Mayor of Kingstown Recap: Wars Going Down in the Middle West

Leaving Kingstown seems like a pretty good idea.

Was I wrong about the mayor? Last week, I wrote that Mike McLusky never seems to have any well-thought-out plans to address either Kingstown’s violent-crime problem or its near-daily crises — at least not beyond telling all his contacts to sit tight while he slaps together a quick fix. But in this week’s episode, Mike comes across as … competent? In control? Maybe even a few steps ahead of his enemies? Am I watching the right show?

The colorfully titled “Captain of the Shit Out of Luck” begins with another one of those “good lord, what now?” emergencies that define life in Kingstown. A helmeted person on a motorbike tosses grenades over a prison wall, injuring several Aryans on a work detail. Then, a sniper across from the facility shoots at the guards to keep them from taking down the biker. (This is probably not the best week for a TV series to air an episode featuring a sniper. But then, few weeks are these days.)

Three inmates and one CO are killed. One of the Aryans gets his face blown off. (It’s disgusting!) Merle Callahan is hospitalized … and enraged.

The attack raises two questions: (1) Who’s responsible? (2) Can Mike turn this situation to his advantage? Ordinarily, the answer to the second question would be, “He could, but he won’t.” But this week? Something seems to be cooking in Mike’s noggin.

First, Mike pays a visit to Merle, reassuring the racist creep that he’s on his side by saying, “I wanted to be the first face you saw.” Merle then immediately reminds us what a horrible person he is by complaining that the first face he saw was some “immigrant” cop … who is actually a native-born Kingstowner with brown skin. Merle tries to blame Mike for what happened, saying he failed in his promise to “hit Bunny Washington.” Now he wants more than just increased police pressure on the Crips. Merle wants everyone dead.

On the surface, it appears that Mike’s response to this is just another variation on his usual “stay cool and trust me.” He does, indeed, tell Merle that he’s going to “take care of” Bunny. But … Mike also suggests to Merle that the Aryans’ real trouble could be with the Russians, who are more likely than the Crips to have access to military-grade weapons like grenades and high-powered rifles. Of course, Mike secretly knows that Bunny does have that kind of firepower. (Also, we saw that the sniper was Black.) But it’s easy to convince a bigot like Merle that the white guys are better organized and better armed.

Then Mike catches a break. Because the prison attack disrupted the Aryans’ drug-dealing operation, a couple of Merle’s agents on the outside pay an unscheduled visit to Konstantin to get resupplied. Unfortunately, they arrive right when Konstantin is stewing over the deaths of the Eastern European immigrant teens in last week’s episode, wondering who could be responsible. Since the Crips don’t traffic women, they don’t seem like likely candidates. But how about these rude Aryans, who have hopped onto his yacht demanding dope?

So Konstantin unceremoniously murders one of the visitors, letting the other one live to send a message back to Merle, who is so sick and in pain in his hospital bed that he can’t think straight. “Time to set that motherfucker’s river on fire,” he snarls at a henchman.

Did Mike actually plan all this? Or did he just get lucky? There’s some evidence that he actually engineered the feud between the Russians and the Aryans, perhaps to protect Bunny (even if Bunny doesn’t know it). He gives Ferguson and the KPD a tip about the Crips’ weapons cache but asks for a heads-up before they strike, which ultimately results in a SWAT raid on what turns out to be an empty warehouse. Ferguson is miffed that the Crips outmaneuvered the cops, but Mike insists that all that matters is the gang gets the message that the police could hurt them.

And then Mike smiles mysteriously and — to Ferguson — infuriatingly. Roll credits.

As with the past few Mayor of Kingstown episodes, this one is disappointingly low on action. After an explosive opening, we immediately downshift to more scenes of talking and scheming. But at least the scheming seems more purposeful and fruitful this time.

Also, as the gang wars heat up, an intriguing new idea keeps emerging: Could any of these people just … leave Kingstown?

This is an offer put directly before Iris, as Konstantin looks to assuage some of his guilt over how she’s been treated by the Russians over the years. He means to set her up with a new identity and a fully funded new life elsewhere. She resists, though, telling Mike — who encourages her to take the deal — that “there’s always strings” and “this isn’t done.” Bunny has more luck in telling Raphael’s son that he and his mom need to move someplace safer … although even those two seem oddly reluctant to go.

Why won’t the Kingstowners flee? In one of this episode’s two funniest throwaway lines (I’ll list the other one below), Ferguson takes a call from Mike while he’s in the middle of scratching off a gas-station lottery ticket, and he says, “About to be a mega fuckin’ millionaire here.” Naturally, Ferguson doesn’t win a million dollars. But what if he had? How big of a windfall would it take for any of these folks to take the money and run? Or do they all know in their bones that for crooks like them, this just isn’t done?

Solitary Confinement

• In last week’s review, I speculated that Konstantin’s chief lackey Roman (Mark Ivanir) could be involved with the destruction of the Russians’ human-trafficking bus. I still have my eye on Roman, given how eager he is this week to hustle the Aryans away from his boss so that he can conduct business with them himself, in private. Something’s going on there.

• Warden Kareem Moore misses the trouble at Kingstown Prison because he’s having coffee with his wife so they can talk about the expensive psychotherapy their daughter is going to need. In Kareem’s absence, he relies a lot on his seemingly loyal guard Kevin, who is secretly working for Bunny. But it’s starting to look like Kevin may be second-guessing this arrangement, especially after Bunny roped him into helping with the prison attack. Kevin may be thinking about becoming an actual conscientious prison employee.

• Another example of Mike being on his game this week: When Tracy comes to him to tell him about William Breen (Matthew Del Negro), who, in the previous episode, got physical with her and warned her to drop her investigation into prisoners getting raped by guards, Mike confronts Breen outside of a bar and beats the crap out of him until he agrees to transfer out of the women’s prison. Perhaps there are still consequences for crossing the McLuskys!

• Kyle finally confronts Sawyer about how out of control his boss has been lately, after Sawyer gets enraged by the fruitless raid on Bunny’s armory. Kyle has been maturing into someone who aspires to be brave, honest, and responsible — as evidenced by a sweet scene where he helps the owner of the McLuskys’ favorite diner close up early so she can visit her mother.

• The other funniest line of dialogue this week also comes courtesy of Ferguson, who gets annoyed when Mike calls him away from the Kingstown Prison crime scene. “Mikey, I’m doing fuckin’ police work up here,” he grumbles. One of the subtle themes this season — seen with Ferguson, Kevin, Tracy, and even Kyle — is the growing number of people in Kingstown who would just like to do their damn jobs without having to answer to one of the city’s many criminal representatives.