In Its Season Finale, the Point of 'Mayor of Kingstown' Finally Avails Itself

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 6, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 6, 2024 |

Spoilers

After the first few episodes of this season of Mayor of Kingstown, I found myself wondering: What’s the point of the series? It wasn’t that I didn’t find it entertaining — I did, and still do — but it was challenging to discern its direction or message.

Now that the season has concluded, I’m quietly impressed by how the finale inverted my initial question. Kingstown, a prison city, may not actually have a point — and therein lies its purpose. It’s a government-sanctioned dystopia, pitting lawless criminals against equally corrupt law enforcement, both inside and outside the prison walls. It’s essentially the Wild West transplanted to modern-day Michigan.

In this world, moral absolutes don’t exist, and it falls to Mike (Jeremy Renner), the unofficial mayor, not to prevent crime but to maintain a precarious balance. It’s reminiscent of Hamsterdam in The Wire: Mike’s goal isn’t to eradicate the drug trade or stop murders but to control them, preserving an equilibrium that keeps the prison industrial complex churning. There’s no higher purpose because everyone, regardless of their allegiance, is a cog in this relentless machine. Crime pays, but rarely for those who commit it.

The pervasive corruption and chaos are perhaps the most realistic aspects of Mayor of Kingstown, perfectly suiting the style of a Taylor Sheridan show. He’s always prioritized atmosphere and profundity over intricate plotting. Rather than crafting a traditional narrative, Sheridan maneuvers his pieces across a chessboard: cops, guards, Russians, Aryans, Crips, and Mike at the center. Mike’s primary objective is to contain the action within this board, preventing it from spilling into the unsuspecting outside world — a world oblivious to the assembly lines of broken lives, the constant flow of the disenfranchised in and out of prisons, overseen by guards whose own humanity has been eroded by the system’s relentless grind.

Thematically, it’s undeniably bleak, yet the series remains engrossing. The characters develop enough depth over time that their fates still resonate. But make no mistake: there are no happy endings in Mayor of Kingstown. The few who’ve survived three seasons may not see through a fourth, and even if they do, their lives hardly seem worth the struggle. Even small victories come at a brutal cost: a woman imprisoned for avenging her son or a Black prison warden who, unable to take his own life, provokes Aryan inmates to kill him, ensuring his family’s financial security through his death. Sometimes, death feels like a blessing (RIP Iris).

Despite this overwhelming bleakness, it’s a testament to Hugh Dillon and Dave Erickson’s writing that the show remains compulsively watchable without descending into misery porn. The narrative may not follow a conventional path, but like the mayor himself, it’s always on the move, maintaining a relentless, captivating momentum.