Ah yes, the old interoffice hookup. You know those mute background drones on Marshals, the people working at desks and walking purposely with papers, are blowing up the headquarters Slack about all the resulting awkwardness between Pete Calvin and Belle. While Cal wears a sheepish look two miles wide, says their makeout session was a mistake, and to stay “front-side focused,” Belle is at least an adult about it. She doesn’t necessarily agree that it was a mistake. She also says Pete buried the lede when he told her about seeing her deadbeat husband, because it happened in the parking lot of a doctor’s office. What’s up with him? But Cal doesn’t tell her about the neck and shoulder pain that still lingers, years after his SEAL deployments.
(TC 2:58-3:00: [Garrett] “I was born dangerous, Ky-O.”)
They all took shots while in the Teams. Physical, mental, emotional. As Kayce says, they’re all haunted by ”what we did outside the wire.” From Cal’s chronic pain, which he receives more bad news about here in Episode 8 of Marshals (“Blowback”), to the shadow that moved across his features in Episode 2, when Kayce referenced their fallen SEAL buddy “Roner” during the Zone of Death firefight. And to the morning they’re out at East Camp, where Kayce and Cal’s ride is interrupted by a former Team guy neither of them have seen since the whole Roner thing went down.
“I was born dangerous, Ky-O.” Country singer Riley Green joins Marshals as Garrett, part of a core four with Kayce, Cal, and their friend Roner when they were all deployed in Afghanistan. (He also uses Kayce’s SEAL nickname, which Cal has dropped here and there since Marshals began.) But nobody’s seen Garrett for ten years when he gets off a bus in Montana with nothing but his boots, mustache, an acoustic guitar – and some bad blood. Garrett says he came out west looking only for Kayce, that he knew nothing of Calvin’s move to the region. “Ain’t that rich – Cal gives you a new career, and he ended mine.” Oof.
When a hot, dangerous new tip comes in, Cal benches both Belle and Miles. He’s avoiding dealing with their kiss, and he’s butthurt over learning about Miles dating Maddie – after everybody else knew. Taking the high road again, Belle is unsympathetic. Miles isn’t “respecting work boundaries”? Come on, son. But that drama phone will keep ringing while the US Marshal-ing cycles up. The anonymous tip to HQ has sent Cal, Kayce, and Cruz to the site of a rodeo, where a fugitive bank robber is said to be hiding. But while they manage to shoot a few nameless thugs – Marshals random goon kill tally always ticking upward – they find nothing.
Garrett arrived at East Camp with tales from gigging throughout the South and playing Nashville’s Honky-Tonk Highway. Sure, he’s bitter over Calvin taking his SEAL Trident and ending his life in the Teams. But music was his escape. Except it’s not that simple, as Kayce learns when he comes home to find his old friend lost in a PTSD nightmare. (“Roner I’m coming!” he cries out.) After Kayce helps him out of it, Garrett says the emotional trauma begins again, the second he leaves the spotlight, the moment the applause goes away. “We both know who Roner’s death is on,” Kayce offers, as in it’s not Garrett’s battle to keep fighting. But their history together, and where the bad blood with Cal fits in, stays unresolved. In the meantime, Kayce tells Garrett he can stay at East Camp as long as he needs to get right with himself.
An anonymous tip from a burner phone that is no longer active. Splitting the team up as they follow bad leads. No intelligence on their supposed bank robber, his accomplices’ movements, or any kind of motive. At HQ, Calvin says the team’s latest op is starting to feel like a setup.
What Calvin won’t say, to anyone on Team Jockup or seemingly even to himself, is just how serious his chronic pain is. Cal is silent in his doctor’s office during a follow-up for his test results. “I know it’s a lot to take in,” “there are support networks,” the doctor’s voice fades as Cal just stares. It’s an effective new chapter in the way Logan Marshall-Green is playing this guy. He’s always looking outward, always staying “front-side focused.” But trouble slips in from outside the wire, Cal can’t find the words. It’s akin to how we’ve seen him flail during the estrangement from Maddie.
Pete was at the doctor, Kayce was with Garrett, and Belle and Miles were stuck doing background research on threats that weren’t even real, leaving Cruz as the member of Team Jock Up most exposed. The operation is surgical as her government-issue SUV is T-boned by a Suburban, Cruz is hauled out unconscious, and loaded into a waiting van. She comes to, briefly, and glimpses a young woman through her shroud, but Cruz can only land a few kicks before she’s brutally cattle-prodded.
The team saw the traffic cams, and any static is forgotten as they gear up for a rescue, backup be damned. (“Let’s go get our girl.”) Because they know who owns the demolition business where Cruz was taken, and know how personal he likes to make things. Evidently Randall Clegg’s grudge was never just about Kayce Dutton.
Cruz takes a few more kicks to the gut as she’s tossed into a torture basement at Clegg’s compound. A chair, a light ring, a camera; an upside down American flag. It was bad enough when this guy and his family were locals causing trouble, with beefs against Kayce and the Duttons. But abducting a federal agent and threatening her torture feels like an escalation.
And how’s this for taking shots? When Team Jock Up arrives at the compound, they’re immediately pinned down by Clegg fam gunmen, who emerge firing from concealment.
To Be Continued.
Kayce Taykes for Episode 8 of Marshals (“Blowback”):
- For all of Pete Calvin’s grousing, Miles and Maddie’s actual relationship seems to be going swimmingly. When MIles frets over how to tell his boss he’s dating his daughter, Maddie decides for him. She grabs his face and kisses him right over the bar, and right in front of Cal.
- Tate Dutton is back in a TV holding pattern. Marshals had a nice feature for him with Episode 6 and Monica’s remembrance ceremony. But once Garrett shows up at East Camp, Tate rides off, not to be heard from until this show needs a teenager again.
- And the return of Randall Clegg means more terrific work from Michael Cudlitz as the villain. Everything this guy says sounds like scripture from a holy text he wrote. “It’s time to burn the land clean,” “The blood of my kin, spilled by puppets” – he’s also big mad at the federal government, which probably explains the Cleggs firing on federal agents.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
