Moment of Goodness: Boyd Puts a Ring On It, Justified “Foot Chase” 

In one of our first meetings with Ava and Boyd way back there in the first season, she leveled a shotgun at him across the dining room table. And she’d killed his brother for being abusive. Ordinarily, that would stack the deck against any sort of romantic entanglement, but this is Harlan County and they do things differently there.

Justified is as much about the love story of Boyd and Raylan as it is Boyd and Ava. Again, since it’s Harlan, it’s not surprising that Ava has spent time with both men. With Raylan, Ava floundered a bit without a fixed goal of her own and she moved the hell on when he cheated on her with Winona. With Boyd, she has flourished amidst his (and their) life of crime, and along with Arlo and Johnny, made a family and found a home.

When Ellen May came into the mix and Ava again killed to protect her, she worried and fretted that it would bite her, and it may still yet. So Boyd devised a plan that backfired, as his plans sometimes do, when he sent Ellen May off with Colton to be killed and he let her get away from him. So Ava’s been floundering again and worried about poor, dead Ellen May (who’s not dead). She’s haunted and she tells Boyd. She also tells him that she loves him and “I have and will do anything for you,” but she needs to know what they’re doing and where they’re going. He tells her to meet him in their truck in two minutes.

We pick up with them sitting on the tailgate side by side looking out at the lights in the town below. He talks about how they used to be run off from there when he was a boy. He hands her a lock box and tells her to open it. She does and finds stacks of 100s. He admits that he’s been squirreling it away for a down payment on a house anywhere she wants it. He says everything they’re doing is for the future. He muses that in three generations’ time, Crowder will be an old family name and nobody will mind their children playing with a kid who carries it. Ava buckles slightly at the mention of children.

He tells her to take a closer look in the box and she does and finds a diamond ring. He says that he knows most people don’t profess their love over a box of money but they’re not like most people and she agrees. He gets on his knee, calls her the love of his life, the apple of his eye and he asks her to marry him. She laughs through tears and answers “God, yes,” and waves her hands at him, eager for the ring. In a perfectly Boyd moment, she tells him “No, baby, it’s the other hand.” He gets it right and she leaps into his arms and they kiss and laugh.

We don’t know where Boyd and Ava are going to end up as they dally with the Dixie Mafia and the U.S. Marshals and Shelby, but they’re going to do it together.  I never thought we’d see an engagement, and certainly not in an episode focused on finding the owner of a foot, but it made sense. And it was a great moment. I love that in a wrap up with EW, Joelle Carter said the “wrong hand” moment wasn’t scripted. Perfect.

Justified airs tonight at 10 pm/9 c on FX.