By Couch Baron
We're at the point in the season where we've got about five thousand different agendas flying around, and I love every one of them. First off, Colton uses his old military police ID to get a look at the gas station's security camera footage and sees a sheriff's vehicle on the scene at the time Ellen May vanished. Hoping to find her and get the job done, he lies to Boyd that everything happened as planned. Later desperate, he heads over to Shelby's and tells him not to say anything to Boyd – but when he leaves, we learn that it was actually Shelby who took Ellen May, as he wants to know from Ellen May what information she has that could damage Boyd. Shelby, I am impressed.
The corrupt FBI guy's suicide has given Art and his crew the opening they need to take the Drew Thompson case back from the Feds, and Agent Barkley shows up to let us know he's not thrilled about that. The result of this development, though, is that a manacled Arlo is brought into the Marshal's office, and Raylan soon learns that U.S. Attorney Vasquez has offered Arlo his freedom in exchange for Drew Thompson, as Thompson could give them a shot at Theo Tonin, who you'll remember is the Detroit crime boss from last season. Raylan, as you might imagine, is not thrilled at the prospect of Arlo walking, so he takes the 24 hours he has before Vasquez gets an official green light for the deal and tries to find Thompson himself.
A lackey of the Tonin family, "Nick Augustine," played by Mike O'Malley, shows up in Harlan, and as it happens, he's an old buddy of Barkley's, and Barkley has been protecting him for years. All this comes out in front of an hilariously uncomfortable Wynn Duffy, who listens as Nick first chastises Barkley for missing the boat with Thompson and then tells him that Theo wants him alive, possibly because 30 years ago, Thompson shot Theo in the eye, stole $2 million in cocaine from him, and left him for dead on a runway in Panama. Having figured that Barkley isn't up to the task of making this happen, Theo sent Nick to contract the job out to Wynn, and the deal is sealed when Nick puts a bullet in his old chum Barkley's skull. Which makes me wonder: On exactly how many different TV shows has Stephen Tobolowsky met his death?
Wynn comes to Boyd for help in tracking down Thompson, which sends Johnny to Ava trying to sow a seed or two of discord. Meanwhile, Raylan gets Constable Bob to track down that girl Roz he stabbed in the foot in the season premiere. Having realized that Arlo didn't hire her, he asks who did, and the answer is her stepfather, a "Josiah Cairn," already known to Raylan as a scumbag from his coal mining days. Raylan uses some vehicular persuasion to get the truth out of the old man – while Waldo Truth was plummeting to his death pretending to be Thompson, the real McCoy also had a landing mishap that left him with two busted legs. He got word to Arlo and Boyd's dad, who struck a deal with him – they'd send him to the hill people to get healed up and to have a place to hide out in exchange for the stolen cocaine. Trouble is, according to Cairn, Thompson's legs never really healed, so without any mobility, he was forced to stay among the hill people all this time. Raylan leaves Tim as a sentry but heads into the hills alone and on foot, and despite his declaration of peaceful intentions, he summarily gets taken away and shoved into a cage – where he finds Boyd. Hee.
Although it looks at one point like they might escape, thanks to a double-cross from Josiah, they're sentenced to death – until the woman Raylan came to see, an old friend of his mother's played by General Beckman from Chuck, intervenes. Raylan in turn talks them out of killing Boyd, and then the woman Mary lets them know that Josiah lied -- Thompson isn't there anymore, but she did catch sight of him ten years earlier, and he's in Harlan. To wrap things up, Boyd extracts a promise from Wynn that he'll get half the heroin business in Kentucky if he brings him Thompson, and he's feeling pretty good after he pays Arlo's lawyer to quash the deal – not knowing that Wynn is on board with Johnny's plan to kill Boyd as soon as his Thompson errand is finished. Meanwhile, Raylan goes to have another chat with Josiah about his mendacious ways, only to find that he's severed his own foot to get his location monitor off. Man, is this the season of people losing their mobility or what?