Mayor of Kingstown Recap: Talk, Talk, Talk

Over the past few weeks of Mayor of Kingstown, I’ve noticed a growing awareness among the show’s supporting characters that Mike McLusky — the protagonist they’ve built their whole fictional lives around — may be the cause of all their problems, not the solution. We see this multiple times in this week’s episode, most notably when prison guard Kevin Jackson tips Mike off that his boss, Torres, has another drug shipment coming in on a gas tanker truck. Mike tells Kevin not to worry about anyone finding out he’s been spilling insider info, saying, “If any of this lands on their radar, I’ll handle it.” Kevin, a savvy young man, replies, “I hear the words you’re saying. They’re just words.”

Words are all Mike ever has to offer. Sometimes this keeps him out of trouble. Earlier, when ADA Evelyn Foley blames him for the missing witness in her grand jury case, Mike has an easy dodge. “There are things I do not do.” Or to put it another way: He doesn’t do much at all. What can Evelyn charge him with? Grunting suggestions at cops and criminals?

As bracing as it is, though, to hear so many Kingstonians speak the truth aloud about Mike, it doesn’t do much to help this particular episode, the season’s weakest. As often happens with prestige-y crime dramas as they near the end of an arc, this week’s Mayor of Kingstown, “My Way,” is overstuffed with characters and plot. Yet it’s also hesitant to move anything towards a resolution, since there are still three episodes left to fill. It’s not a bad episode; it’s just not particularly satisfying. It mostly feels like a 50-minute reminder of the story so far.

The only significant burst of action involves the drug delivery. Acting under Mike’s orders (or “grunted suggestion”), Frank Moses has his men stop the shipment, shoot the driver, steal the drugs, and burn the truck. What Frank doesn’t realize, though, is that this is all part of a larger plan to tie him directly to his gang’s crimes. Mike intends to steer Evelyn toward the drug-trafficking “whale” she needs, now that her case against KPD Lt. Ian Ferguson has collapsed. In return, Mike expects Evelyn to free Kyle.

I have a couple of issues with these plot developments. For one thing, I hate it when a show introduces a new character as smart, charismatic, and powerful as Frank Moses — the insulated, untouchable kingpin — and then immediately has him make a bunch of dumb mistakes that could be his downfall. I simply don’t believe that the Frank we met at the start of this season would get suckered by Mike McLusky, of all people.

I also must renew my complaint from last week’s review that, in the name of keeping the audience guessing, the Mayor of Kingstown writers have made it less clear what the Frank Moses organization and the Colombian cartel are actually up to. With the attempted hit on Bunny last week, it seemed possible — not likely, but possible — that Frank could be in cahoots with the Colombians. This week, though, seen on his own, away from Mike, it’s more obvious that Frank legitimately wants revenge on his rivals for his torched train.

Similarly, the presence of dead Colombians at the site of the railroad hijacking suggested that Cortez’s cartel bosses might be hanging him and his soldiers out to dry. But after Frank waylays the Colombians’ shipment to the prison, Cortez is the fixer who gets called in immediately. He breaks into Warden Nina Hobbs’s very nice home — bypassing its many state-of-the-art security features somehow — ties her up, and demands she find out who knew about Torres’s truck schedule. (Do I think Mike can keep Nina from fingering Kevin, and thus save Kevin from Cortez? I most certainly do not.)

The Nina subplot in this episode is another case of “too much, yet not enough.” Like Frank, she was introduced early in the season as an accomplished, steely professional who gets things done. Now, with just a few episodes left in a season that could possibly be this show’s last, we get some important new information about who Nina is. We learn that one of the reasons she’s in league with the Colombians is that they’ve been threatening her grown daughter. (Cortez, while pushing Nina around, shows her the pictures they’ve recently taken of her kid.) Apparently, a lot of her bull-headed moves — like sending a would-be assassin to take out Frank at the police station — have been driven by her needing to prove her worth. She’s not actually as big a boss as we’ve been led to believe.

There’s still more crammed into this episode. Robert proposes to Ian that if they just killed Mike, their lives could be so much simpler. Instead, Ian gets Robert pass-out drunk and then makes it look like Robert has poisoned himself with car exhaust fumes in his garage. (As silly as I find Mike, I can’t say I blame Ian for making this choice. Mike’s ineffective, sure, but he’s not a psychopathic drunk with a hair-trigger temper.)

Also, Merle escapes from the prison after being reassigned from AdSeg to GenPop. Now — as he snarls to Kyle before the transfer — he can menace the McLusky family on the outside. He gets off a good line before he leaves, telling Kyle he doesn’t see the ex-cop breathing “free air” again, because, “Shit’s not trending the McLuskys’ way.” For his part, Kyle argues the McLusky family will be well-remembered in Kingstown’s history, while Merle will never be anything but a “footnote.”

Still, it’s worth noting that when Cindy comes by Kyle’s cell later to let him know about Mike’s plan to get him freed, he warns the guard, “Stay clear of my brother.” He adds, “Mike’s ‘trying’ gets people killed.” And that’s coming from his own kin! Man, Mike’s rep is getting more tarnished by the day.

Solitary Confinement

• I did poke around a little online to see if there are any rumblings about a season five for this series, given that it looks like a lot is going to remain unresolved after the next three episodes. All I could find was one quote from Jeremy Renner at a pop culture fan convention, in which he said the Mayor of Kingstown team had “a cool end” in mind, which would require a fifth season. No renewal news yet, though.

• Even though this episode’s fairly muddled, it still has the baseline virtues that make Mayor of Kingstown one of the most watchable, least exasperating of the Taylor Sheridan-produced shows. The deadpan tough-guy dialogue is one of those strengths — as in the moment when Ian glances over at a surly Mike and says, “What’s that look for?” The perpetually dour Mike’s snappy reply: “It’s my fucking face.”

• Another good scene: Frank Moses sitting around with his right-hand man, LJ (Verlon Brown), reminiscing about how the seizure of Black neighborhoods in Detroit (via “words on a piece of paper” and “men with plans”) drove them to their current lives as criminal masterminds. This series could use more moments like this, acknowledging the reality of its setting, rather than moments that play the usual notes of pulpy sensationalism.

• On the flip side — and as a further example of how this episode juggles too much — I don’t know that we needed any of the scenes featuring Officer Breen, the lecherous prison guard. We’re clearly building up to some kind of horrible incident between him and Cindy. I’m not looking forward to it.