And Why It Will Ultimately Fail.
The Mayor of Kingstown is a Paramount streaming product also available on Amazon. It’s gritty, grabs the viewer’s attention, and engages completely with its audience. It also insults the audience, and I will get to that.
Kingstown and The Improbable Premise
Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye from the Marvel movies) plays Mike McLusky, the unofficial ‘Mayor’ of Kingstown.
The show-runners ask a lot of the audience. Kingstown’s IMDB page offers the following blurb: The McLusky family are power brokers tackling themes of systemic racism, corruption and inequality in Kingstown, Michigan, where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry. We are constantly reminded that Kingstown holds ‘7 prisons within a 10-mile radius.’
So, what exactly is a ‘power broker?’ If one goes by the dictionary definition, we’re talking about someone who exerts enough influence to affect political, bureaucratic, and economic outcomes.
What Does This Guy Do Again?
Mike, a convicted felon and former inmate of one of Kingstown’s prisons does not hold an apparent job or an official position. Contrast this to Robert Moses – nominally New York City’s Park Commissioner, among other titles he managed to collect. Contrast this also with the fictional Tony Soprano who was ostensibly employed by one of New Jersey’s private sanitation companies and had to sit down with his accountant and go over his W-2 forms once a year.
Mike McLusky is the beneficiary of a system set up by his late father. As far as one can tell, Mike earns his living through consulting – guiding people through the labyrinth of the incarceration system and skimming off the grift. The grift also includes picking up his brother’s mantle as a paid FBI informant. There is apparently enough money to fund office space and an admin assistant.
There are no ethnic ties on which to fall back. Mike’s family is small. It’s just him, his younger brother the detective (married, one child, one on the way), and his mother the college professor. There is no Cosa Nostra. No Irish Mob. He simply ‘knows’ everyone. His relationships include prison bureaucrats, prison guards, influential inmates, gang leaders, and ‘reliable’ members of the local police. His strength relies on the Mariana Trench depth of these relationships, again established by his father, and maintained by his late brother.
This highly improbably premise is made believable by an all-pro cast. Renner, Dianne Wiest, Taylor Handley, Hugh Dillon, and Tobi Bamtefa, pull this off with consistent and erudite performances.
Go Woke Go… Well, You Know…
The infection plaguing the Entertainment Industry has wormed its way into the streaming services. Kingstown has this infection, and I doubt it will go past it’s second season without a ruthless purge.
Miriam McLusky is an unlikeable character. Even more unlikeable than McKenzie Bezos in real life, and that’s saying something. This is a credit to Dianne Wiest – a Streep-level actress whom I loved in Hanna and Her Sisters. Miriam McLusky summons Skylar White as played with panache by Anna Gunn.
Miriam clearly disapproves of her son’s choices. This grew out of her animosity towards her husband, who like her eldest son, apparently met an untimely demise. Wiest delivers her lines with a soft conviction and the self-righteousness common to Leftists. Having built nothing herself, Miriam’s primary outlet for her brilliance is to critique the efforts of others.
Kingstown Indoctrination
Whoever is writing Dianne Wiest’s lines either does not like her, or is pathologically intent on delivering The Message at the expense of all else. The character of Miriam delivers three monologues to captive audiences in the first half of the season.
- The Civil War and Wounded Knee. Asserting that the U.S. Civil war was ‘the only time in history the oppressors fought each other over the rights of the oppressed,’ is both criminally simplistic and ignorant. Miriam alludes to Wound Knee – not the finest moment for the United States Military. It also does not define the United States Military – a force historically restrained and benevolent.
- Miriam embellishes and changes critical points of de Tocqueville’s account of the Choctaw being ferried across the Mississippi. This is clearly a case of where the story teller feels that The Message is vital and therefore fictionalizing history is justified.
- On the origins of slavery. The first slaves did not land in Virginia in 1619. They originated in the Middle East 9,000 years ago, where it continues to this day. From the Middle East, slavery spread to the African continent where – you guessed it continues to this day. Miriam draws on the works of Eanes de Zurara and again changes critical information in order to weave the sad tale of a West African King negotiating for his freedom with a Portuguese ship captain. This, she asserts, is where slavery began.
There are no implications here. Through Miriam’s monologues, we are explicitly told that white Europeans are the source of all evil in the world and is manifested through the existence of the United States. A war on history will no more serve than a war on language.
I’m calling the shot right now. If this doesn’t change, The Mayor of Kingstown will dies with its second season.
Selah.
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