Warning: The following contains spoilers for Tuesday’s killer Animal Kingdom. If you’d rather watch first, read later, amscray!
We all knew that Adrian’s reluctant involvement with the DEA was gonna get someone killed on Animal Kingdom, didn’t we? Especially after Pearce got added to the mix. I just assumed that the dead man walking was Adrian himself — and the surfer still could wipe out for good. But in Tuesday’s episode, Deran’s boyfriend didn’t turn out to be the first casualty of the mess in which he’d landed himself. That distinction went to — drumroll, please — Colby. How’d it happen? Read on…
‘YOUR DEEP CONCERN FOR MY WELFARE IS VERY TOUCHING’ | As “Into the Black” began, Smurf, chagrined to learn from Detective Andre that he still didn’t know who’d been talking with the state police about her and her boys, tasked J with sniffing out and exterminating the rat. “You wanna know what it feels like to be in charge?” she spat. “This is what it feels like to be in charge.” Meanwhile, Pearce and Livengood leaned hard on Adrian to turn on Deran, and warned him to steer clear of Jack’s warehouse — it was being raided that very day. Later, at the bar, Deran assured J that Smurf didn’t really think anyone was selling them out; if she did, she’d have gotten them all together and sent them out for blood. Since she hadn’t, “it’s all good.” Only of course it wasn’t all good. It wasn’t even partly good, and it was still getting worse. On a visit to Craig’s place, Deran found out from Renn that Jack had been busted. (“More customers for me,” cracked the future Mother of the Year candidate.)
Immediately, Deran, the wheels in his head turning so fast, his skull must have had skidmarks on it, sought out Adrian, who swore that no one had asked him to squeal. Then, as the hour neared its conclusion, Colby paid an ill-advised after-hours visit to the bar to imply to Deran that since Jack was headed to prison and Adrian wasn’t, it wouldn’t be hard to convince, say, Pope that the surfer boy was the cops’ informant. But in exchange for $ 20k, Colby said, he’d be happy not to float such an idea. Though Deran agreed to pay, he’d no sooner opened his safe than he’d retrieved a gun and put a bullet in Colby’s head. Afterwards, he called Pope to help bury the body and told a whopper of a lie: When he’d confronted Colby about being the stool pigeon, Colby had come at him with a gun, so he’d shot the turncoat. Finally, Adrian found Deran in the shower in the dark. Clearly starting to reel from the impact of what he’d done to protect his boyfriend, Deran looked at him as if memorizing him, said an “I love you” that seemed to weigh a million pounds, and held him close under the spray of water.
‘IT’S HARD TO STAY SOBER IN THIS HOUSE’ | In other developments, J put a tracker on Smurf’s car and discovered that she was getting chemo treatments (which she didn’t seem to mind as much as she did the chatty grandma sitting next to her). Angela continued trying — and miserably failing — to ingratiate herself to Julia’s son. “Who else can you trust?” she asked even though it was clear he’d sooner put his faith in anyone else. She fared better with Pope, whom she convinced to let her tag along to one of his fights. When he had second thoughts at the last minute — “I don’t really want you to see me like this,” he admitted — she reassured him, “You don’t scare me. You’re not gonna scare me.” And he didn’t seem to, even when he kept choking his opponent after the match was over. Later, closer than ever to his new lover, Pope confided in her that Smurf has cancer.
While all this was going on, Craig broke into Frankie’s storage unit in order to get a face-to-face with her. She was, as you’d expect, furious that he’d attacked Raoul and stolen his bike and watch. “He owed me money,” said Craig. “Now we’re even.” Hardly, Frankie replied. He’d taken way more than he was owed and, in the process, “burned an entire network for me.” When she started going on about how she needed Smurf to recognize her as a professional, Craig surmised that his whole relationship with Frankie had just been about her desire for an in with his mother. At home, Craig teased Renn about even considering Crest as a possible name for her son (though it was “Crest like a wave,” she noted, not like Colgate!). Later, he discouraged her from continuing her career as a drug dealer by buying all of her blow, which, in a twisted Craig way, was pretty sweet.
‘YOU LOOK LIKE A JAKE’ | In our 1970s flashbacks, the gang hit the hippie commune that Janine had been pitching as an easy job… when really, what it was was an opportunity for her to exact revenge on an old friend of her mother’s… an old friend who’d clearly abused the future Smurf as a kid. After she came clean to Colin, he made her promise never to make another job personal; that was when things went south. (In this case, Jake got shot in the arm.) If she needed somebody beat up or even killed, he’d go do it with her — just not on a job. In response, she promised not to lie again. And if he believed that one, he might also be interested in that bridge in Brooklyn that she was trying to sell! So, what did you think of “Into the Black”? Were you surprised that Deran killed Colby to keep him from painting a target on Adrian’s back? Is there any way out for those two? Hit the comments.
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