Cartels Don't Get Powerful By Forgetting When People Cross Them

With the exception of noted loose cannon Eleanor Nacht (and, sidebar, they show her feeding an acorn to her pet...something last week and this week we get no payoff as to what the fuck that was? DON'T BE THE KILLING ABOUT IT, THE BRIDGE), the Fausto Galvan cartel is doing a pretty great job this season flexing its figurative muscles, by which I mean killing basically everyone in its path. This episode in particular isn't quite a match for, say, the instrumental-part-of-"Layla" montage in GoodFellas, but it's about as close as this show has gotten thus far.

First: let's catch back up with our old friend Kenneth Hastings/David Tate! Marco has been doing his part to stop El Paso cops from looking that far into this whole business with the money house and whatever part Eleanor Nacht may have had in it, which is only going to get harder now that cartel bankers are wandering out in front of their branches and offing themselves at like 3 in the afternoon. But a deal is a deal, and if Marco is really committed to murdering Tate in reprisal for Tate's murder of Marco's son last season, then Fausto Galvan is going to make sure that happens.

First, he's going to arrange for Tate to get brutally assaulted in prison, and when I say "brutally assaulted," I mean that getting a chunk of cheek bitten off...

...is just the prelude to the real attack that's going to trap Tate in the infirmary for a while until Marco can get there. I hope Tate didn't like archery before he went away, because his depth perception is not going to be what it was after this.

When Marco does get smuggled in, with a shiv, and escorted into the infirmary where Tate is strapped down, he may decide not to murder Tate after all -- for now, anyway -- but Tate has a skull wound and Marco's got a thumb and...well, you know how it is.

And that's just what happens to a dude who has access to people in the cartel he can do favours for. People who directly fuck with the cartel end up even worse off. You draw the short straw and end up being the triggerman who kills the boss's son?

You get to spend eternity with your head in a jar in said son's crypt, watching while said boss shows off his handiwork because before he decapitated you, he also gave you an eyelidectomy so you could see everything go down. You steal two tiny bundles of the cartel's heroin -- and out of a horse's butt, so it's not even like it was all that fun for you?

Your fun party gets all shot up and everyone gets killed -- and you only escape by (a) pure luck, with an assist by (b) smearing your girlfriend's blood on your mouth and playing dead. You're some dumb kid who didn't do anything but wander around the party trying to sell sandwiches?

Should've done a little more market research on your sales territory, kid. (And worn pants. Your mom doesn't want to ID you in your tighty whities.)

What you also need to remember about fucking with a cartel is that when it takes its revenge -- and it definitely will -- no one involved will even bother to try to cover their tracks because they legit do not have to. And that's not just me talking: that's also THIS SIGN.

Or, to put it another way...