SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Mayor of Kingstown Season 4, Episode 6.

After Mayor of Kingstown put viewers on notice, the Paramount+ show follows that up with another heavy gut punch. Season 4, Episode 6 is called “#081693,” which is Kyle McLusky’s inmate number. And it is a very unpleasant watch, even by this series’ standards.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad episode—far from it. But it’s a bitter pill to swallow from the beginning, in which Bunny Washington is wounded in a shootout with the Colombians while traveling to the site of the train wreck from Episode 5. Based on Mayor of Kingstown‘s willingness to kill Doug Carney out of the blue, there is genuine reason to fear for Bunny’s life (luckily, unlike Carney, Bunny’s fate is not immediately apparent). But that scene and the reaction it provokes set the tone for everything that follows. It’s hard to walk away from this episode and feel anything other than sadness.

There are several startling action beats across the hour. Aside from Bunny’s shooting, Kyle comes very close to being beaten to a pulp by some Colombians on the inside until he’s rescued by some of Merle Callahan’s crew. This will not be a shock; audiences knew as soon as Kyle ended up in general population that violence would follow. But it’s still a terribly uncomfortable sequence to watch. There’s also a shooter lying in wait for Frank Moses inside the Kingstown Police Department. Ian takes care of that problem, but audiences likely aren’t even thinking about that as a possibility. They’re thinking about Kyle, whose spirit appears to be permanently broken. Mike has warned him not to trust Callahan with good reason, but from a viewer’s standpoint, it’s hard not to think that without Callahan, the show would be down another McLusky.

The action does its job in keeping the chaos level high. But Mayor of Kingstown lives on the moments in between the gunfire, and Season 4, Episode 6 is no exception to that cardinal rule. The gist of this storyline is that the real conflict is spelled out: it’s the Colombians vs. Frank Moses, with Kingstown as their chosen battleground. Mike, Bunny and even Nina Hobbs are just pawns in their bigger game, with Bunny literally being referred to as such. Frank isn’t Bunny’s shiny new ally; he sees Bunny as a means to an end. Savvy viewers have likely been suspicious of Frank all along, but why that twist works is they know what that will mean to Bunny when he gets out of the hospital. It’s going to hurt him emotionally, because he saw Frank as his ticket to something bigger, and even more importantly, he thought Frank saw potential in him.

And in a warped way, what this episode re-establishes is Mayor of Kingstown‘s idea of community. Upon learning of Bunny’s shooting, Mike goes to inform his sister in person. (The biggest misstep in the whole episode is not showing that conversation.) And it’s very important that the last scene of the episode is Mike finally being seen at Bunny’s bedside, both comforting his sister and being there for his friend. To bring the episode back down to that quiet beat after all the violence and drama is critical. It’s coming back to what the series actually wants to be about. These two people, though seeming to be opposites, have become family. Those within Kingstown are there for each other in the face of these incoming would-be tyrants.

Other plot threads are woven in between to keep story points alive. Evelyn Foley is back at work and realizing what happened to her star witness (though not who happened). Deputy Warden Torres has rumbled that Kevin Jackson is working for somebody else. And Season 4 found a way to make Will Breen even more disturbing, as he’s now set his sights on Cindy Stephens. The less said about Breen, and the quicker he’s off this show, the better.

But all of these things are secondary to the realization that our protagonists have never been in charge of this new game. For everything they’ve done and been able to figure out before, they’re collateral damage between Frank and Nina’s sides. That is an interesting new spin. Mayor of Kingstown has always been Mike versus the outside world; it’s never really been the outside world just happening to Kingstown. Season 4, Episode 6 makes everyone feel a whole lot smaller.

Mayor of Kingstown streams Sundays on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Paramount+.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.