Animal Kingdom recap: [Spoiler] gets buried in the desert

We’re halfway through Animal Kingdom Season 4, and one Cody becomes a killer as another learns a secret about Smurf.

This is officially the halfway point of Animal Kingdom Season 4 where it’s building up to become what can only be a shocking conclusion. The SoCal iron throne is nearly at J’s fingertips and Smurf loses yet another notch of her sanity. But the biggest thing to happen this week was the corpse buried in the desert right alongside Cath somewhere.

Flashback

Let’s just get this out of the way now. Short and inexplicit, just like these mini prequels.

The crew robs a hippie commune run by a man Smurf knew in the past. Apparently, he’s an old friend of her mother’s that either sexually violated or coerced one of them into prostitution. Her reaction to seeing him couldn’t be called anything other than painful rage as she shoves her gun in his mouth and asks how it feels to have something in his mouth.

After they all get away, Colin promises to track down and kill anyone she wants from now on as long as she promises to keep personal vendettas out of their business. The new Bonnie and Clyde everybody.

Find the snitch

Everyone’s playing a game of “find the snitch” and J has his money on Angela. He has good reason to; everything so far has pointed at Adrian being the rat but he’s yet to say anything noteworthy to Pierce.

Meanwhile, Angela shows up out of nowhere and is far nosier than any houseguest has the right to be. Also, Adrian being the official snitch is just too obvious to be true, they’re probably going to surprise us with this one. Or maybe I just like Adrian too much to see the truth.

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Smurf gets informed through her police contact that someone is talking to the police and she puts J on the task of finding out who. He goes to consult with Deran first and it’s during their five-minute conversation when red flags start flashing through Deran’s head.

The minute J mentions the possibility of someone snitching, he starts piecing it all together, why Adrian’s been acting weird and disappearing at odd hours ever since he’s started dealing for Jack. He doesn’t know for sure though until he learns that the DEA raided Jack’s drug warehouse.

The way his eyes bugged out of his head, it’s a wonder no one thought he was having some sort of heart attack. J’s sleuthing kind of drops from there when he becomes distracted with following Smurf around instead.

Someone needs to get rid of Angela

J and Smurf are trying to get rid of the houseguest, but it’s not working. Honestly, what is the point of her? She spends half the time trying to turn everyone against Smurf and the other half trying to get in Pope’s pants. She’s following him around the way Peter spied on Wendy through her bedroom window, like a friendly stalker who doesn’t understand why no one likes them.

She does manage to get Smurf’s cancer confession out of him, but not even Pope’s confidence will spare her from J if she tries to have another heart-to-heart with him, the boy is one bad day away from setting her on fire. I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually killed her out of spite.

He holds her responsible for some of the blame with what happened to Julia, but we’re only getting a quarter of the information that’s too vague to piece any kind of story together. Animal Kingdom should have invested in some Julia flashbacks.

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Craig

Renn is having a boy that she wants to name Crest (for a wave, not toothpaste), but before Craig can deal with baby names, he confronts Frankie about her betrayal. I never liked them together but it’s hard to see her break his heart by admitting she never wanted to work with the Cody boys at all. She only used Craig as her way in with Smurf, using him like the grunt he already sees himself as.

I don’t know if this is the end of Frankie, but it sure felt like the end as Craig walked away without looking back. He gets over it pretty quickly with Renn around though.

Craig decides that Renn selling drugs for a living which is too high risk now that she’s pregnant (funny considering the way he snorts anything that moves), if she gets caught her baby won’t have a mother, but when he can’t get her to change careers he buys her entire supply of cocaine to protect her. Aww.

Smurf does chemo

Smurf starts chemo, but just a few hours into a single treatment, stuck beside an insufferably annoying chair neighbor, she storms out of the building. In her defense, I would have run from that chatty woman too, but for Smurf, it probably runs deeper than that. Hatred for the torpid mundane problems of normal people when she had to fight tooth and nail for a criminal empire that ultimately amounts to nothing. Despite all the power she obtained, she ends up completely alone with a slow-killing disease like everyone else in that treatment center.

J, who is watching from his car a few feet away, watches her slash the chatty woman’s tires as she leaves the center, all with a hilarious look on his face. You can hear him thinking, “what is this psycho doing now?” After she leaves, he goes into the center and finds out about her cancer. Now three people know.

Deran and Adrian

Deran went down a road you can’t come back from and he did it all for Adrian, who has yet to tell him everything. Colby, the idiot that might as well of just handed Deran his death certificate, made the grave mistake of threatening Adrian and requesting a payment of $20,000 to keep silent.

Honestly, this moment has been building since Animal Kingdom Season 3 when Colby got Ox killed, nearly ruining Deran’s chance of normalcy then and now once again here. Instead of giving him money, Deran shoots Colby execution style without remorse.

It might be one of the coldest murders displayed on the show, and Deran remains in shock for the rest of the episode. He and Pope bury him in the desert and he goes home to cling to Adrian as a thousand unspoken words linger between them.

Don’t miss the next episode of Animal Kingdom on Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. ET on TNT.