In Season 2 Episode 3 of Marshals on Paramount+, when Pete Calvin finally sat in the chemotherapy chair to crank up the actual doing of his cancer treatment, it revealed to this wary warrior the shape of his fight. The tumor in his neck won’t be diminished by a fast and heavy show of force, the house style of the SEALs or US Marshals. Beating cancer will be a grind, a journey not a battle, and will require a significant investment of time. Which in Cal’s world translates to obsessing over his professional expiration date. Pile onto that a typically arrogant visit to his office from marshals big boss Harry Gifford, who says “My elite unit stays elite — even without you,” and Cal is searching in vain for a superior fighting position on an enemy he can’t even see.

So who would be the New Cal? It’s not a surprise Gifford likes Deputy US Marshal Andrea Cruz for the role. Since Marshals began, he has fixated on her outsider status as something he can control. She’s not a former operator, not from Montana, and not unwilling to entertain a return to her roots Back East. But it’s also typical of Gifford that he doesn’t see, or at least doesn’t fully appreciate, the bond between Andrea and her Jock Up teammates. He thinks of replacing Pete only in terms that suit him. “It’d be good for the higher-ups in DC to see the talent pool I developed.” Alright dude, but the development happened on the ground, in the trenches, where you don’t tread. 

A lot of this squabble feels like an extension of Episode 4 last season, where Gifford encouraged Cruz to manufacture evidence if it led to Kayce and his Big Dutton Energy getting booted off the team. And just like then, Andrea tries to keep the big boss and his ambitions for her at arm’s length. She wants to support Cal, support Jock Up, and maybe support our theory of an emerging closeness between Cruz and her “Cowboy.” 

Late at night, he texts. “You up?” Of course she is — Cruz is still crashing on the office couch and putting in wee-hours research into the on-the-job death of dad, a New York City police officer. Andrea and Kayce become a two-person Jock-Up crew, rounding up randos with priors and executing existing warrants. 

And circling back to Season 1 Episode 4, this activity is how the entire team returns to chasing Rudy Carpenter (Braxton Hale). He’s the neck-bearded roustabout who accosted Cal and Kayce in the woods as they rescued Tom Weaver from his downed chopper. The same roustabout who’s now labeled a “domestic terrorist” by Gifford. (A great aside from Kayce to Cal, regarding that mission. “The only mistake we made on that mountain was choosing to save Tom Weaver’s life.”) The marshals want to find Carpenter for legitimate reasons, since he has become even more unstable. This guy has been mailing pipe bombs to those who wronged him. But the operation also dovetails with Gifford’s pushing of Pete. “He’s shaping the noose for me if this thing goes sideways,” Cal tells Kayce.

Marshals always gets its man, so Carpenter is eventually cornered. But before we get to that, we gotta take a funny Kayce detour. Investigating the bomber’s ex-wife who remarried a local billionaire leads Belle and Kayce to a country club in Bozeman, where the cowboy in his snap-buttons and boot-cut jeans is a complete fish out of water. Our first impulse, to see Kayce disguised in a pastel golf shirt and pleated khakis, doesn’t happen. But our guy, who says “I was born for the barn, not the country club,” does manage to beat the shit out of two pushy golfers with their own putters. He also makes a Beth Dutton reference; His sister was a member of the same country club before she moved to Texas with Rip and Carter.

As Andrea told the team, “Catching Carpenter is a fight we can help Cal win.” So as Jock-Up uses traffic cams to locate him, and closes on a dilapidated old barn out on the outskirts of town, they’re ready to go in fast and heavy. They have evidence Carpenter stole “amfo” from an industrial site — a volatile explosive mixture of ammonia nitrate and fuel oil. And they already know he’s unstable. If there was ever a reason to go in strong, this is it, and if a successful op to leash a wanted man gets the heat off Pete, then it’s all good for Jock Up.

Did we mention Season 2 Episode 4 of Marshals is a two-parter? 

The sick feeling starts as the team is advancing on the barn where Rudy Carpenter is holed up. There isn’t enough time left in the episode! Oh no! Is Marshals gonna kill off another beloved character?! Carpenter is spotted, and he takes a few shots as he flees inside the barn, where Kayce and Cruz advance. He’s wounded, surrounded, done for. Until Rudy Carpenter pulls out a detonator, and without another word hits the trigger button. BOOM. 

To Be Continued. We will have to wait and see what new damage Team Jock Up must weather.  

Kayce Taykes for Marshals Season 2 Episode 4 (“Blast Radius”): 

• Belle remains a rock for Pete; we cheered when she showed up at his cancer treatment. But the loose thread of her gambling addiction is becoming a wild hair. In this ep, she’s hanging with little Braxton when some heavy breaks her SUV’s window. She’s got 48 hours to clear her debt with the bookies, or else.

• Will somebody finally read-in Maddie on her dad’s cancer diagnosis? Pete is still dragging his feet on being honest with his formerly-estranged daughter, which means she can’t understand it when “the version of Rambo I had in my head all these years” doesn’t align with the man who gets up to pee every 20 minutes and falls asleep during father-daughter movie night. The stubbornness of Cal’s Warrior Ethos means he’s even got Miles Kittle lying to Maddie about what he calls his boss’s “secret cancer.” C’mon, Pete! Be honest with your daughter. You need all the support you can get! 

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.