him facing the wrath of Boyd Crowder.

By doing this, Luther exhibits a power–protecting his child–that Raylan cannot at the moment. Raylan can’t hold, feed, or even change his daughter’s diaper until he takes Boyd down (that’s the promise that he made to Rachel and co. at the end of last season). Luther’s protection of his son ensures that, for the time being, Raylan can’t be there to do the same for his daughter, so he decides to let Earl loose, hoping he’ll run back to Boyd and somehow end up doing something stupid that will help Raylan and the Marshals catch them all. Neither Raylan nor Rachel are sure that it will work, but it’s the only action that he can take at the moment–the only form of power he can display.

Similarly, Boyd also found himself in quite the difficult predicament in last night’s Justified. After getting threatened by Ty Walker (in his own bar, no less), Boyd is kidnapped soon after and told to stop trying to go after the money he’s attempting to steal, which he first believed was Calhoun’s, but now realizes that it belongs to someone much more powerful: Avery Marcum (Sam Elliott), who met Boyd when he was only ten years old. The exchange between Avery and Walker (who are confirmed to be working together in this episode) and Body and Ava (more on her in a minute) is the episode’s best scene, as Avery first shows a warmness to Boyd, reflecting on the times he spent with his father, before belittling him, telling him that he’s still playing the part of the criminal without actually being one, pretending just like he was back when he was kid.

However, Avery’s threats are not enough to deter Boyd, who we know never takes insults and injuries from others lying down. He confronts Wynn Duffy and Katherine Hale about their plan to steal Avery’s money, a plan that they had not let him in on yet (tricking him into believing it was only Calhoun that he was stealing from), but Boyd doesn’t walk away, as Hale expects him to. Instead, he promises to not only rob Avery but put a bullet into the back of his head. Avery tried to limit Boyd’s power and control in Harlan, and even though he know that he has a very good chance at dying, Boyd still believes that he’s the smartest, most dangerous man in the room–that Avery’s reach cannot beat his intelligence and creativity.

Finally, Ava finds herself in the worst position of all the show’s major players in this episode (just as she has all season long), but she remains strong and resilient enough to use the limited power she has in very smart ways.  The scene of her in the basement of Walker and Avery’s pizza place, which does indeed still have a bank vault, is tense and gripping, and it was great to watch her quickly photograph the location and get out of there quickly by flirting with Choo Choo (oh how I love Choo Choo). Even if Walker and Avery did quickly discover who she was, it’s just refreshing to see Ava exhibit some sort of independence.

But it’s Ava’s final act of the episode that is her smartest decision yet this season. “Since you got out sometimes I feel like I don’t know who you are anymore,” Boyd tells Ava, before she invites him into her bed. It’s a choice that comes about because of Ava’s love for Boyd (there is still a spark between the two of them–just watch the opening scene of the episode), but it’s also part of Ava’s calculated plan to regain his trust and confidence. It’s a much more important move than any pictures she could have taken or any documents she could have stolen, and it’s one that might just give her more power and control than any of the show’s characters moving forward.

Other thoughts:

– Really great work from both Joelle Carter and Erica Tazel in this episode. The major part that Ava has been playing in this final season of Justified has been a welcome change from Season 5’s awful prison storyline, but it’s also nice to see Rachel get a more expanded role in this episode, too.

– Wynn Duffy uses a tanning bed, wearing G-string, and I am not at all surprised. That scene was fantastic.

– Drunk Boyd and Ava were so much fun. I wish we could have just one episode of them two and Raylan getting drunk on moonshine together before Justified ends.

– “We dug coal together.”

What did everyone else think about last night’s episode of Justified?

[Photo via FX]