Dear God, I hope Lobos is dead.
After agreeing to work together in last week’s episode, Ghost and Tommy put their plan into action in “The Right Decision.” Tommy helps Hugo and his men spring Lobos from a transfer ride to D.C., then Ghost comes in to execute the man himself. (He covered his tracks, of course, by telling Angela he’s doing recon work at one of Karen Bassett’s hotels.)
Both figuratively and literally, it takes a while for them to get there, as Ghost and Tommy march Lobos out in the middle of nowhere to a freshly dug grave. The whacking once again gets postponed when Sandoval calls Lobos from a smuggled cellphone, which makes Ghost and Tommy briefly panic about the possibility of the phone getting tracked to their location. As they argue, Lobos makes like a Russian and bolts.
Ghost eventually catches up with Lobos after he and Tommy search through the dark woods. A brief scuffle between them ensues until Ghost puts two bullets in his chest. As Ghost and Tommy skedaddled out of there, leaving Lobos’s body out and open in the wilderness, I hoped like hell that Lobos wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest, and that Hugo and Sandoval wouldn’t find him. I don’t want Lobos to live, and not only because this rather fey villain has became the worst drug lord in dramatic-television history. (When Ghost appears and shoots his henchman in the head, Lobos cheekily responds, “That’s odd!”) We all know what happened the last time Ghost thought he killed a foe and left him for dead: He survived, escaped, fled to his crooked cop cousin’s house in D.C., practically jacked himself off to a full recovery, and now he’s plotting his revenge. We already have one Kanan; we don’t need two.
I’m starting to wonder how Kanan (who was nowhere to be found in this episode) will come down on Ghost for the remainder of the season, especially now that a new Big Bad has popped up. Just when Ghost thought his troubles were over (are they ever?), his head of security, Dean, informs him that he’s not just some ex-military man. He’s none other than the shadowy Serbian kingpin, Milan — or, as Tommy calls him, “the muhfucka that eats people.”
Milan lets the cat all out of the bag in James’s office: He and his guys posed as a security team to get close to James and his business; he’s the one who left that bloody lotería card on his desk; and he here’s to put James to work for killing Vladimir last season and intercepting his package. Yeah, it’s a brand-new can of worms for Ghost, who must now go back to hustling product to protect himself, his business, and his family.
Of course, it always comes back to him and Angela. As Ghost and Tommy brainstorm ideas about offing Milan (which seems pointless since Milan said his business doesn’t die with him), Tommy reminds him of all the lying he’ll be doing to Angela once again. He also points out that Angela is a liability; even if she doesn’t go to the police, Milan could get hold of her and do Shonda-knows-what to her. Tommy, who’s already tortured and in zero-fucks mode after strangling Holly last week, coldly tells Ghost he’s gonna have to do the deed himself. Alas, Ghost handles the situation by abruptly breaking up with Angie, telling her Tariq slipped away from home during the hotel visit, making him realize what’s more important in his life. It’s a bullshit excuse and Angela sees right through it; though to his credit, Jamie asks her something that’s long overdue: “If we were meant to be together, you think it would be this hard?” I’m sure every Power viewer has asked that about these two.
Even though Angela demanded the truth, as I mentioned last week, James dodges that and leaves her place saying this is “the right decision.” (But dude is still sprung on her, as we see him holding back tears in the hall while Angie wails away behind her door.) It’s quite an appropriate episode title, since Power is a show filled with characters who continuously make the wrong decisions. Even if James breaks up with Angela, Milan can still snatch her up and make Ghost do whatever he wants. (I hope this season doesn’t end with Milan pulling some Joker nonsense and forcing Ghost to choose Angela over Tasha in some life-or-death situation.) Even though Ghost brings Tasha along to cover for him as he goes off to deal with Lobos, you know it’s going to bite both of them in the ass, since we caught security-cam footage of them walking hand-in-hand in the hotel. Odds are Angela will catch that down the line and start feeling mighty scornful.
While the episode was crafty and streamlined in its execution, with the first half focusing on Ghost, Tommy, and Tasha joining together to pull off One Last Job, only for Ghost to come face-to-face with a new threat in the second half, I got the sense that things might get more predictable as the season progresses. Power is at its best when we can see its wheels churning, as both the show and its characters make clever moves that’ll pay off later. For an episode where most characters don’t see threats coming, “The Right Decision” puts all the show’s moves out there for everyone to see.
Stray Thoughts:
- Joseph Sikora is on fire this week. He has some choice lines, like asking Ghost if he was bringing a girl for the hotel visit (“You already got a side bitch on your side bitch?”), calling Hugo’s men “thugs that torture farmers” after Hugo tells them they learned English at the School of the Americas and, of course, telling Ghost he’s not “emotionally prepared” to deal with another psychopath druglord. (I know how he feels.) But after spending the first ten minutes in a drunken, self-loathing daze, Tommy showed off his detached, sinister side by pressuring Ghost to kill Angela. It looks like someone is trying to be the show’s Jesse Pinkman.
- Poor Knox. Even though he walks away from the ambush, the dude still can’t catch a break. He obviously thinks Angela, not Sandoval, is the leak. (At this point, I’m surprised everyone doesn’t think it’s Sandoval, since he always acts antsy and suspicious whenever Lobos is mentioned.) This episode definitely teases us with the possibility of Angela and Knox getting back together: Jamie and Angie break up, Angela feels guilty over Knox’s possible death, Saxe tells Knox to get back in there now that Angela seems vulnerable. Although I don’t see how they could possibly get back together after she royally screwed him over last season, there’s a chance he could exact some revenge by getting close to Angela, convincing her to flip on Ghost, and kicking her ass to the curb.
- Poor Tasha. She can’t even enjoy a night at the hotel without being reminded that Ghost loves the shit out of Angie, and vice versa. (I enjoyed watching her handle Ghost’s texts to Angie, while also shading her and wondering if this girl has a job.) Also, dude was callous enough to bring those separation papers with him, which she discovered in his bag and eventually signed. Tasha has turned into the show’s most evolved character. Those shallow, selfish dreams of being the Elvira to Ghost’s Tony Montana seemed to have evaporated from her mind. Now, ol ‘girl is done with Ghost. She just wants to be there for her kids.
- Be honest: When Jamie and Angie started smashing on top of that table, weren’t you were like, “Give it a goddamn rest already?”
