Mayans M.C. Episode 5 Review: Uch/Opossum

This Mayans M.C. review contains spoilers.

Mayans M.C. Episode 5

This week Emily, Felipe and Angel steal the show by enthusiastically showing that each is irrevocably fucked up.

For example, now we know why Agent Jimenez was puking his guts up after threatening Felipe’s son and trying to use his shadowy past as leverage. Whatever secrets Felipe may be hiding, he is not hiding them as well as he thinks. That is one scary dude. So scary that Jimenez’s father (ostensibly Felipe’s brother in law) immediately started looking nervous when Felipe paid him an unexpected visit. However, it was Agent Jimenez that ended up shitting his pants when Felipe surprised him with a) nostalgic pictures of beheadings and b) much more recent photos of Jimenez’s family.

The message was pretty clear: Felipe went to extraordinary efforts to put that old, violent life behind him. But if you threaten his family, he will burn your life to the ground. Or maybe behead it? Whatever. At the end of the day, just do not fuck with Edward James Olmos.

Speaking of heads, the overly militant Cole (ex-Blackwater, ex-special forces, ex-etc.) paid Angel a visit and brought the head of the woman from last episode, whose family had been running prescription drugs and shooting Mexican border jumpers and who managed to get massacred – all within 60 minutes! Unlike most normal folk, Angel reacted calmly to waking up and finding a head impaled on a bayonet in his living room. With hardly a blink he made a deal with Cole to sell the rebel’s heroin.

further reading: Mayans MC Season 2 News and Details

Angel is putting out some serious Jax Teller vibes here on Mayans M.C. And while it is worth pointing out that he is powerfully protective of his brother and the woman leading the rebels, Adelita, he otherwise exhibits all the traits of a sociopath. Lying, manipulative, scheming, murderous, a stunning lack of compassion. Not to mention a morbid curiosity about necrophilia (no, really). It makes you wonder if his underlying personality is the cause of the rift in his relationship with Felipe. Perhaps he and Angel are too similar, too prone to violence and moral ambivalence, which is what pushes Felipe toward the compassionate-to-a-fault EZ.

Angel just does not care. He is willing to deal with Cole, beginning with a favor that involves running an Afghan “translator” on the no-fly list through the border tunnels and into the U.S. Willing to betray his MC in order to support Adelita and her plan – which we now learn is only in phase one. And while Angel mentions this phase to EZ, he claims to be ignorant of future plans. One gets the sense that he is lying. In fact, while the rebels have locked down their righteous narrative, Adelita’s conversation with a well-heeled Cardinal who is obviously disdainful of the poor (which includes the people he is meant to help) indicates that there is a larger plan at work. One cannot help but wonder if the goal is not to free Mexico from the cartel, but to encroach and eventually take over cartel territory. Why else would the Church care? Historically, caring has not been their strong suit.

Lest we forget, the cartel cares. So much. Galindo makes a point of showing EZ how much he cares by threatening to do him bodily harm for secretly meeting with Emily, while showing him the border property he is fighting with the Mayor to have rezoned for new industry in order to revitalize the town. The two men face off, intellectually, and in another life they may have been friends. But while Galindo has a lot of ambition and an underworld empire to run, all EZ has are his feels.

Specifically his feels for Emily. The woman who aborted his baby when he spurned her after he had been sent to prison, eight years earlier. And yet still he rushed to visit her in the hospital after she was nearly trampled in the church. The woman who tried to visit him on the sly, then went home to antagonize and have rough cat-fight style sexy time with her mostly (but he cares!) sociopathic husband. You start to get the impression that Emily is not the sweet girl that EZ remembers. That she is not the reluctant participant to gang violence that she portrays herself to be. Emily may well turn out to be a polished version of Gemma; a vicious match for Galindo. Or even someone more ruthless by far.

And where does that leave EZ? In the end, who is served by compassion and who is served by violence – and who will get ground in the dust?

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