Mayor of Kingstown Recap: The Devil You Think You Know

Mayor of Kingstown is a show with lots of twists but not many surprises. Sure, the plot regularly jerks violently, and characters’ fortunes often suddenly change. But very little that happens is unpredictable if you’re familiar with crime genre conventions. So I have to admit that when something actually unexpected happened in this week’s episode, I did a double-take. In “Sins of Omission,” Ian realizes — if only for a moment — that Mike may not be telling him everything he needs to know. And he is pissed.

The opposite has been true for a while now, with Ian cheerily lying to Mike. Ian plays the part of the can-do, “I got your back” buddy-buddy, while he’s been secretly working dirty deals and knocking off anyone in his way. He’s at it again this week, dropping a brick off an overpass and causing that nosy ADA Evelyn Foley to crash her car. The Evelyn incident doesn’t seem to rattle Mike’s trust in Ian. But Ian does seem genuinely upset with Mike when he finds out about Bunny’s new business partner.

In the aftermath of the bloodbath that ended last week’s episode — where a couple of Frank Moses’s “hitters” raided the Colombians’ massive drug-cooking fortress — Mike admits that he asked Ian to pull KPD’s surveillance off of Cortez so that Frank’s team could take care of business. This, to Ian, is a major blunder on Mike’s part. Everyone knows the Detroit crew is bad news. Heck, Mike knows the Detroiters are trouble. How could he give the Moses mob a foothold in Kingstown and not bother to warn local law enforcement?

“Sins of Omission” is one of the more action-packed episodes of the season so far, with several storylines heating up at once. In addition to Ian almost killing Evelyn (more on that later), Bunny finally has Raphael take revenge on the Colombians for Cortez’s attempted assassination in the season premiere. A Crip ambush on Colombian prison boss Roberto Cruz (William Guirola) leaves several of Cruz’s men in the infirmary, and Bunny feeling like a message has been sent.

Mike, though, is getting a different message. He can’t help but notice that Warden Nina Hobbs has responded to the attack in the yard by punishing only the Crips. It confirms what he has suspected: that Nina and her lackey Torres are in league with the Colombians. He gets further confirmation from his inside man, Kevin, who calls to tell him that Torres is running some kind of smuggling operation via the prison’s fuel trucks.

And speaking of Mike’s prison informants: Cindy Stephens finally gets involved in this season’s plot! The episode begins with Cindy in bed with Mike and ends with her calling him with the intel he wanted on AdSeg’s current population. Thanks to Cindy, Mike now knows that his brother Kyle has been incarcerated all along in a cell next to Merle Callahan’s. Although Mike doesn’t know that Merle has been filling Kyle’s head with a lot of ideas about steely stoicism and the importance of “alliances” — or that Hobbs is encouraging Merle to keep wearing Kyle down — he assumes the worst.

So, to sum up what Mike does and doesn’t know, and does and doesn’t control: He’s ignorant about Ian’s attack on Evelyn, he’s losing Ian’s confidence over the Frank Moses situation, he’s losing Kyle to Merle, and he can’t convince Bunny to take the Colombian threat seriously.

Again, it’s not surprising that Mike is drowning right now. He gets in over his head every season. But the Mayor of Kingstown writers deserve some credit for burying Mike in the usual Kingstown bullshit so early in season four. The intensity has been impressively upped.

For all this mounting tension, the episode’s two standout scenes are a couple of disconcerting conversations Mike has with some of his most trusted associates. Let’s begin with Bunny, who’s had his head turned by all Frank’s talk about parking his money in legitimate businesses and insulating himself from the dangers of his old life. He won’t listen to Mike’s warning that Frank could have bad intentions, given that Detroit is now sending in an army to prepare for war with the Colombian cartel. Bunny’s unconcerned, and convinced he can take what he needs from Detroit, then “skedaddle.” (“I’m-a riverdance out that bitch.”)

What really worries Mike is that Bunny may be looking so far ahead that he can’t see what’s right in front of him. Bunny’s talking about turning over his business to Raphael in 10 years, while there’s a strong likelihood that Raph could be killed any day now by the Colombians, with Hobbs’s blessing. It’s no wonder that Mike openly scoffs when Bunny tries to coax him into getting his own big payday and getting out of Kingstown. Nobody escapes Kingstown. They’re lucky if they can just survive in this city.

The other conversation is between Mike and Robert, who angrily (and correctly) insists that he had nothing to do with Evelyn’s crash. Moreover, Robert has lost all patience with Mike criticizing and judging him. “From day one, I risked my life for your fucking family,” he says, adding that after all the years he’s spent following orders, he’s realized (again: correctly) that nothing Mike plans ever turns out right. “You sure as shit ain’t the fucking mayor,” Robert says. Alliances are breaking down everywhere.

Which brings us back to Ian, who publicly still supports Mike but may be privately stewing. He has a good one-on-one scene too, with his partner Stevie (Derek Webster), who suspects that Ian may have dropped the brick on Evelyn during the time away from work when he said he had to take care of his diabetic cat. (The motor-mouthed Ian had never mentioned a diabetic cat before, and he’s not the kind of guy who would keep that to himself.) Ian quickly reveals the truth about his Evelyn plot to Stevie, saying he’s facing life in prison and has to do whatever he has to do to stay free.

This is something else Mike probably hasn’t counted on: that his cop friends might turn on him to protect themselves. After all, Ian’s no idealist. When Stevie sighs, “When is this bullshit gonna be over?” Ian mutters, “When we’re fuckin’ dead.”

Solitary Confinement

• You may have seen the news last week that Jeremy Renner was accused of some pretty awful behavior by Yi Zhou, a former romantic and professional partner (though the extent of their time together in either capacity remains unconfirmed). Renner’s team has denied the allegations, but it seems wrong not to note them here, given that he’s the star of this show. These kinds of stories can have an effect on how people view actors and their roles, so it would be totally understandable if anyone who watches Mayor of Kingstown finds Renner’s performance as Mike tougher to take right now.

• The prison fight sequence is well-staged, with some nice overhead shots that become unusually ominous after the guards order the prisoners to drop to the ground, making the cons look like corpses strewn across a battlefield.

• Something to note for the future: Kyle’s wife, Tracy, sees signs of a break-in at her house, prompting Mike to ask for police protection. (“I got you, abundance of caution,” a distracted Ian says when Mike calls in the request … right before Ian drops his brick.)

• Even though Evelyn is only hospitalized and not killed by Ian, Mike still wants to keep her from continuing her crusade against dirty cops. “Dead doesn’t do any good, Evelyn,” he says. But is “scared into passivity” any better?

• Mike, annoyed that Ian’s calling him while he’s in bed with Cindy: “Somebody better be dying or dead.” Ian, describing the usual state of things in Kingstown: “Mikey, everybody’s fucking dead here.”