What I’m Watching: Longmire

Longmire: Season 5, Episode 9 “Continual Soiree” (B+)

I didn’t realize that I was just one episode from the end of the season, but it makes a lot of sense given the way that this episode ended. I’m surprised that it took Walt this long to figure out that Henry was Hector, but once Cady mentioned the only visit Henry had paid her, it took him very little time to put it all together. Usually, I’m not a fan of fleeting flashbacks to assist viewers in understanding characters’ realizations, but in this case they worked very well. I expected Walt to end the episode by outright asking Henry if he was Hector, but instead he downed a whole beer and then pummeled him in his bar, a much more emphatic and destructive way of dealing with the situation. This show, which is a procedural, has done a marvelous job of cultivating continuing narratives and recurring players, and bringing back Peter Stormare’s Chance Gilbert was enormously effective in this hour. To think that he can represent himself in court and diminish the proven fact that he kidnapped and tortured Vic is horrifying, and the way that he and news outlets are publicizing Vic kissing Walt is getting out of hand. Walt has a lot of enemies, and people who have never met like Chance, Jacob, and Tucker are doing a great job of trying to mar his reputation and take him down. He doesn’t even have to think about the Irish mob because he has far too many people willing to see him fall in town.