‘Longmire’ season 5, episode 8 review: The Malachi stand-off; Vic’s confirmation
There is a story that has been hinted on “Longmire” for a couple of episodes now, but for the most part, we’ve remained relatively unsure as to what it means: Vic’s possible pregnancy. Now that we know that it is very much a key story for the season, it’s hard to necessarily ignore it anymore.
Now, is this the right move to take her story in this direction? In one way, it feels like giving the character something to do simply for the sake of doing so, and that element of the equation is frustrating. Also, it further cements Vic’s status in the show as of late as the deputy who just can’t get it together; she’s living in a trailer, she’s coming off of a divorce, her kissing “Longmire” caused problems in his civil suit, and now an unplanned pregnancy.
Can anyone give Vic a win sometime soon? Please?
Aside from Katee Sackhoff’s character, there was a wide array of other big stories this week as Walt continued to vulture around Jacob Nighthorse, despite the fact that he had the wrong guy, while Cady recovered from having to shoot Asha’s husband JP at the end of the episode before. He died in surgery, and at first she blamed her. Eventually, she was cleared due to stand-your-ground laws, and even if she wasn’t from that we think self-defense eventually could have done the trick if Asha came around.
While we’ve been somewhat critical of a few stories this season, we continue to stand by the notion that this may be the strongest one we’ve seen to date for Cady.
In getting back to Walt, his pursuit of Nighthorse was a back-and-forth affair that began with Jacob getting an Irish flag that was an apparent threat from the mob on his property. This started off quite the chain of events that led to eventually enough information being passed down to where Malachi was revealed to be a perpetrator. He tried to deflect everything back on Jacob, but before he could meet Walt with the “information” implicating his boss, he met an end of his own.
The entire closing scene with Malachi was all sorts of fantastic, and while we love the character, we’d be okay if we never see him again on the show if for no other reason than that this was a worthy Jacob cut a mark on his cheek as a sign of shame, telling him that he was no longer welcome within the reservation and everyone would now know it. If this is the end of the Malachi story, we’re saying farewell to a pretty despicable dude, someone who held the Red Pony hostage and also repeatedly was Jacob’s #2 when he was doing shady stuff. Then, there is the whole heroin business with the mob.
While we do remain confused as to the direction of the Vic story, there were enough fantastic moments in between Henry / Jacob saying farewell to Nighthorse and Cady’s crisis that it more than made up for it this time. Grade: B+.
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