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Everybody's favorite marshal decides to get rid of his girlfriend's MMA-style husband by strongly recommending that he head off to Florida. When that doesn't work, they promise to meet behind the bleachers after gym class to pummel each other.
Meanwhile, Boyd tries to bribe Preacher Billy's pesky church into leaving, but instead of going to Billy, Boyd heads straight to sister Cassie, thinking that she is the brains behind the operation. However she doesn't think Boyd's offering is nearly enough to get them to move. She's not opposed to moving, she just wants mo' money. So Boyd decides to try a different tact: Guns. Boyd sends Colton and some other dude to drive out the church with firepower. Instead Boyd's man goes down getting attacked by snake after snake until one gets him right in the face. Colton brings him back to Boyd's, black and blue and with half a snake embedded in his cheek. They decide a doctor might be in order.
Rachel is in trouble with her boss for single-handedly apprehending a violent fugitive, which she totally learned from Raylan. As she goes to Time Out, Art tells Raylan that Drew Thompson (a.k.a. the guy who was supposed to be dead after pancake-ing in Harlan County) was wanted on a sealed federal witness warrant before he died. Well, faked his death. Raylan and Tim are tasked with telling his widow that Drew's not actually dead.
Meanwhile Johnny is branching out on his own and trying to make a deal with Wynn Duffy. But Wynn's not looking for a partner and Johnny's not just interested in breaking into the Dixie Mafia heroin business. Turns out Johnny is holding a serious grudge against Boyd for putting him in a wheelchair all those years ago. So he offers to help Duffy kill Boyd. Needless to say, Duffy is intrigued. Also needless to say, Duffy's hair is Sun-In-alicious.
Raylan and Tim tell Drew's widow that Drew is still alive, but turns out she's a psychic who knows a thing or two and definitely knew that Drew was alive. Then she proves her psychic skills by outing Raylan's plan to fist fight with Lindsay's husband. Just as the marshals are starting to get somewhere with the widow, an FBI agent shows up, which causes the lovely widow to jump out a bathroom window. As she's running from the FBI, she gets nabbed by a man in a leather jacket who also has a ponytail and a tiny beard and is thus, clearly, a bad guy. The FBI guy follows the marshals back to their office in order to try and take over the case, using the fact that the psychic widow ran as evidence of their incompetence. Raylan thinks something is suspicious, though, and his misgivings (mis-Givens?) are proven true when the so-called FBI guy calls the kidnapper and it's clear they are working together. The kidnapper, who also has neck tattoo to prove he's up to no good, works over the widow in a motel room until she gives up Drew.
The doctor really wants to take Boyd's man to the hospital, but Boyd realizes that the guy has been alive so long, the snakes must have had their venom removed.
Raylan heads to the gym for his rendezvous with the MMA guy, only to find that he's cleaned out his locker and left. Raylan laughingly comes out of the gym, only to run into the FBI guy who just got a tip from the kidnapper that Drew was in there. Raylan puts the pieces together pretty quickly and realizes that the guy is in on the kidnapping. The FBI man knows the gig is up and after telling Raylan that his partners will kill him and his family if he turns on them, he tells Raylan where the woman is being held. Then he shoots himself in the head.
The marshals bust in just as the kidnapper is about to torture the widow some more. Art has joined the party and tells her that the kidnapper was part of a Detroit mob outfit. If she tells them what she knows about Drew, they will protect her. She claims that the only thing Drew told her was that for all intents and purposes he was dead. Art calls it bullshit, because he's Art and this is FX after 10 PM ET. She finally admits that she knows why Drew was in hiding: He witnessed a Detroit gangster kill a government informant. That's good enough for Art who promises to station two men outside her house for protection.
Boyd heads to church, where Preacher Billy calls him out for breaking and entering and getting bit by a bunch of snakes. But this time Boyd has a prop: a real live snake in a box, a snake that wasn't milked of its venom. Preacher Billy didn't know what his sister was doing, so she has no choice but to stop him before he gets bit. But Preacher Billy believes Jesus will protect him from the snake venom. So he grabs the snakes …and immediately gets bit and poisoned. Boyd leaves looking more than a little guilty.
Raylan finally realizes that Lindsay ran off with her husband. Line forms to the left to comfort him in his time of need.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Welcome back to Harlan County, where the pushers are prettier than the preachers, pastors welcome prostitutes, the church folk have no qualms about shaking down the dealers and the prostitutes clean up real nice for Wednesday night services. When last we saw Boyd and his posse, they were getting mighty hot under the collar about the word of God moving into their backyard and saving all the troubled souls of their Oxycontin-buying clientele. Boyd and his ruffians tried asking the preacher and his sharp-eyed sister to move on out of town, but the Lord moves in mysterious ways that are determined to make Boyd part with some of his hard-earned dirty money. So Boyd returns to the tents of the evangelists -- not to watch, in the words of the preacher himself, "the hillbilly with the snakes" -- but to bribe the smartypants sister with a duffle bag full of cold hard cash. While I, for one, would be extremely excited to have someone offer me a bag of money (take note, Santa Claus) with the only stipulation being that I move out of Harlan County, the eel-eyed sister is not nearly as craven as I am. (She also has better hair, and I'm almost convinced the too are connected.) She thinks her beloved brother Billy deserves a proper church in which to manhandle irate reptiles. Perhaps wall-to-wall carpeting and solid oak pews would help soothe their savage souls and make them less likely to get all nippy with or without the power of Christ keeping them calm. If Boyd wants them to move, he needs to build them a proper church. And church-building money wouldn't fit in a duffle bag. Well, not until President Obama decides whether or not to mint the trillion-dollar coin. A trillion-dollar coin would easily fit in a duffle bag. At any rate, Boyd isn't willing to pay for a brick-and-mortar operation when he has Plan B. And with Boyd, Plan B is always guns. Sometimes Plan A is guns, too.
Raylan Givens is a lot of things... and a sucker for a pretty lady is definitely one of them. So even when it turns out that his girlfriend du jour, Lindsey, is married to a man roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, he's likely to believe almost any story she tells him, so long as they can make amends the old fashioned way. When Lindsey knocks on Raylan's door, her tail is tucked between her legs and her clothes are extra tight, so there's little doubt that Raylan will be paying extra close attention to whatever sob story she tells him. She starts by saying that despite the fact that Randall called her his wife, she divorced him last time he went to prison. (By prison I assume she means Grey's Anatomy, where Randall played Dr. Charles Percy until he was shot down during the Great Grey's Massacre of '10.) Then Lindsay confesses that she and Randall used to be not only husband and wife, but accomplices, too. She would get close to men, find out what they had that was worth stealing and then Randall would take it. It was all simple and brutally effective until Randall decided that he didn't like his woman rubbing up on strange men and beat some guy to the brink of death. He went to jail and Lindsey got divorced and hooked up with Raylan. She hoped by telling him this sad story, he would forgive her trespasses and let her trespass on him a bit more if you know what I mean... and I think you do, especially when she takes off her shirt mid-apology. Raylan is so eager to agree with her that he looks like a damn bobblehead.
Boyd drives back to his Evil Empire HQ to alert his musclemen that the carrot didn't work and they will need to use the stick. So he sends two of his men to scare off the preacher into someone else's backyard. In the dark of night they enter the church with guns loaded. The darkness may have masked their breaking and entering, but it also hid the fact that the preacher and his sister apparently believe in free-range snakes. The entire tent is liberally littered with the lil biters. One guy goes down after several rascally reptiles take umbrage at the fact that he is stepping on their tails and firing at their heads. The snake to the face is just God's way of waving a Don't Tread On Me flag. He shoots the body clean off the snake as he collapses on the ground.
Colt brings his ill-fated musclin' buddy back to Boyd's ASAP with the poor snake's head still attached to the guy's face. They lay him down on the pool table as Boyd barks orders about finding a doctor. Johnny, who knows where to find emergency help, is currently missing in action and not answering his phone, so it falls to newcomer Colt to track down a doctor with a stash of anti-venin.
In Raylan's continuing quest to make bad life choices, he decides to head down to Randall's gym to confront him with a bunch of information that would make a lesser, smarter or slightly less thick-headed man hightail it to the hills or, in this case, Florida. After Raylan ascertains that Randall is really down on his luck and living out of his gym locker, he decides to go ahead and kick him while he's down. He tells Randall that Lindsay told him all about their life of crime together and his new solo career as an illegal cage fighter. Not being the subtlest man to ever wear a white hat, Raylan makes sure that Randall is aware that when Lindsay was spilling the details of their crime spree, she was snuggled up in bed with everybody's favorite deputy marshal. If that wasn't enough, to earn Raylan a punch in the face, he gives Randall a deadline of 6 p.m. to get out of town or else Raylan will alert his parole officer to the fact that Randall is out of Florida and then have him arrested and sent to jail. Randall isn't especially impressed by Raylan's threat to call his P.O. and instead sets his own deadline to put a limp in Raylan's "Gary Cooper walk" at 6 PM. It's not stated, but it is implied that this will occur behind the bleachers or else everyone's getting swirlies.
Back at the office, Raylan accidentally walks in on Rachel getting a dressing down by Art. Seems she took a page out of Raylan's playbook and went to apprehend a violent fugitive all on her lonesome without ever calling for backup. She rightfully points out that Raylan pulls that malarkey all the time and never gets written up for it, which Art agrees is true, but explains that he's given up on Raylan as a lost cause and still has some hope for Rachel. She walks out shaking her head with Art giving Raylan a dirty look for his bad influence. Art tells Raylan that he found Drew Thompson's widow. Just as a reminder, Drew Thompson is the guy who we thought was a human pancake up until the last episode, when it turned out the poor soul covering the pavement many years ago was an out-of-luck dude desperate to escape his fairly frightening family. Drew Thompson is alive and well, but still missing -- taking with him the mystery of the diplomatic mail pouch, which sounds like one of the lesser Hardy Boy books. We'll let it slide. Turns out Drew's widow remarried to get out of the limelight after her husband's face plant. Art wants Raylan and Tim to head over to her house to see her reaction to the news that her husband is not dead. Art also tells Raylan that he found out that Drew Thompson was a witness in a sealed government investigation. He's trying to find out the details of the case, but Raylan should ask the widow if she knows. Then they talk about Art's "marshal stiffy" for a while and I just can't even.
If Timothy Olyphant played Wynn Duffy, he would no doubt be my absolute favorite character on this show. Or probably any show, really. Well, if Timothy Olyphant played Wynn Duffy on Sons of Anarchy I would probably keel over dead from the TV stiffy I would have. MAKE THIS HAPPEN, FX. And if you have to have Walter Goggins play a cross-dressing prostitute on the same episode, well, I would die and go straight to TV watching heaven. All this is to say that even though Wynn Duffy made it very clear last week that he had no interest in doing business with Boyd and the Harlan County JV Goon Squad, Johnny Crowder is sitting in his trailer seeking an audience. Boyd didn't send him, though. Johnny is trying to make a deal of his own. Turns out that Johnny still holds quite the grudge against his cousin. He blames Boyd for putting him in the wheelchair, even though it was Boyd's daddy who pulled the trigger. Seems Johnny viewed himself as the heir apparent to the hillbilly empire and doesn't think that it's fair that Boyd should come out on top. This isn't Wynn's first time at a Crowder dance though and doesn't think he can trust Johnny. Johnny has an idea of how to lay a foundation of trust and friendship, though: He'll kill Boyd.
Speaking of Boyd, he still has a man with an eighth of a snake attached to his face laid out on his pool table like Sunday supper. Colt has managed to find a doctor, but for some reason Boyd refuses to send the man to an ER, even though the doc promises to say he found him on the side of the road. Is there something I'm missing about this? Is there mandatory reporting of snake bites like there is for bullet wounds at hospitals? Or is it just such a small town that a snake to the face would get around and the St. Cyr siblings would know that their snakes got the best of Boyd? Whatever the reason, Boyd tells the doctor just to go ahead and rip the snake out. This is all highly unnecessary, but very effectively gross.
Raylan and Tim have made their way to the widow's house, but she isn't expecting them, even though she's a psychic and should have known. I am not an especially quick-witted person when it comes to off-the-cuff talking, but the one time I did manage it, I was walking down the street when a woman stopped me and asked if I knew the way to the Psychic Convention at the Convention Center. I stopped, cocked my head and asked, "Don't YOU know?" She didn't think it was funny, though, and I felt bad and gave her directions. Anyway. Raylan didn't bother reading the woman's file, so he has no idea what Tim is talking about, which is that the "certified spiritualist" has been accused of fraud numerous times. The woman seems surprised that Drew could still be alive, but she's more interested in the fact that Raylan has "so much death around him" and is convinced that he is going to go meet some bad man later. Raylan scoffs that he meets bad men all the time, but then the psychic (whose name is Eve, by the by) adds that he's a weightlifter or a fighter and stops Raylan short. He confesses to Tim that he's going to meet Lindsey's ex-husband at the boxing gym later. Just as Tim is about to lay into Raylan and his poor decision making skills, a mysterious black town car pulls up and starts idling outside Eve's house. While in New York an idling black town car is as common as an angry bodega cat, in Kentucky this causes everyone to fly into panic mode. Eve locks herself in the half bath and Raylan goes out to confront the man while Tim holds point. Turns out the man is an FBI agent, he gets invited in, but Eve isn't waiting around to find out what this is all about. She hoists herself out the bathroom window and then gets kidnapped at fist point as she attempts to flee through the backyard. It was a surprising turn of events and really well done. The marshals and agent have no idea that she's gone and only once they call the all clear do they realize she's AWOL, but they still have no idea that she's been kidnapped.
The FBI agent follows the marshals back to their office to witness their good-natured ribbing from Art who tsks tsks tsks that Tim and Raylan couldn't handle a suburban grandmother. The FBI agent gloats and then attempts to take control of the entire case. While the agent tells the boys to relax because he's handling the missing widow now, Raylan isn't buying it. He thinks it's suspicious that the widow left her phone and car and he makes a face like he smells something fishy. The fish in this case? The FBI agent. He's a real enough agent all right, but he's working with the kidnapper and, in what seems like a rookie move, calls the kidnapper from the elevator. Turns out both he and his family are in jeopardy if he doesn't help the kidnapper find Thompson.
The kidnapper -- who we can tell is a bad guy because he has neck tattoos AND a pony tail AND is wearing black -- stashes the widow in a motel room. He ties her arms to the chair, pulls a bag (that he probably bought off KidnappingSupplies.Com because where else do you get head bags? Wal Mart?) off of her head and demands that she tell him where Drew Thompson is hiding. She swears she doesn't know and while I am inclined to believe the woman, the kidnapper is not. Maybe he thinks her psychic skills can aid him in his search even if her memory can't. He knocks her over and threatens her with both a slow death and a pee-soaked sock in the mouth (same difference really) if she doesn't start talking.
Raylan heads to the gym for his 6 p.m. deadline, but finds that Randall isn't waiting around to get arrested. Apparently the allure of socking Raylan in the nose wasn't enough to risk getting taken back to Florida and thrown in jail (same difference really). His locker is empty and he's long gone. The news puts an extra spring in Raylan's step and, if possible, makes him even more cocksure. He's smiling as he steps out the back alley only to run smack into FBI Agent Barnes who is telling someone (the kidnapper probably) on the phone that the tip didn't pan out. He looks shocked when he sees Raylan, quickly hanging up the phone in that way that you can really slam a flip phone shut, and then rapidly putting the onus of explanation on Raylan. He claims that he knew Raylan got something out of the widow and just didn't want to share with the FBI. Raylan, who is still playing mental catch up, quickly starts putting the pieces together. Barnes asks Raylan if Thompson is in there and Raylan shoots him a clear WTF look and says no. Then Raylan starts to get a lot more curious. He's there on personal business -- why is Barnes there? If he got a tip, who did he get the tip from? The only people who knew that Raylan would be at the gym were Tim and Eve Monroe, the widow. The FBI agent's face gets an expression that clearly reads as to quote from my favorite politician ever, "Bitch set me up!" (That was former DC Mayor Marion Barry, by the way, after getting busted smoking crack with a prostitute.)
Barnes quickly surmises that the widow set him up, although that seems like improbably and outlandishly good thinking under pressure. Raylan, meanwhile, has put all the pieces together and realized that Barnes is working for the bad guy. He calmly tells him to start talking, because otherwise they will search his phone records, find out whom he was talking to and he'll be going to jail as a disgraced FBI agent. The only way to save his skin now is to start helping them find Eve before she's dead. Barnes starts thinking things through and pulls his gun out while Raylan tries to talk him out of doing whatever he thinks he's about to do. Barnes doesn't see another way out though. He can't go to jail because he's a lawman. If he helps Raylan, the bad guys (whoever they are) will kill him and his family. Raylan promises to shoot him in the leg if he doesn't drop the gun. Barnes tells Raylan to tell his wife that he's sorry, then he tells Raylan where Eve is being held and then he shoots himself in the head. Thus endeth the brief criminal career of FBI Agent Barnes. RIP.
Back in Harlan, Johnny finally returns to the Apple Dumpling Gang's HQ. Boyd demands to know where Johnny was, but Johnny shrugs him off asking what the heck happened to snake face. The snake-bitten guy is on the mend, but the doctor would still like to take him to the hospital. He can't believe that the poison hasn't killed him yet! That makes Boyd's face go blank in a way that only Walter Goggins' face can. You know that Boyd has realized something big.
In the hotel, Eve is pulled out of the closet and is about to be punished for her bit of clever thinking. The kidnapper knows that she played him, sending Barnes to the gym when she knew Thompson wasn't there. The guy throws her on the bed, ties her up with zip ties, straddles her and pulls out a knife scary enough to make her talk. Just as things look especially dire, Raylan and Tim and a whole squad of marshals' service operatives bust up the party. After the bad guy is carted away and Eve gets some much-needed medical attention, Art comes to talk to her. Hopefully he tucked his marshal stiffy away, because Eve has probably been traumatized enough. Art tells her that the bad guy was a "Detroit hard case" named Mason Goins who worked for a man named Theo. Eve admits that the name rings a bell, but she's not very forthcoming and even gives Raylan -- her conquering hero -- a bit of sass when he points out that she ran out the bathroom window. So Art lays it out: She's going home and if she is helping them, she'll be well protected. If she's not cooperating with their investigation... well, she's on her own. Eve starts talking, taking the marshals on a little trip down memory lane: One night she found Drew burning all their photos and told her that the day someone would be coming by to tell her he was dead and that -- for all intents and purposes and birthdays and brisses -- he was. Art isn't impressed. He needs more information if he's going to bother using up his limited resources to keep her safe. Eve gulps and finally spills the beans: Drew saw Theo, the Detroit gangster, kill a government informant. Apparently this information is worth killing over and it's also enough to spring the marshals into action. They think this Theo fellow will send an army after Eve, especially now that they know he had an FBI agent to leak him information. Art promises her six armed guards and sends her on her way. Raylan has a question though: How did she know which gym he was at? There are three gyms on the west side, which was all the information she had, how did she know which gym to send Barnes to? She smiles coquettishly, "I have a gift."
Boyd is heading back to church, but he hasn't come to pray for the soul of his snake-bitten brethren. While Pastor Billy preaches about how the Lord Almighty loves him and protects him from the terrible bites of serpents, last night evil came into their church and was struck down by the very same snakes. God protects the righteous and the holy from the snakes' poison, but when evil knocks on their church's door, he smites down the wicked with the same snakes. That's when Boyd shows up like the punchline to Billy's speech. Billy knows it was Boyd's men who got their comeuppance last night and he also knows that Boyd tried to bribe his sister into uprooting the congregation from their spot. He calls Boyd out in front of the churchgoers, handily incorporating him into the sermon and Boyd doesn't bother denying it. He does deny something though: That Billy's snakes have any poison in them at all. Boyd presents the congregation with a box and the opportunity for knowledge. He uses the sanctuary-filling voice that he used to use back when he was a preacherman and tells the gathering that inside the box is a rattlesnake that was pulled from a crevice near the Cumberland River this very morning, which is how he knows that the good preacher's sister didn't have time to milk it of poison yet. Someone in the congregation yells, "Blasphemy!" Now, I don't know about you, but any time someone yells "Blasphemy!" I start thinking about the stoning scene in Monty Python's "Life of Brian", so you'll forgive me if I watched the rest of this scene imagining it in John Cleese's voice.
The preacher's sister pretends she has no idea what Boyd is talking about, but calmly tries to talk her brother out of it by claiming that the snakes aren't props and are only handled when the Lord calls them to it. Boyd quotes some scripture about acting in the light and Billy agrees to hold the rattler for the glory of God. That's when his sister stops him. She admits that she milked the venom out of the snakes before he ever handled them. Billy is shocked at his sister's actions, but she tries to explain that she had to. He never saw their daddy suffering and in pain after getting bit by snakes. Boyd picks up his box to leave, because his work is done, although I'm not sure why he brought the snake with him. Why not leave an incredibly dangerous snake for the people you hate to deal with, right? Anyway, Billy stops him and is going to juggle that rattlesnake for Jesus, if it's the last thing he ever does (and it could be!) Cassie tries to talk him out of it, but he ignores her. Then Boyd tries to talk him out of it, because it's not the will of God but sheer hubris on his part. Billy doesn't care and ultimately neither does Boyd. He hands over the snake and Billy gets to preaching. It's all good and everyone's prayers of safety seem to be working, until, you know, they don't. The pissed off rattlesnake sinks its fangs into Reverend Billy. He tucks the snake back into the box and then collapses. Boyd walks off as Cassie screams for someone to call an ambulance.
Raylan and Rachel are recovering from their respective days in the bar over shots of bourbon (it is Kentucky after all). Rachel seems to be grappling with something, but neither she nor Raylan really want to talk about it. Raylan interrupts their near-mute bonding to ask the bartender if he's seen Lindsay. Apparently she's waiting for him in his apartment, so Raylan heads upstairs to see her. Instead of finding his girlfriend, he finds his apartment tossed and robbed and whatever he had gone, including the bedding, which seems like Extreme Robbery. I mean, ew. Rachel walks in to the mess, surveys the scene and assesses the situation, "Guess [Lindsay] got tired of waiting." Guess so.
Come back week when Raylan tries to justify his really bad taste in women!
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Raylan and Rachel are recovering from their respective days in the bar over shots of bourbon (it is Kentucky after all). Rachel seems to be grappling with something, but neither she nor Raylan really want to talk about it. Raylan interrupts their near-mute bonding to ask the bartender if he's seen Lindsay. Apparently she's waiting for him in his apartment, so Raylan heads upstairs to see her. Instead of finding his girlfriend, he finds his apartment tossed and robbed and whatever he had gone, including the bedding, which seems like Extreme Robbery. I mean, ew. Rachel walks in to the mess, surveys the scene and assesses the situation, "Guess [Lindsay] got tired of waiting." Guess so.
Come back week when Raylan tries to justify his really bad taste in women!
Think you've got game? Prove it! Check out Games Without Pity, our new area featuring trivia, puzzle, card, strategy, action and word games -- all free to play and guaranteed to help pass the time until your show starts.