Animal Kingdom
4×13: “Fubar”
Directed by John Wells
Written by Daniele Nathanson

* For a recap & review of the penultimate episode, click here.
Flashback to a pregnant Julia breaking into Smurf’s house with a friend, stealing anything they could sell and any money they were able to find. They had no clue that Pope was in the garage making bullets. They went about grabbing silverware, stashed cash, and bottles of pills from the medicine cabinet, as well as some clothes and other things, too. But soon Pope was alerted to intruders and came toting a shotgun. He confronted Julia and her friend, smashed him in the face with the butt of a gun. Pope locked Julia in the bathroom.
In present day, Pope’s getting transported to a different prison. His family’s in the desert ready to snatch him up. Craig and Deran take up position on the side of a road, as J sits in a vehicle elsewhere watching the GPS. They setup a wire to blow tires across the road with only a couple minutes until the prison bus gets there. J follows behind the transport while Craig and Deran finish with the wire. Then suddenly, J turns around and leaves, letting the transport go on by itself. The bus hits the wire and goes off the road. Craig and Deran take action, though they notice their nephew’s nowhere to be seen. Craig takes care of the cops but misses one, having to shoot him in the leg to subdue him. Still, he and Deran keep the cops in check. In the bus, Pope fights with a Mexican prisoner likely connected to the Trujillos. Another cop in the bus gets out and Deran has to shoot him in the leg, as well. Pope is nearly choked out before he stabs the Mexican prisoner with a piece of broken glass. Then Craig blows the hinges off the door to get Pope out.

But there’s still no sign of J.
Flashback to Pope telling Smurf about his sister breaking into the house. He told his mother he locked Julia in the bathroom; also that Julia’s “pregnant and strung out.” Mom looks oh so sympathetic to her daughter’s life situation.
At the roadside, Pope gets out of his prison jumpsuit and wraps his wound. Elsewhere, J keeps an eye on the GPS and he goes about his business. He gets into another car, texting his uncles that he “got heat.” The three brothers get in their dune buggies and start making their way into the desert, as J appears heads back to the house, cleaning the place up like any other day. J puts on the news while getting out a new cellphone to use. He also checks the GPS again, seeing that his uncles are headed through the desert. J calls the cops with a tip about the storage place and men on ATVs. Cold as ice.
Perfect to see J’s situation now paralleled with his mother’s situation. Maybe if Smurf hadn’t treated Julia so terribly it wouldn’t have come to this now. J’s almost taking revenge on the family for what they did to her more than anything else, though it’s a bit hypocritical for J to act like he’s never done horrible things, either. Flashback to Julia still locked in the bathroom at Smurf’s place when Baz dropped in. Smurf made Baz bring food in to try and get Julia to eat. Julia was obviously detoxing from heroin, and Baz didn’t show her any kind of sympathy. Everyone just turned their back on her, over and over again. So very sad. A little later we see J packing everything up and he takes the photograph of his mother that was wedged into the corner of his mirror.

Pope, Deran, and Craig are on the horizon near the storage facility. Pope thinks they should just leave now. But they need the cars to get to the border. So they’ve got to risk heading down there. Pope tears out the GPS in his wound so that his beloved nephew can’t keep tracking them any further. When Craig takes a look around he sees that the guns are gone, the cash is, too. Then Deran sees the money’s not in their account. They’re starting to realise that their nephew has fucked them over big time. So they start running, right as the sirens are blaring in the near distance and soon cop cars are swarming. Pope and his brothers sneak their way into a house, where they start to panic about what to do. Deran’s angry at himself for trusting J. But they all trusted their nephew. All they’ve got is a few guns to take on potentially hundreds of cops. Pope advises Deran: “Get your shit together.”
Back at the house, J gets a visit from the sheriff’s department. Only natural seeing as how his uncle’s been busted out of prison. J puts on a good act for the cops with Penny at his side. He lets the cops look around the house. “Just follow my lead,” J tells his new girlfriend. He forces Penny to lie to the cops, too. Another crime she’s committed already.

Flashback to Pope and pregnant Julia talking. We realise it had been a year since Smurf kicked her daughter out. Pope asked about the baby and the dad; Julia claimed she didn’t know who the father was, even when Pope asked if it was Baz. Then Julia had to go see Smurf, who acted like a saviour for not calling the cops. Mom offered up a twenty-dollar bill and that was it, sending Julia back to the streets. Pope actually spoke up, saying Julia and the baby needed help. Janine agreed to make a few calls.
Pope tries to get his brothers to leave and let him face the cops himself. Deran and Craig aren’t ready to do that. They want to go down together if they’re going down. But Pope grabs their weapons. “We‘re gonna be okay,” says Pope, trying to comfort his brothers in spite of the hell coming down on their heads. And then off the two brothers go, leaving big brother to face down the police alone.
Penny knows something isn’t right, confronting J. She thinks he needs to leave by himself. She isn’t ready for whatever he’s dragging her into, even though she’s fallen in love with him. She can see the toxic nature of the Cody family and their relationships through what’s happened in the past couple days. And she can certainly feel the danger approaching, though she agrees to wait with J until he’s ready to leave town. Seems like J has other plans, using hidden drugs to inject Penny’s drink. Any sympathy for J has long gone out the window, particularly considering all his mother went through with drugs. Nasty, nasty stuff. J is far more like Smurf than like Julia. And J’s not just drugging Penny, he’s used the drugs to kill her. No loose ends. At least it’s the first time J has shown any real emotion in a long time, moved to tears by his guilt.

In the desert, Pope goes out the front door shooting the shotgun, taking a few rounds but right in the bulletproof vest. Deran and Craig are slipping away out the back on the dirt bike, trying to get into the desert further. Pope manages to clear the front of the house, yet more cops are already on the way. So he hops into one of the cop cars that’s all shot to pieces and starts driving onto the backroads again. He stops and pulls an old man from his vehicle, taking that on the next stretch of road. Deran and Craig make it out of there, then they head into a store looking for cash and something to clean Deran’s wound. They grab the store owner’s truck keys, too. But in the middle of it, the store owner’s kid shoots Craig, who takes the bullet for his brother. Now the wounds are worse, and the brothers have to get out fast using the owner’s truck.

Safe to say everything for the Codys has gone FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition). Perfect title for the final episode of Animal Kingdom. J heads inside the house and smashes everything to bits. He’s interrupted when Pope finally makes it back onto the property. Pope sees dead Penny lying in a chair outside, then he hears his nephew making noise inside. He walks through the now destroyed house and finds J bashing away with the baseball bat. He grabs his nephew and puts him in a chokehold as the two of them fall to the ground.
Flashback to Smurf driving her kids in the car. Pope felt Julia’s belly, as they chatted quietly about baby names. She missed her brother. Where are they headed, exactly? Smurf was just bringing Julia back to the streets. She didn’t want to put her daughter through rehab again. Pope didn’t say a word this time. Smurf offered her daughter a twenty again, then she pulled out a gun when Julia tried to get Pope to go, too. Mom said that Pope could go if he wanted, but he’d be out of the family. And we all know that Pope didn’t go.

When J comes to again he’s strapped to a chair next to the pool and Pope’s sitting nearby. “We trusted you,” Pope yells at his nephew. He resents being setup to die along with his brothers. Not exactly forgivable. J keeps pretending like it’s all a misunderstanding. But Pope won’t put up with any more lies. Hard to lie with a dead girl next to them. J defiantly says the whole family deserved everything he was planning to do for what they did to his mother. “You could‘ve saved her but you didn‘t,” says J, right before Pope tosses him into the pool. Pope remembers that fateful day when he turned his back on Julia forever, letting Smurf leave Julia on the streets without a care. It’s a lot of guilt to carry for the rest of your life. And now, Pope stands above his drowning nephew, as if completing the circle he and Smurf started that day by leaving Julia.

So Pope pulls J back up from the pool. An interesting return to the time Deran and Craig nearly drowned J, and it was Pope who saved him that time. Pope says he wasn’t strong enough to stand up to Smurf. He says Julia “was the strong one.” J tells his uncle that Julia never stopped loving her family, even after everything that went down between them. Pope weeps at the thought of not helping Julia. He tells J to leave. Then he looks around the house recalling memories while he pours gasoline everywhere. Pope lights up his mother’s clothes and her old room first, fittingly. When he’s done he sits by the pool looking at a photo of him, Julia, and Smurf when they were young. And he collapses.

On the road, Craig’s not doing well from his bullet wound, as Deran drives and tries to keep his brother alive. Things aren’t looking good. Craig knows he won’t make it an hour, though Deran doesn’t want to give up. He soon convinces his brother to stop. They pull off to a place near the ocean. Deran drags a near lifeless Craig to the cliffside where they sit together and listen to the sound of the ocean together one final time. “Isn‘t that beautiful, huh?” Deran asks. He promises to raise Nick like his own child and to take care of Renn. Slowly, Craig slips into death, and he’s gone. Deran kisses his brother goodbye, leaving Craig’s body near the ocean.
Across the world, J sits by a pool somewhere having an expensive drink.
What an ending! Wow. J survives his family, unlike his mother. Maybe Deran will be okay, but who knows.
It was a fantastic finish to a wild series. Loved spending time with the Cody family; the sick fucks.