By the end of this week’s episode, it’s impossible to say who among Kingstown’s newcomers is allied with whom.
Photo: Dennis P. Mong Jr./Paramount+
When Frank Moses was first introduced in Mayor of Kingstown’s season four premiere, I initially assumed he was in league with the Colombian hitman Cortez, conspiring to take down Bunny Washington. Then, in the very next episode, Frank extended his helping hand to Bunny, and I felt like a dope. But even in that recap, I hedged my bets a bit with the Frank/Cortez connection, writing: “This is not to say, by the way, that Cortez is definitively not working for Frank. We get multiple scenes with Mr. Moses this week, and while he very earnestly explains his Kingstown plans, he remains a bit of a mystery.”
I’ll be honest: By the end of this week’s episode, “#081693,” I can’t definitively say who among Kingstown’s newcomers — Frank, Cortez, Warden Nina Hobbs, and her lackey David Torres — is allied with whom. I’m not even 100 percent sure anymore if Cortez is a loyal Colombian soldier. I am pretty sure that the guard, Cindy Stephens, isn’t part of any larger conspiracy (outside of helping Mike keep tabs on Kyle). But everyone else? No assumptions. Not any more.
All the old conventional wisdom gets tossed out this week, thanks to Frank, who is clearly up to some kind of no good. After Cortez’s guys hijacked and torched Bunny’s gun shipment last week, Frank and Mike gather to survey the damage, noting that the hijackers very purposefully burned the train’s smuggled shipment rather than stealing it, and that their planning for this operation involved accessing the railroad’s Dead Man’s Switch. While nothing is expressly proven in the episode, the hijackers’ knowledge of the train yard suggests Frank must have been an accessory to the crime.
Meanwhile, as Bunny is on his way to the scene of the accident, a mysterious vehicle forces his driver, Lamar (Zuri James), down a side road, into a hail of bullets from masked gunmen. Bunny gets shot and is hospitalized, in critical condition. When Mike questions Lamar later, he realizes the driver was paid by Frank to veer into that ambush.
Before accusing Frank of anything though, Mike has to check on Cortez, who is still eating at the same Kingstown restaurant every morning but otherwise staying off the KPD radar. Cortez (who suddenly speaks English perfectly, irritating Ian to no end) answers Mike’s questions about the train job by noting that a lot of Colombians died during the mission. But if Cortez feels betrayed by someone he trusted, he seems unbothered. He tells Mike that Bunny’s only a pawn, and that the people he works with are after knights, rooks, kings … and “mayors.”
This brings us back to Frank, who seems suspiciously cool about the train-jacking and Bunny’s subsequent hospitalization. He reassures Mike that this disaster won’t hurt him much financially. (“I factor loss before profit. I’ll recoup even if I have to rip it from their hides.”) He seems more concerned when Mike suggests that the police might want to question him, given that he owns the depot. Frank’s whole deal is that he remains distanced from the criminal aspects of his organization. He’s never been arrested.
And so, Mike gets to show another of the Kingstown newcomers just how much pull he has as the “mayor.” Last week he had Nina’s car pulled over and searched. This week — to prove to Nina that he can be of use to her — he has the KPD bring Frank in for questioning. He does warn Frank in advance, so that the mobster can have his lawyer at the ready, and to avoid the kind of “dragged away in handcuffs” scene that could’ve gotten messy. But the arrest does happen.
But when Frank arrives at the station, he finds another Colombian hitman there, armed and angry. He survives the shooting that follows, but that shooting itself raises questions yet again about who’s working with whom in this town. (Also, do the cops just let anyone with a gun come inside and have a seat?) If I had to guess, I’d say Cortez ordered the hit on Frank in retaliation for the men he lost during the hijacking. But like I said … I should probably take a break from the Mayor of Kingstown plot-arc-guessing business.
The big question I have whenever the storytelling on shows like these gets snarled is: Do the writers know where they’re going, or are they just twisting the plot for the heck of it, to kill time before the season finale? And I do think the Mayor of Kingstown folks have control of the narrative here, even if they may be too in love with jerking their audience around.
Besides, the story’s sudden lurches are pretty effective at generating excitement. That’s certainly the case with this week’s most suspenseful sequences, involving Kyle (the “#081693” of the episode’s title) nervously navigating GenPop. While Cindy urgently tries to alert Mike that Kyle’s missing from his cell — and not showing up as having been transferred — Kyle’s staying alert, warily eyeing all the inmates who seem to know him.
The Kyle scenes are nerve-wracking, because it’s not entirely clear what the warden had in mind when she moved him from AdSeg. When he tries to appeal to the guards — telling them he’s a cop and is supposed to be sequestered — they first mock him and then later drag him off to a basement, where some prisoners are waiting to beat and rape him. Throughout his whole ordeal, the only people looking out for Kyle are the Aryans, who protect him in the cafeteria and later chase away his abusers. (Presumably, since Merle has Nina’s general blessing, she either approved the Aryans’ actions or assumed they’d intervene. But again … I shouldn’t guess.)
When Kyle’s finally back in his cell, Merle wanders aloud if Kyle appreciates having someone look out for him — implying that Mike has done a pretty poor job at keeping his brother safe. That’s not entirely fair, for two reasons: 1. Kyle’s abandonment and rescue was apparently intentionally orchestrated; and 2. Mike can’t keep anybody safe.
Still, it’s notable that Mike spends a lot of his time this week focused on Bunny. He takes time out of his day to tell Bunny’s sister personally that her brother’s in the hospital. And when he realizes that Frank wants to have Bunny killed, he heads to the hospital himself to sit by his unconscious friend’s bedside.
I know Mike says he wants the best for everyone in Kingstown, but he always seems to go above and beyond for Bunny, doesn’t he? I wonder sometimes if the reason Mike hates Merle so much is that during his prison days, Merle turned him into a race-warrior, fighting against the guys he grew up with and cares about the most.
• In other Cindy news, her creepy colleague Will Breen (Matthew Del Negro) sits in his car after work and watches her walk through the parking lot, while he attempts — and, perhaps even more disturbingly, fails — to pleasure himself. Ye gods.
• This episode doesn’t have much time for ADA Evelyn Foley, but we do get to see the crushing moment when she realizes that her grand jury witness is AWOL and that her case against Ian has probably been torpedoed. (If she ever finds out that the witness is dead in the river, the case should be back on.)
• Ian has a funny moment where he scratches off lottery tickets and fantasizes about moving to Montana. This got me thinking. Earlier in the episode, we see a fancy KPD helicopter arrive at the scene of the train hijacking, which isn’t unexpected given what we know about how much money and equipment flow to local police departments. But given that Ian is corrupt to boot, do we really think that he’s hard up for cash?
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