In true Justified tradition, it’s taken a few episodes for motives to come to the surface. Tonight it was revealed that Avery Markham’s real estate sweep is based on Kentucky’s possible legalization of weed. Once the bill is passed, Markham will have all the primo land for growing pot, making him a very rich man.

For some reason, this plan seems a lot less nefarious than I imagined Markham’s endgame to be. Pot? Legal pot? It doesn’t sound so bad in the long run. Of course, he’s dropping bodies to reach his goal, so there’s that. And we still don’t know what’s in the hulking Excelsior safe.

To help bust into this safe, Wynn and Boyd called upon the help of Lewis Mago (Jake Busey), who I wasn’t feeling at all in this role. For a show with such colorful characters, even Mago seemed too cartoonish. It was a short and sweet role though and he went out on a wonderfully bloody note. The shot of dumbfounded Wynn and Boyd was hilarious.

While Boyd washed Busey’s blood off his face, Ava got to spend a cocaine-fueled ladies’-day-out-shoplifting-spree with Katherine. There was a lot of talk of Grady and how Katherine knows Markham ratted him out. Now she’s sleeping with the enemy, so to speak. Even by Justified standards that’s one dysfunctional relationship. Who snitched on Grady isn’t the only knowledge kicking around Katherine’s head – she also knows about the whole Albert Fekus debacle from Ava’s stint in prison. This means Katherine could know about the deal Ava has with the feds. As if Ava wasn’t on edge already. Mary Steenburgen gets icier every episode!

Raylan continued shifting his focus to Markham, despite Art pleading for him to just take down Boyd and get the hell outta town. Raylan doesn’t want Boyd, he wants all of them. For all his fatherly talk, he’s still driven by an insatiable desire to take down the bad guys. He doesn’t just want to take out the trash, he wants to kill the snake slithering around the garbage cans too. This drive led him to visit Dickie Bennett, who acts more and more like Charles Manson every time he pops up. That’s okay with me – Jeremy Davies steals every scene he’s in. He’s always a blast to watch.

Turns out the Bennett land was purchased by Loretta McCready (Kaitlyn Dever). The last time we saw Loretta, she was busted for selling pot to a cop’s son. She was also in the possession of a lot of hidden money, which is how she probably bought the land. The pow-wow at Loretta’s house was fantastic, with a lot of badasses on both side of the law quietly beating their chests at one another. Raylan and Markham drew their lines in the sand and now that Markham knows the marshals are onto him, it’ll be interesting to see how far he takes this.

Episode Rating: ★★★ Good

LAST CALL 

• Boyd absolutely does not want Italian liquor that tastes like grapefruit.

• That last activity on Tim’s bucket list sounds pretty hot.

• I still have Dickie’s defiant jingle “There ain’t no way, I’m gonna cooperate” stuck in my head.

• I’m over the mustache. Sam Elliott looked like one seriously menacing S.O.B. leaning over Loretta’s table at Raylan. His confidence is terrifying.

• Anyone else notice the Gizmo doll Loretta had on her coffee table?