Eeeehhh...I dunno. There's some decent ideas lingering in the fifth season, but it's bogged down by a shitty primary antagonist(s) the greater purpose of whom seems to be establishing a creepy southern white guy narrative that transcends Boyd, Dewey, et al. Obviously they made Boyd the low collar, scumbag, southern white guy that's designed to encompass the racist criminal archetype that the audience is meant to dislike immensely, but the writers also saw a need to establish Boyd's likability so he could be a suitable rival-cum-friend for Raylan. As such, they have needed to, at times, juxtapose Boyd and his crew with significantly more violent, more stupid, more red-in-the-neck, and more overtly racist antagonists to give him the proper anti-heroish image.
In the first season, it was pre-gunshot Boyd and post-gunshot Boyd. In the second season, it was Boyd and the Bennett brothers. In the case of season 3, the situation was reversed with Limehouse being subtly characterized as a lesser evil that's just trying to get by as a black man in a southern world that despises him since--of course--it's the white guy that's the scum of the earth (but other than that, it was Boyd vs Dickie Bennett). Season four made sure to get in a creepy, racist, southern white guy dig through a rich criminal character who got his house repossessed. In season five, we meet Dewey Crowe's cousins. Season six features an arguably worse evil than Boyd, but he's clearly being portrayed as a creepy, unlikable antagonist.
As I pointed out earlier, the Deputy Marshal's become progressively more unlikable as well. Raylan has compromised himself and the allegedly "just(ified)" principles upon which he operates--as a deputy Marshal--a hundred times over in how he ceaselessly violates civil rights, deals out unnecessary beatings, unjustly coerces people to do his bidding, and corruptly uses taxpayer resources to fund his pet "anti-Boyd" projects (Raylan even used the star on his belt as an excuse for acting this way multiple times. Congratulations on vindicating the anti-feds you friggin douche bags). The only problem here is that the show refuses to acknowledge these violations and continues to favor everything Raylan and his federal compadres do. Obviously, it's easy for them to say he walks a gray line with the deaths of Bucks and Augustine, but his everyday behavior is just casually ignored as though it's irrelevant to the larger character. Even with the Marshal's office going into full blown dick-mode with assault, harassment, illegal search and seizures, and outright corruption the show's narrative turns a blind eye to all of it because--in the writers' mind--they're all just a bunch of stupid, racist hillbillies who have it coming to them.
The truly poetic binary behind his relationship with Boyd is honesty versus dishonesty. Boyd is honest about his nature while Raylan lies to himself and others. They both inherited the same brand of anger from their fathers that made them inherently violent men, but Raylan only thinks (falsely) that he's risen above that anger because he wears a federal badge and fashions himself as a heroic cowboy figure. That being said, it must be reiterated that Boyd's character has been put through the ringer and mangled five ways from Friday just to make him seem even more ruthless than you could possibly give him credit for. I do not believe for a moment that the Boyd of the last five seasons (yes, even the fifth for all the crap it pulled) would be as callous as he's turned out to be in season 6. The end result is Boyd being almost totally incomparable to Rylan even though they're supposed to complement one another. As such, it's taken for granted that Raylan is the better man despite the similarity in origin between the two characters.
The last two seasons (especially the sixth) have effectively nullified the aspects of Boyd's character that assigned him so much charisma and likability--not least of which was his capacity for developing personal attachments with his associates. Then, suddenly, along comes season six and he has no apparent capacity for affection aside from his romantic feelings toward Ava--which they've gone out of their way to accentuate with abuse and general creepiness. It all serves to soften the blow of his inevitable downfall for the viewers (think Shield meets Dexter). The shit he ends up doing just cannot be reconciled with the other seasons.
On top of all this was a shitty side-story involving Ava going to prison and becoming disaffected with Boyd. If you're going to watch it, I won't say anymore, but the Deputy Marshals show their true colors when they take advantage of her being wrongfully imprisoned--with them knowing the charges are bullshit the whole time.
