Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Chicken Feed
By Couch Baron | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.29.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Raylan is not thrilled that Lindsey and his twenty (!) grand in cash are gone (this possibly is in ascending order of chagrin), and Rachel offers to help him in his pursuit of Lindsey and her ex. Turns out Randall the MMA ex-husband and Lindsey have headed over to that Matthew McConaughey fight promoter "Joe"'s place, and Randall and Lindsey are planning to put up Raylan's money to for Randall to manage…gamecocks? The viability of this career aside, Randall has some serious anger-management issues with which Lindsey is most decidedly not on board and which prompt her to call Raylan from the road. When Raylan and Rachel arrive at Joe's party house, it looks like Jonestown, but conscious is Theresa from The O.C., who leads Raylan and Rachel to Joe. Raylan uses his special brand of charming intimidation to get Joe to point him in the right direction; Rachel eventually has to leave him to go to work, but not without arming him with a sawed-off shotgun. Raylan catches up with the couple and promptly blasts Randall in the gut with a beanbag bullet; however, he underestimates the healing power of Randall's rage, and soon the big guy has tackled him and they're in a fight that Raylan doesn't look very likely to win. But Lindsey settles the matter by shooting them both, and then makes her choice by knocking Randall out with the butt of the gun. However, she takes off before Raylan can recover, leaving Raylan to turn Randall over to the authorities and discover that his money has turned into so many clucking chickens. And they're not even eatin' chickens! Raylan's philosophical about the dual loss, not least because Lindsey's departure means he can finally get some much-needed sleep.
It seems Billy actually died from last week's snakebite, which is rather an unexpected choice on the show's part, and this sends Ellen May crawling back to Ava and Boyd. Not knowing whether Ellen May has blabbed about the murder to anyone, Ava is wary of the return, so Boyd has Shelby bring Cassie in to try to learn if she knows anything. If Cassie is privy to any information, she does a good job of hiding it, but Ava still thinks Ellen May might be too much of a liability for them, so Boyd suggests she send her away to work for some family of his in Alabama. Ellen May actually figures out why Ava's sending her away, and promises not to say anything, but Ava's unmoved, and even orders Colton to kill Ellen May while he's taking her to the bus station. Even as hard a man as Colton can't bring himself to kill simple old Ellen May in cold blood, but after he heads into a gas-station bathroom to steel himself with some nasal refreshment, he emerges to find her gone. The fact that she started pumping the gas before disappearing suggests that someone came along and removed her from the scene. My money's on Cassie, as I'm betting she figured out the purpose of Shelby's game, but the beauty of this show is that it could credibly have been just about anyone.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We pick up where we left off last week, with Rachel blandly telling Raylan that he probably should have seen this coming. Raylan isn't so sure this was Lindsey, so Rachel asks if it's then Randall who took his money. Raylan asks if everyone knows about that, and Rachel is like, "All about your secret money? Please." I mean, Art practically accused him of running a side business, but I like the idea that the rest of the marshals have all been gossiping about it too. After Raylan confesses that the missing money is "a goodly sum," Rachel wonders if he's going to call it in, but he's not sure what to say; he doesn't even know whether Lindsey was a willing participant in the scheme. The fact that she knew about the money and Randall didn't is telling enough, but Rachel does me one better and asks if, say, Lindsey's toiletries are still around. Raylan has to admit that they are not, and Rachel is at least kind enough not to outwardly enjoy this nearly as much as Art or Tim would. She does, however, ask what Raylan really knows about Lindsey and what he intends to do when he finds her, but Raylan doesn't have many ideas, as he's kind of stuck on the fact that he thought Lindsey actually liked him. Aw. That's about as much sentiment as you'll see Raylan express, and he punctuates the moment by getting extra-squinty about it. Since Raylan doesn't have any answers, Rachel suggests they go find some...
...and we cut to the place to which they will probably go to seek them -- the house of that Matthew McConaughey-esque dude who was wearing the tracksuit two episodes ago, whose name we'll find out is a disappointingly simple "Joe." I thought he was the type who would have at least three other first names. There's a raging party going on outside, but Joe, tailed by his enforcer "Rufus" (still wearing the stupid fedora) leads Lindsey and Randall inside into a quiet room that's generously stocked with liquor.
Joe grandstands for a while about feng shui and expensive tequila and God knows what else, and in the face of his Southern white-trash low-life bullshit, it amuses me to learn that the actor, Joshua Close, is Canadian (he was recently in The Master, I think as one of Phillip Seymour Hoffman's acolytes late in the film). Randall, however, isn't particularly amused and gets less so when Joe starts hitting on Lindsey, but he steers Joe to business, saying he's come into the necessary money for the mysterious thing they discussed. Joe crows to Rufus that Randall's "gonna be a fight manager for real," but he does deign to count the cash in the envelope Lindsey hands him. Randall drawls that they need to "accelerate the timeline," and Joe's head is not so far up his own ass that he doesn't know that means the money's stolen, not that he particularly cares. When he hits on Lindsey again, though, Randall gets to his feet and goes for his weapon, but the click of Rufus' gun lets us know he has Randall covered, and Joe suggests he sit down and act civil. In response, however, Randall knocks a bunch of shit off Joe's desk and tells him to make the calls he needs to make, prompting Lindsey to laugh how all the boys think they've "got dicks the size of redwoods." She jokes, but it would go a long way toward explaining how she could abandon Raylan.