5) Thick as Mud (Season 3, Episode 5)
Justified had many crooks, thieves, and criminals at its disposal over the years, but no single character stole quite as many scenes as Dewey Crowe. Damon Herriman’s pitch perfect take on Harlan’s county idiot made the bumbling Crowder crony near and dear to our hearts, even if his tomfoolery often posed more a nuisance to Raylan than a real challenge. An hour devoted to Dewey chasing down his stolen kidneys makes a great showcase for Justified’s signature gallows humor, and ability to craft deliriously entertaining one-off episodes.
“Thick as Mud” has everything you could hope for out of a procedural installment of Justified: colourful characters, a compelling plot, and Raylan getting out of a jam by the skin of his teeth. The middle stretch of any season was often a game of keeping Raylan busy while Boyd kicked the plot ball forward, but the show always stayed compelling and relevant so long as the writing made incidental stories just as entertaining as the climactic ones. No show made a goose chase look as effortless or fun as Justified, and there was no better goose to chase than Dewey Crowe.
Best Scene: Every minute from the moment Dewey gets cornered in a convenience store storage closet, to “discovering” he has four kidneys, is pure comic gold.
Memorable Line: “Have you been pissin’?” Raylan asks Dewey, trying to diagnose whether the kidneys are even at large. “He took my kidneys Raylan, not my dick!”
