Mayans MC Recap: You Can’t Sell Rotten Meat

This recap of Mayans MC Season 2, Episode 3, “Camazotz”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.

Following on from last week’s cliffhanger ending, in which one of the Mayans was shot dead while interrupting a deeply disgusting blowjob an addict was performing on a nutcase cop, said addict, Hope (Vanessa Giselle), has taken sanctuary at the MC — with the video evidence of their compadre’s execution. Of course, this has to be responded to, for appearance’s sake if nothing else, and the best way of luring their targets into the open is by using the escapee videographer as bait.

This is a plan that virtually nobody is comfortable with, least of all Bishop (Michael Irby), who had a personal connection to the deceased, and EZ (JD Pardo), who’s yet to cross this particular moral line. Philosophical advice is on-hand from Coco (Richard Cabral), but anything he says is little comfort considering, you know, he’s Coco. In a bizarrely touching scene at the dilapidated meeting spot, the Mayans all introduce themselves to their tripping bait, almost as if they haven’t just injected her with drugs and put her in mortal danger.

Only one of the offending cops is lured to the meeting; from his phone and his terrified testimony, the Mayans are able to work out the location of his partner — his mother’s house in Lodi, where he’s reclining, drinking beer, and watching a Trump rally, presumably in some attempt to fill out his Generic White Trash bingo card. The plan to sneak into the house and deal with him quietly hits a roadblock when the Mayans burst through the back door and discover his psychotic mother is home. When she tries to strangle Hope for breaking her best bowl, she’s shot dead by Coco, whose affinity for killing matriarchs obviously isn’t reserved for his own family.

The Mayans get what they want in “Camazotz”. One half of the corrupt partnership is left alive, to ensure no blowback wafts in the direction of the MC; the other half is hung upside down from a tree and riddled with bullets. Back at the clubhouse, melancholy guitar music memorializes the Mayans’ fallen comrade, as EZ’s eidetic memory makes a second season appearance, as does Happy Lowman (David Labrava), in attendance to pay respects on behalf of the Sons of Anarchy.

Galindo’s (Danny Pino) morning is ruined twice in “Camazotz”, first by Emily (Sarah Bolger) taking a much too hands-on approach to business affairs, offering bribes in the guise of friendly favors, and Lincoln Potter (Ray McKinnon) arriving unannounced to whisk him away to an undisclosed location — to be, as explained to Alvarez (Emilio Rivera), “nustled in the bosom of Uncle Sam”. Alvarez, meanwhile, is tasked with checking on “the Queen” and following up on Dita’s (Ada Maris) “new friend”, whom we know to be Felipe (Edward James Olmos).

Galindo, despite being a local crime lord, has an obvious distaste for Potter and his government stooges, which is easy to buy into since Potter is so wonderfully detestable. And he’s easier to dislike when he deposits Galindo in the middle of a candlelit farmer’s uprising, where a squeaky-clean political figure who might establish an unhelpful democracy in the absence of Los Olvidados needs to be “bloodied”, so to speak, by tying her to the Cartel. The problem for Galindo is that he knows Potter’s suspicions are correct; LO is intimately tied to the riots.

Emily doesn’t quite cross over to the dark side in “Camazotz”, since her attempt at bribery results in her tearfully forcing money into her friend’s hand with no strings attached, thus proving she isn’t as cut out for the strong-arming lifestyle as she’d like to think. Luckily her friend wants more money and knows it can’t all be given as charity, so a deal is struck regardless. Emily, informing her husband, plays it off as though the plan went swimmingly, so she’s certainly enterprising enough to cover her own ineptitude.

While checking on Adelita (Carla Baratta), Alvarez gives a touching speech to Mini (Melany Ochoa), who is traumatized from having inadvertently witnessed a grungy white man eating out a woman during the night. (Her facial scars are a bit annoying for her, too.) He also visits Felipe and enjoys a pointed exchange about warm meat and the general inadvisability of cavorting with Dita; later, Felipe riffles through old romantic correspondence between him and her while profusely apologizing to his wife’s ashes, suggesting that further cavorting is virtually an inevitability at this point.

Mayans MC Season 2, Episode 3 closes with EZ and Angel (Clayton Cardenas) ambushing Happy at his home, in another teasing cliffhanger.