‘Power’ season 3, episode 6 review: Jamie’s mistakes lead to heartbreak

Last week’s episode of “Power” was a tour de force, a story that was ultimately accentuated with the shocking death of someone beloved by many viewers in Holly. We’re certainly still reeling from that, but our biggest shock on Sunday night was seeing precisely how quickly the show itself chose to move forward rather than focus on that.

Holly’s death was in some ways a shocking afterthought on Sunday’s episode, largely in how we had Jamie and Tommy do their part to orchestrate a massive cover-up so they could break out Lobos and kill him once and for all. Tasha covered for her (soon-to-be ex?) husband while at a hotel, and even went so far as to send Angela text messages in his name. Their mission may have been one that they needed to do now in order to properly grieve Holly later. To us, that’s really the only thing that makes sense.

Now, let’s turn to what else surprised us: The way in which Tommy and Ghost felt almost like the criminal version of the Keystone Cops in the way that they dealt with Lobos, getting into an argument on a potential location tracker to the point where their prisoner eventually made an effort to escape. He even did temporarily, but it was short-lived and James eventually did put a bullet in his heart. Lobos’ time was done, but he best said it to Ghost when he reminded him that at some point in his life, he could find himself in the same position with a gun pointed in his direction.

The more we saw over the course of the episode, the more that we realized that Lobos may have been right. Ghost failed to realize that a traitor was right under his nose in Dean, who used his professional association with him to gather information and turn him into a tool of his own. It terms out he has his own affiliates and even a different accent; yet, he doesn’t seem to care that Vladimir is gone.

What this latest twist means is that Ghost is at the mercy of someone who can hurt his family, and it caused him to reach a very painful realization: It was time to do away with his relationship with Angela. She wasn’t safe, and she had already sacrificed so much for him. We wonder if the guilt over Tasha seeing his papers also got to him to a certain extent. He claimed to her during their breakup scene that his family (otherwise known as Tariq acting out) was the reason for the split, but we (and she) knew otherwise.

Overall we’d say the mole within the investigators, coupled with Jamie and Tommy’s future danger, proved to be very strong ends to what was otherwise an uneven episode where there were a few things (Holly’s lack of impact; Lobos running free) that just didn’t make sense. “Power” is still top-tier, but this may be one of the weaker outings of the season. Also, we’re not sure we had enough investment in the betrayal for it to be a huge jaw-dropper. Grade: B.

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