"Mayor of Kingstown" Season 4 continues to explore the depths of despair for its characters, painting a picture of a tinderbox waiting to explode. The sense of impending doom reaches a new crescendo in Episode 6, a chilling hour that plunges the McLusky brothers and many others into a vortex of violence and betrayal. The looming war between the Crips and the Colombian cartel threatens to spill over at any moment, while the Aryan Brotherhood lurks on the fringes with their own sinister agenda. Career criminal Frank Moses proves to be less reasonable than Bunny initially believed, and in the midst of it all, Mike and Kyle find themselves at odds for different reasons.
The episode "#081693," a title steeped in Les Miserables-esque coded references (Kyle's prisoner number at Anchor Bay), opens with Bunny and his driver Lamar being ambushed on their way to meet with Mike and Moses at a vantage point overlooking the sabotaged train from the previous episode. The prime suspect is a Colombian hit squad, and Bunny takes a few bullets in the crossfire, leaving him comatose for the remainder of the episode. Meanwhile, Kyle finds himself in general population, desperately trying to keep his identity as a cop a secret.
Mike struggles to find out about Kyle's whereabouts, with Carney dead, Raph in isolation, and Bunny in the hospital. Kevin isn't much help either, as Torres confiscates his burner phone. It's only when Cindy comes on shift and discovers that Kyle's Ad-Seg cell is empty that the alarm is raised. At the same time, Kyle is allowed to make a call from the yard, forcing Mike to suffer the double whammy of learning that his brother is missing and that it's because he's floating around in gen-pop.
Mike advises Kyle to seek protection from Raph and the Crips and stay away from the Aryan Brotherhood, who will undoubtedly try to recruit him. But he assumes that when the guards come to take him away, it's just an administrative error being cleared up. He doesn't know that Cindy told Torres he was missing before she called Mike, not realizing that Torres is as corrupt as Hobbs. The guards hand Kyle over to the Colombians for a horrific assault, only to be saved by a few Aryans who assure him that Merle Callahan has his back.
By this point, Mike has stormed into the prison, booted Torres in the balls, and demanded to see Hobbs, who is now more open about her agenda now that Mike has uncovered her collusion with the Colombians. She wants Frank Moses arrested, but only if Kyle ends up back in Ad Seg and Mike gets to see him. His first wish is granted, but Kyle refuses the visit. Hobbs also reneges on her promise to stick Callahan back in general population. When Kyle gets back to his cell, his neighbor is still in situ, reminding him pointedly that he now owes him a favor.
It wasn't until the sixth episode that the cat was finally let out of the bag in Mayor of Kingstown Season 4, revealing that Moses is not the man he claims to be. Mike, with cunning plans afoot, tries to lure Moses into a voluntary cooperation with the Kingstown Police Department (KPD), who were about to make an arrest that evening under the guise of routine inquiries about the burning train that had passed through his depot. Mike's scheme involved Ian and Stevie holding Moses long enough for him to pretend to Hobbs that he had been arrested. And while Moses seemed happy to go along with it, unaware he was being played, complications arose when a Colombian assassin tried to take him down at the station.
The situation became further entwined when Mike, while visiting Bunny's driver, Lamar, realized that Moses was behind the attempted assassination on Bunny. And it was supposed to be successful, indicating that there would likely be another attempt on his life while he was hospitalized. The episode ended with Mike sitting by Bunny's bedside, ignoring Ian's call (which we knew was to inform him of the Colombian's move on Moses). It's a world where everyone is trying to take each other down, and the fact that anyone has survived this long is nothing short of a miracle. But I don't think this miracle will last much longer.
