Summary
Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 is determined to make things as difficult as possible for Mike McLusky, and “Damned” is no different, putting Kyle in more danger than ever and bringing the factions competing for control on the cusp of all-out war.
Things are not going well for Mike McLusky. To be fair, things are never going well for Mike, but it seems the main objective of Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 is to have things go as badly for him as humanly possible. And bad for him means bad for everyone, since he is, you know, the mayor. It might not be an elected position, but it is one of considerable responsibility. Recent changes to the dynamic of Kingstown, though, including the arrival of a new gangster and a new prison warden, have given him more responsibility than he can conceivably handle, and Episode 5, “Damned”, makes that pretty clear.
It doesn’t help that Mike’s staunchest remaining allies are corrupt idiots. Ian is trying my patience particularly this season. I’ll grant you that he’s facing life in prison thanks to Evelyn’s crusade, which she is clearly uninterested in abandoning despite Ian having dropped a brick through her car windscreen, but his stupidity reaches an even more ridiculous level in “Damned”. Knowing Evelyn has a witness who can place him with Morrissey, he enlists the help of Sawyer, of all people, to spook him into not testifying. Needless to say, Sawyer, whose life has completely unravelled and is being kept in motion solely by alcohol, snaps and kills the guy.
How could Ian not have seen this coming? It’s so silly and unsurprising. I don’t even know what it has to do with Mike’s issues beyond the fact that he’s clearly going to have to clean up their mess despite having too much to deal with as it is. But Ian is becoming as much of a liability as Sawyer is, and it’s Sawyer’s fault that Kyle is currently languishing in Anchor Bay being tormented by Merle Callahan, so I suppose there’s a full-circle quality to it all that makes sense.
Speaking of full circle, there’s a sense of that idea in Merle and Kyle. Of course, Mike was once in Kyle’s position, which he reminds him of when he visits him in prison to warn him of who his new neighbour is. Mike was Merle’s protege out of necessity. Now, Kyle is being groomed by Merle as a way to get at Mike. None of it is an accident, as Mike well knows, but the person I most empathise with here is Tracy, who points out the obvious: That all Mike’s efforts to protect everyone invariably backfire and get people killed. Part of the reason she accepts moving out of state to protect herself and her son is that the correlation between Mike’s help and violent deaths is basically 100%. As soon as Mike promised to take care of the situation, she knew she’d be doomed if she stayed.
Mike is trying, though. It’s just the string-pullers he’s up against now are more ruthless than he expected – more ruthless, even, than he’s used to. The primary one is Nina Hobbs. Of course, it’s her who Mike turns to after learning that Kyle was put in the cell next to Merle, and he’s done playing nice. When she won’t agree to separate them, Mike tells Ian and Stevie to hassle her outside the prison. In the process, they find a serious handgun with no serial number, which isn’t exactly the kind of personal protection weapon a law-abiding woman would carry, but instead of hauling her in for possession of it, Mike tells Ian to wait and let her scurry to him. Understanding how much pull he has should hopefully convince her to play ball.
He’s half right. Hobbs does indeed visit Mike in Mayor of Kingstown Season 4, Episode 5, and pretends to have been shaken enough to be willing to create some distance between Merle and Kyle. But she doesn’t reveal how she plans to do that, which is by having Kyle transferred to general population instead of Merle. This is basically a death sentence, as she well knows, and with Carney out of the picture and Torres (and by extension Hobbs) in open alliance with the Colombian Cartel, his days are numbered.
Kyle’s only hope for survival is allying himself with the Aryan Brotherhood, using his connection to Merle – the exact same scenario that Mike found himself in back in the day. But we know what that cost Mike, and Kyle has even more to lose. Frankly, there’s simply no way that I see this ending well. And it isn’t the only thing.
Bunny’s having a rough season, too. His new partnership with Moses was always going to have roadblocks, but Hobb’s empowerment of the Colombians has made their business almost impossible to run. Even though the goons Moses sent to burn their safehouse down were killed by Cortez, vengeance is still due, and to that end, the Colombians ambush Bunny’s first shipment of product, stop the train transporting it, and set the carriages on fire. It’s a big statement, and one that can’t go unanswered, so while Kyle is at war inside the prison walls, the various factions vying for control outside are now on the cusp of open war.
Still, things seem to be going quite well between Mike and Cindy, if nothing else.
RELATED:
