Did Ellen May tell the cops? Or did church lady (to whom Ellen May unburdened herself)? It would explain her being at that scene. It also opens as play for Boyd: get Ellen May to testify that she heard church lady planning to set up Ava. Ava, though innocent, in a panic stole the body to thwart such low and cunning plans.
I’m sure Ellen May talked to the cops and/or the marshals. And I’m sure church lady called them up too. But that wouldn’t explain why she was out there, it’s not like she was needed. It makes sense thematically, but not logically.
I had been wondering about how Boyd and Ava will play this next season. I’m sure Boyd will hire a very good lawyer. I doubt Boyd and Ava could get Ellen May to testify for them, considering what she’s been through and since I think she’s under marshal protection now. And I doubt any jury would believe the preacher’s sister would try to set up Ava. But there might be some slightly believable story they come up with, like some Boyd associate or enemy killed Delroy, and Ellen May is confused about what she knows, since she’s a dim druggie prostitute. Ava would probably still be in for whatever the punishment is for moving/desecrating a body, but could still get out of prison before too long.
Or what I’m thinking more likely is that Ava will be stuck in prison all season. Local law enforcement is probably upset with how much Boyd has gotten away with, so they’ll relish the chance to punish Boyd though punishing Ava. There will be the sweet scenes of Boyd visiting Ava at prison. And in between visits, Boyd will go on a rampage against those who’ve wronged him, which will be exciting to see.
And there was a great callback to that scene at the end, when Art calls Raylan to tell him about Nicky’s death. Raylan replies “Well, I’l sure sleep well tonight.”
I don’t think she was his daughter. On a lot of shows, she would have been, but that’s a little too pat for Justified. Rather, I think she represents his daughter, who he had to essentially abandon and surely regrets doing so. He sees her as a substitute for that. Shelby is sort of the anti-Boyd, in that he went straight and found that it suited him, whereas Boyd tried to go straight but inevitably got sucked back into the life.
He gave $300,000 to Limehouse to buy Shelby and Ellen May, and I thought that was just about all of his cash. Now the heroin business that Wynn Duffy promised him should throw off enough cash but at the moment, he’s cash-poor. So will the next season mention the pressures he’s under? (This season, someone mentioned that Limehouse lost much of the cash he was storing in the pig carcasses to the Marshals’ Service, but that never became a big plot point.)
Oh, and I’m certain that it was Cassie and not Ellen Mae who told the police where to find Delroy’s body. Ellen Mae has no incentive to talk. Raylan said she did, but he really had no way of knowing since he’d been suspended and kept out of that loop, and was just bluffing. Cassie told them what Ellen Mae told her in order to exact revenge for her brother, and that’s why she was at the site. Mooney probably called her after finding Ava.
Yeah, Paxton better take next season off, or he’s a dead man.
I’m also certain that it was Cassie that tipped the police off about the body. My take on her being there at the end was to let Boyd know that it was her who did so.
I remember him mostly from Drugstore Cowboy - their druggie friend who’s always being mistreated by Matt Dillon, who shows up at the end of the movie after Dillon’s gone straight.
I found it frustrating that the entire season they seemed to ignore the fact that Ava killed Delroy to save Ellen Mae’s life. Ellen Mae doesn’t seem aware of it, much less grateful. Ava doesn’t bring it up, even though you’d think this would be at least part of why she’s reluctant to kill Ellen Mae. That mitigating factor isn’t mentioned to the preacher’s sister.
Really, I found Ava to be suddenly a much less compelling character this season, though the scene where she escapes the bar shows us the old Ava right enough.
I also don’t buy the attempts to conflate Raylan’s ways with those of his father. His father was a cheat and a schemer, with occasional resort to violence. Raylan plays fast and loose with rules, but mostly to get into gun fights.
All told, though, I found this season vastly superior to three. I liked season three, but I was never that interested in the mystery of Mags’ money and I didn’t see why everybody suddenly felt they had a claim to it. The missing witness angle in season four I could buy, though I thought the importance the Detroit mob placed on him was way out of proportion. And I didn’t get what everybody’s angle was. The old corrupt sheriff had a code of honor, but what was Arlo suddenly scheming for that he had waited so long to put in motion?
Now, Patton Oswald’s character I thought was just unfunny comic relief. I was floored that after dragging him out episode after episode, his entire schtick paid off so beautifully. I mean, of course there was that thing about stabbing somebody in the leg, which I saw coming, but the fact that he looked like such a badass because when asked where ‘Drew’ was he genuinely had no idea who the guy was talking about, damn!
Also, the nursery gunfight. Goddamn.
And Tim getting a chance to show his skills. I’ve enjoyed his sarcasm for many episodes, but in season four we see his particular skill set come into play. I hope in season five we get to see Rachel break away from the pack.
Although the show and the Raylan novel need to be treated as alternate universes, I do think the pathos of the guy (Delroy in the book) who gives Raylan a speech by videotape was a nice ironic take on the inherent machismo of the quickdraw contest, though I guess I can see why they just made it a normal (for Raylan) encounter in the show.
I think the assessment was right. Most of the hero-types we really admire are a hairsbreadth from being the scum they chase. Raylan easily could have become one of the outlaw wheeler-dealer-violence mongers Harlan is filled with; as it is, he only follows the rigid and extensive rules of being a Marshal when they suit him.
John D. MacDonald knew this, if you’ve read the Travis McGee series; more than once Trav is accused of being a slightly brighter mirror image of one of his antagonists, and it rings too true for both him and the reader.
Aside from the fact that nobody would really be allowed to work off the reservation as often as Raylan does, he remains as Chandler put it ‘neither tarnished nor afraid’. Until this last episode, that is, in which he is frightened by the threats to his family and helps set up a murder. For my money, he’s still in the running for ‘best man in the world, and a good enough man for any world’. Although, Tim is really bucking for the top slot.
Johnny Angel, I agree with your assessment, and also wonder what Arlo was up to. Why did he suddenly want the bag after it had been safely walled up for 30 years? Was it part of a plan to get himself out of prison?
If it was explained, I’ve forgotten.
The bag seems to have been a grade-A maguffin. I waited for there to be some big explanation or something, but other than vaguely tying Arlo to the long-ago dead guy, it didn’t seem to have any purpose whether he’d burned it, hidden it or framed it on the wall. My vague sense is that it had something to do with leverage with Theo Tonin regarding Drew’s secret identity, but how it enhanced just saying “I know who Drew is” is a mystery.
I did like the conclusion of patching up the wall. Nice imagery and closure.
We never found out exactly why Arlo wanted to bag - he was killed by the detroit gang before he ever got to take advantage of it - not to mention that the marshal’s got a hold of it and started to investigate before Arlo could take advantage.
I would not call that a “maguffin” in any sense of the word.
Arlo’s intent was likely
a) use the bag to get in with Detroit by giving up Drew - the bag was ‘proof’ that he was not a bullshitter on this.
b) use the bag as leverage against/with Drew (aka Sherrif Shelby) to get out of prison
c) same as (b) but with the actual law enforcement folks.
I thought he was killed by the former sheriff as part of his personal debt of honor to Drew Thompson.
It was (or evolved into being) a nearly meaningless distraction, a false reason everyone started scrambling in circles and cutting throats and packing bags, and never played any signficant part in the plot or explanation.
Sim, meet Mac. Mac, Sim. 
You’re right, it was the former sherrif - I don’t recall it being for his debt, but it was definitely to shut up arlo - which heavily implies that Arlo was going to make a play to Detroit or the Marshals.
It played a very significant part - it was that clue that started the Marshal service looking into and eventually for Drew - it even brought in the FBI (and then due to the moles), the Detroit gang.
It also was not a distraction at all - past the first one/two episodes where they were figuring out what it ‘meant’ -
I don’t call it meaningless at all - I can see your point that it was no longer needed once its significance was determined - it ‘got the ball rolling’ - as opposed to the type where its what everyone is ‘looking for’.
Last edit - no one went looking for the bag as teh clue - the bag dropped in the laps and provided a clue - there were some scenes with Arlo related to “why you have the bag” - but those were story elements, not distractions.
Okay. You’re putting more weight on the bag as a significant item than I can muster, but even you are conceding its point was to make everyone go “Hey, what’s that?” and then be kicked aside. If the cops chase a six-foot Easter rabbit down an alley and thereby discover a murder victim, the rabbit is a maguffin. I posit that the bag was a highly contrived way to get a complicated story rolling but had no real meaning or purpose otherwise. Without that pink rabbit, it could have taken five episodes just to get everyone entangled.
Was it ever even clear where the bag came from? It wasn’t one the skydeader had; Drew/Shelby took it with him after landing, put the dead man’s ID in it, and gave it to Arlo for no believable reason, who kept it for no really good reason, then had two kids break into his house to tear it out of the wall for no good reason. None of those three stages makes any sense to me at all as long as (1) Arlo knew who Drew was and (2) Theo Tonin would do anything to get him. All Arlo ever had to do was get word to Tonin that he knew where Drew was; he needed no proof or leverage as long as he really could produce Drew on demand.
I see a macguffin as
“Go find X to solve Y” where X really isn’t the point at all - has zero meaning and is easily replacable - its main goal is to, quite literally, move the story to point Y.
In this case it was “Here is X, solve Y” - and since this is a ‘crime’ type story, sometimes those Xs are needed to get a case moving - the clue itself is just that - a clue - its not a ‘quest’ to find or even is it something to ‘move’ the story - it does start the story.
The bag came from Drew/Shelby since Shelby’s arrival in the area started the drug business - Arlo kept it - I guess for whatever leverage he thought it would give him. Arlo clearly hoped to use it since he got the two kids to retrieve it.
Arlo’s first play may not have been to Tonin - he (arlo) did kill the librarian right away to keep the info on the bag limited - so he may have been hoping to use it with Shelby - since he did not tell Raylan what it meant.
I think if there is a macguffin in this season - it would be Arlo’s role, not the bag.
If you read Graham Yost’s post-mortems each week, you’ll see that the season-long story is not actually plotted out in advance as much as I thought. They were halfway through filming the season before they’d made their final decisions about who Drew Thompson would turn out to be. So most of the storylines are kind of slotted into place as best they can, but sometimes there will be loose ends that can’t really get wrapped up properly.
It’s just as plausible to say that Arlo was suffering from dementia, and that’s why he had those kids get the bag.
Which explains everything about the erratic, confusing nature of this season, IMHO.
Fer fuckin’ chrissakes, they have 3/4 of each year to devise a season arc and write it. Spending six months drunk on a beach and then throwing together half-thought, slipshod scripts with no direction in sight as production rolls on is so old-school it should be illegal.