This recap contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Directly after the shootout at the pizza place in the previous episode, everyone is freaking out about the fallout in Mayor of Kingstown Season 1, Episode 5, "Orion." Kyle McLusky and Ian Ferguson are being grilled about their involvement, with higher-ups worried about the legality of the shooting. Mike McLusky implicitly trusts his brother and so immediately steps in to try to get everyone to view this as a drug bust. Though some investigators are hesitant as no drugs have been found, everyone seems to bow to Mike's idea.
At the prison, the guards are having a congenial break when they notice a coworker sitting separately and eating Vienna sausages from the vending machine. The group tease the man until he leaves, suggesting that the guards are not only fighting against the inmates but also among themselves. The guards then discuss what they served a particular inmate named P-Dog for dinner, which is revealed to be human poop.
Mike Faces More Difficult Meetings
Mike takes a meeting with a guy named Duchard, whose little brother has been imprisoned just for being present at a drug bust. He claims his brother isn't involved in that life and wants Mike to help get him free from the ramifications of the arrest. Mike later meets with a representative from the District Attorney's Office. His daughter was murdered and an inmate named Parker confessed to brutally killing her, he's retracted his confession and her case was never prosecuted because they never recovered her body. Parker is set to be executed for something else, but the attorney doesn't want Parker to escape suffering. He hires Mike to try to get another confession, which would allow them to take Parker to trial and put a stay on his execution.
Iris arrives at the Kingstown strip club where she's supposed to work while in town. Though a sex worker, she's not accustomed to dancing. According to Milo Sunter, sex workers walk the street in Kingstown, presumably as opposed to the posh New York life Iris had previously been living. The men make her undress to decide if she'll work out for the club in an incredibly dehumanizing moment for one of the few female characters in Mayor of Kingstown. When encouraged to wear a G-string instead of dancing nude in order to leave a little mystery, Iris says the only mysterious thing about the human body is the eyes.
Mike and his frenemy Bunny Washington meet to discuss the growing number of problems. Bunny complains that the guards are overstepping by feeding his crew feces, which Mike brushes off. He claims that he warned everyone about the fallout from working together to beat the child murderer to death, but also suggests that if they're complaining to Bunny then they aren't complaining about Bunny. Mike then asks Bunny to let go of Duchard's little brother, who it turns out is a straight-A student and did turn his life around after involving himself in the gang. Bunny initially says that this life isn't something you can quit like Boy Scouts, but then agrees to let the little brother go and hang on to Duchard himself.
Mike also asks Bunny to ask around inside the prison and see what he can dig up on Parker so that Mike can use it to leverage a confession about his involvement in murdering the attorney's daughter. Bunny asks for a favor in return -- he wants Mike to take his nephew Hakim to his hockey game, because Bunny himself can't leave. On their way, Hakim talks about how he wants to escape Kingstown and play for the Detroit Red Wings. Mike tells him that Detroit's just down the street and he should dream of someplace further away, like Tampa.
Mike Gets On the Ice and the Police Department Keeps Secrets
While Mike is enjoying the hockey game, the police department grab Carlos Jimenez off the street. Kyle and Ian seem on the outs with the rest of the department, who worry that their involvement will turn this operation into a shooting too. Back at the hockey game, Hakim gets into a traditional hockey fight with another player and the kid's parent gets involved, saying Hakim should have stayed on his side of town and grabbing his face over the ice rink wall. Mike dives in, punching the dad and putting his cigarette out on the other man's face. The game turns into a free-for-all between players and parents -- but this seems to galvanize Mike, who promises to take Hakim to every game with a gang of supporters so that no one will touch him. It's an oddly paternal moment from Mike, which seems mostly motivated by giving at least someone a chance to escape Kingstown.
Afterward, Mike and Assistant D.A. Evelyn Foley have dinner together. The dinner is incongruous -- she claims that Mike is the last person she'd want a relationship with, which is the most attractive thing about him, and that they shouldn't pretend to be more to each other than what they are. Mike pays for the meal and storms off, suggesting maybe he was in it for a real relationship.
In a particularly jarring juxtaposition, Jimenez's prison intake is spliced between scenes of his pit bulls being neutered. The metaphor is clear, but it doesn't land particularly well given how little fight it took to bring Jimenez in and the lack of reminder in this episode of why he's dangerous. The surgical scenes and the disembodied sexual organs of a pit bull are jarring in a way that's not violent -- as is typical for Mayor of Kingstown -- but just unexpected.
At the end of the episode, Mike and Bunny sit down to drink 40s together, with Mike complaining about the parents at the hockey game and Bunny impressed by how Mike responded. Bunny tells Mike that everyone else in his family is dead before he laments what it means to be a Black man in present-day America and what freedom is truly available to him. As the end credits music swells, the two discuss the constellations they can see, with Mike describing how humans have looked up at these same constellations for thousands of years.
Mayor of Kingstown Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Paramount+.