Justified, Season 4, Episode 4 recap.

It’s time to find out just how badly Hot Lindsey has f*cked up with Raylan after allegedly running off with her ex-con ex-husband, Randall, with Raylan’s moonlighting money stuffed down her bra.

Deputy Brooks is assuming the worst -- that Hot Lindsey was working Raylan all along, but Raylan doesn’t want to think that. What I don’t get is why, after knowing Raylan for several months, Hot Lindsey would cross him like this. Again, Raylan is a well-known hair trigger. Either Hot Lindsey really is in on it or she’s more scared of her ex-husband than she is of Raylan’s potential to go nuclear.

Judging by the look on Hot Lindsey’s face, she’s scared of her ex-husband.

I’m not fully understanding this plan. Randall wants to use Raylan’s money to buy into a fight promotion business? Doesn’t that sound…stupid? Or does backyard UFC fighting really pay that well?

Shady guy: “Who’d you steal [the money] from?” Randall: “You ain’t gotta worry about that.” What?! YES. WORRY. A LOT.

Randall has serious anger management issues. Hard to tell how involved Hot Lindsey actually is, but she seems to be playing Randall, trying to keep him on an even keel. Hopefully she, at least, is taking the Raylan’s potential to kill everyone seriously. Someone needs to be taking Raylan seriously.

So Preacher Billy died from the snakebite at the end of the previous episode. Boyd does look genuinely affected by his part in it, but that doesn’t stop him from talking circles around Ella Mae, who wants to go back to work for Ava. I love the contrast of how chill Boyd is as Ava is getting more wound up by the threat Ella Mae poses. I’m thinking poor Ella Mae won’t survive to the end of the season. Boyd sends Colton to find Cassie to find out if Ella Mae told the church about her and Ava killing that dude that time.

Theresa Diaz! Remember how big The OC was? That was supposed to be my generation’s 90210.

So Randall’s “fight management” gig is cockfighting. He stole Raylan’s money to set himself up as a cockfighter. Raylan is going to kill him.

Hot Lindsey exposes Raylan’s one real weakness. I’m not sure if it’s that he underestimates women or that he just wants to believe the best in them (when he has no problem assuming the worst in men), but he has a real blind spot for women. If you want to get around Raylan Givens, send a pretty woman. The skeevy fight promoter put it best: “If a man couldn’t see that Grifter Barbie coming, he deserved to get fleeced.”

The photographer in me loves that Hot Lindsey is having a conversation about Fuji Film vs. Kodak and various ASAs, but the photographer in me also knows it’s been years since film was readily available at gas stations. The creepy gas station attendant is a “hobbyist”, which is supposed to explain it, but anyone who uses Kodak has been stock-piling that sh*t for ages and no one shares. The photographer in me is going to have to let this one go, clearly. (I used to stock Kodak Tri-X 400 but that got so hard to find that I had to switch. Now I roll with AGFA Blackbird or RPX 400 and stock by the case. I don’t share either.)

Of course Randall shoplifts as she distracts the creepy gas station attendant. And he can’t let it go that the attendant talked to Hot Lindsey about “tasteful boudoir pictures”.

The sheriff Boyd put in office warns Cassie about Boyd’s interest in finding out about whether or not anyone talked about Boyd’s criminal enterprises. Boyd and Ava listen via speakerphone, then Boyd proposes to send Ella Mae to Alabama. Take the out, Ella Mae.

When Randall goes in to pummel the creep attendant, Hot Lindsey tries to call Raylan. So…not in on it?

Brooks is developing some anger management issues of her own.

Ella Mae is dumb as a bag of rocks.

Raylan and Brooks part ways but not before Brooks hands off a…shotgun? I guess that’s a shotgun?  Let’s just call it “the thing that will kill Randall”.

Oh so it was a bean-bag gun. Randall learned that the hard way.

Raylan and Randall beat the sh*t out of each other, but Hot Lindsey gets the last word, shooting Raylan with the bean-bag gun then pummeling Randall with it. Raylan’s big concern? Making sure Hot Lindsey really did like him. See? Blind spot.

Well, Raylan’s money is gone, spent on chickens. Randall points out the monetary potential of fighting chickens, and Raylan shoots him. Again.

Poor Raylan. All alone, no money, no girl, beat all to hell. At least he has the chickens.

Just when you start feeling bad for Boyd, what with his “being a crime boss is SO HARD” hang-dog look, he goes and orders someone killed. Colton is supposed to kill Ella Mae (and who’s really that surprised that this was Boyd’s plan all along?). But Colton goes to do a bump in the bathroom and Ella Mae vanishes. If Raylan’s problem is his weakness for women, Boyd’s is that, excepting Ava, he can never find really good minions. Boyd needs some minions, ya’ll.

Raylan’s body count so far: 0 (seriously, how did Randall survive?) / 15
Boyd’s body count so far: 1 (poor, dumb Preacher Billy)