Want to better understand the structure and culture of prison gangs? Read David Grann’s 2004 New Yorker article “The Brand†(collected in his book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes). Grann digs into the history and pervasiveness of the Aryan Brotherhood, covering the efforts of federal law enforcement to control a violent criminal organization operating inside the U.S. penal system — a place where, perversely, it’s harder to get intel about what they’re up to.
What has allowed the AB to flourish is their utter disregard for any consequences. They’re already in prison (often for life), so the threat of more prison is no deterrent. Guards don’t scare them. Other prisoners don’t scare them. They embrace violence as a first resort.
So in the Mayor of Kingstown season-three finale, “Comeuppance,†it’s pretty obvious what will happen to Warden Kareem Moore when he tries to break up a gathering of Aryans in the yard without any backup. Earlier in the episode, we see Kareem sitting alone in his house with a pistol, and when the scene moved to the outside, I waited for the inevitable sound of a gunshot (like in so many other movies and TV shows, where characters shoot themselves just off-screen). Instead, Kareem waits until he goes into work, where he chooses suicide by white supremacist. He knows these goons won’t listen to him when he tells them to disperse. He’s expecting — rightly — to get shanked.
This is the first big death in “Comeuppance.†It’s not the last.
Though this finale is the longest episode of the season, it moves fleetly. Like the best Mayor of Kingstowns, it has the kind of narrow focus that aids narrative drive. The story is simple: Mike is ready to execute the second part of his “settle all business†plan, which involves steering the Russians into an ambush and then leaving control of Kingstown’s criminal activity to Bunny and the Crips (so long as they promise never to stray outside the borders). Most of the action revolves around the Crips, KPD, and Mike springing that trap.
Just like last week’s bungled scheme to have Raphael murder Merle, complications ensue.
For one thing, although Mike doesn’t know it yet, Milo is back, and he’s executing his own plan of sabotage and power consolidation. (He announces his presence with a little mind game by having a disemboweled Roman hang from a railroad trestle, leaving the KPD to guess who’s responsible.) There’s also this: Evelyn has connected the dots on the dates when Ferguson checked the serial killer Charlie out of prison and has realized that one of them corresponds to the date the SWAT whistleblower Ben Morrissey was murdered.
The Charlie/Morrissey/Evelyn/Ferguson subplot may seem like a minor digression from the major power struggle going on in the Kingstown streets, but it actually has a huge impact on how that battle plays out. As soon as Ferguson comes clean to Mike, Kyle, and Sawyer about what he did and what Evelyn knows, panic sets in. Sawyer knows that Evelyn’s digging could expose a lot of his past malfeasance, and Kyle knows that if he stands against his colleagues, he could be killed, too.
Evelyn’s story also cuts to the core of what Mayor of Kingstown has been about this season — and maybe since season one. Mike has all these lies he tells himself to justify his life: that all kinds of evil are equally bad and that the inevitability of evil means that a practical man who wants to “watch over those who can’t take care of themselves†has no choice but to decide which terrible person is the most trustworthy. But Evelyn, who grew up in Kingstown, is tired of these compromises. Crime is crime, and she’s an ADA. She has the power to do something about a situation that has become untenable.
All of this has to be on Kyle and Sawyer’s minds as they play their part in Mike’s Russian/Bunny/ambush plot, zooming through Kingstown traffic with guns blazing to help wipe out the Russians. The op goes haywire (of course … this is Kingstown, after all), and before long, Kyle finds himself watching in horror as an enraged Sawyer is shooting anyone who doesn’t immediately comply with his commands, whether or not they’re criminals. Kyle shoots Sawyer to stop him — but he doesn’t kill the man, and because the shooting was witnessed by other SWAT team members and multiple cell-phone-wielding civilians, this season ends with Kyle being taken into custody on Evelyn’s orders.
It’s useful to think of Sawyer’s rampage and Ferguson’s extrajudicial assassination of Morrissey in the context of the Aryan Brotherhood’s approach to solving problems. As cops, the KPD has what the Supreme Court has recognized as “qualified immunity,†which means that they have reason to believe that they can kill without repercussions, provided that they can come up with a good enough story for the courts.
But while this may be true to life, the freedom to murder doesn’t always make for great drama. The best crime shows — The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire — typically keep the body count as low as possible for as long as possible, because it’s more exciting to watch people who violently oppose each other try to coexist. It’s always bothered me that Mayor of Kingstown (like Yellowstone) is so quick to send inconvenient characters to an early grave.
That said, I have no problem with the three other big deaths that close out this episode and this season. When Milo finally reemerges, he calls Mike to Konstantin’s yacht for a meeting, where he tells Iris that she can have the freedom Konstantin promised her, so long as she shoots the old Russian dead. This kind of ultimatum is silly, frankly. (If the goal is to end Konstantin’s life, just go ahead and end it. Turning it into a test just wastes time and proves little.) But the result is righteous. Iris kills Konstantin and then tries to kill Milo — who doesn’t give her enough bullets to do so.
Mike then kills Milo when the creep starts talking about returning to his role as the head of the Russian mob and keeping Bunny consigned to his former turf. Mike’s not going back to dealing with a man who would kill a busload of teen girls — and who needles Mike by saying he’s ultimately responsible for Mariam’s death.
Oh, and on her way out of town, Iris ODs on pain pills. That’s the final big death in this finale. We end the season with the KPD in disarray, the Russians depleted and leaderless, the Aryans still strong, and Bunny perhaps feeling inclined to seize this moment to expand his operation (despite Mike’s orders).
What does this all mean? Here’s where “Comeuppance†hits its marks well, in smaller, quieter scenes, where the characters grapple with their goals and ideals. The episode opens and closes with another one of Mike’s “Gunsmoke voice-overs,†where he recalls (while talking to the imprisoned Anna, as it turns out) how Mariam told him to do whatever he needed to do to survive in prison and then never looked at him the same when he came out.
There’s a lot in this episode about the choices these characters have made in their lives and whether they really “chose†at all. Iris — before numbing herself to oblivion — insists she wanted to stay in Kingstown and be a bartering chip between Mike and Konstantin. And Konstantin — before Milo tells him that their Russian mob bosses have no respect for him — considers himself to be a good and loyal soldier. Fools, all of them.
But the most haunting moment in this episode comes before Kareem confronts the Aryans and ends his own life. While reviewing security-cam footage from the day of the grenade attack, he realizes his protégé Kevin helped facilitate the whole operation, and he warns the young man that Bunny is not his friend and that doing him favors won’t end well. “It’s a sin to profit off punishment,†Kareem says. To which Kevin — who may be green but isn’t naïve — replies, “Ain’t that what the whole system’s based on, sir?â€
Solitary Confinement
• The eye-rolling look on Mike’s face when he gets a call from Iris and hears Milo’s voice on the line is something else. In an instant, he realizes he’s never actually been two steps ahead of his rivals, as he had assumed.
• One last question as we wrap up this season: Is Mayor of Kingstown still a Taylor Sheridan show? He didn’t have any writing or directing credits in season three. Granted, this doesn’t mean he was a non-presence. He could’ve been doing writing passes on scripts and giving input in the writers’ room and on the set. Television as a medium is so collaborative that it resists the kind of auteurist reading critics like to bring to art (although some big personalities like Sheridan do assert themselves as the authors of their work). Ultimately, because I wasn’t there when this season was being made, I can’t speak to anyone’s individual contributions. I will note, though, that Dave Erickson is the credited screenwriter of season three’s premiere and finale, which is usually a position reserved for the writer-producer who’s actually running things. I’ll also say that Mayor of Kingstown strikes me as a punchier, pulpier, less soapy show than Yellowstone. Make of that what you will.