Episode 5 excels as our separate storylines converge, painting a portrait of the looming threat in future episodes. The best parts of the episode — as with the season thus far — are the remarkable scenes centering on Kiowa Gordon’s Chee, as he struggles with demons he thought he had long laid to rest.
We pick up with Joe waking up in a box truck, the two white males who assaulted him hovering above. He tries to explain who he is, but they don’t listen and leave him on the side of the road. It isn’t until later that they learn the two men are FBI agents working a case. Agent Shaw, Jim’s former colleague, and Agent Wells are working to close a case against a notorious drug trafficker, McNair. With his trial in a few weeks, eyewitnesses are disappearing. One of those witnesses was Albert Gorman.
The feds initially refuse to exchange notes, but when Joe mentions the woman in the green van, Shaw takes notice. His colleague, Ken Upchurch, was found dead in his garage of an apparent suicide. But they know it was a hit carried out by Irene from McNair’s orders. Joe promises that if they prove she was Upchurch’s killer, then the FBI will assist in finding Billie.
Meanwhile, Billie has found solace with Leroy’s girlfriend. Bored in her apartment, she finds some old pictures of Leroy’s grandmother with two female relatives. Suddenly, she begins crying as she thinks one of the women is her mother, who she was told died when she was young.
As Bern and Joe work with Shaw, Chee opts to return undercover as Mike Garcia, reuniting with Sonny. The unpredictable man takes Mike on a run across the city. After being recognized by an elderly woman, Jim evades suspicion and joins Sonny at The Pink Carousel, a strip club where Sonny has to handle business. As Jim has a heart-to-heart with a dancer, Sonny races from the back, a rain of bullets behind him. He’s hit as they escape.
Once safe, Jim tends to Sonny’s wound until he falls asleep. While out cold, Jim snoops around and finds an address book listing Leroy’s possible location. Later, we see Jim enter Leroy’s apartment through the window. As he stumbles on a stash of old pictures, he feels a sharp pain from his wound and hallucinates someone gasping for air underneath a wool blanket. As quickly as it started, the hallucination ends, and Jim sees Sonny with a shotgun to his face, demanding to know his true identity.
This episode was decent, as more of the mystery became clear. Gordon continues being the shining standout as viewers explore his complicated history. Gordon’s character represents the struggle assimilation poses for Indigenous and other marginalized communities in the United States. His career with the FBI was supposed to be a shining moment for him, but he’s realizing his chase for success was only an evasion tactic from the trauma he suffered as a youth, and later in losing his mother.
Rating: 8/10