The fire alarms are going off, and the story is heating up in Smoke episode 6 on Apple TV+. Everyone in this episode, titled “Manhood,” is on a mission, and we are loving the urgency.
This review contains spoilers for the first six episodes of Smoke.
Man on a Milk Jug Mission
Though the end of Smoke episode 5 left him unconscious in a car, Gudsen is ultimately OK after the car crash caused by a drunk driver. So what does the arson investigator do as soon as he can bust out of there? He hunts down the milk jug arsonist.
Smoke episode 6 feels like the first episode where we get true, consistent progress in each of the arson cases Gudsen and partner Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) are trying to solve. They are once again not working together, as Gudsen has such tunnel vision that he failed to even tell Calderone about the latest milk jug arson. So he’s on his own, which is how he seems to like it anyway. We know he likes to be in control.
Luckily, it seems to work well for him because he actually does track down milk jug arsonist Freddy Fasano (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine). After some bribery and threats, Gudsen does stop Freddy from committing an arson murder suicide.
Obviously, the milk jug arsonist has been caught, so that case is ready to be closed. But with two episodes of Smoke still left to air on Apple TV+, there’s still more to tell. Gudsen didn’t gather all of his clues and information legally to catch Freddy, which could impact the formality and legality of it all. Freddy also clearly isn’t mentally well, more than we would’ve thought. He’s not just a serial arsonist. In the arson murder suicide scene, Freddy is in Brenda’s (Adina Porter) house, but calls the hairdresser, Ms. Yolanda. He seems to think she’s his last foster mother, despite Freddy actually murdering everyone in his last foster home in a fire. So while Gudsen has finally found his milk jug arsonist, locking him up may not be as simple as he’d hope.
The first half of Smoke on Apple TV+ gave us a fragmented story with pacing that needed improvement, but episode 6 has pushed us towards the finish line of one arson case in a well-paced manner. It also made a big stride in the other arson case with room to spare.
Book Leads to Betrayal in ‘Smoke’ Episode 6
The other half of Smoke episode 6 involves pretty much everyone else in the show trying to pin down Gudsen as the divide-and-conquer/potato chip arsonist. This is all accelerated by Ezra Esposito’s (John Leguizamo) random and prohibited visit to the fire station, where he confronts fire chief Harvey Englehart (Greg Kinnear). Englehart has known Esposito thinks Gudsen’s an arsonist, but Esposito’s presence pushes Calderone to confess that she believes that, too. Though the fire chief doesn’t buy it for most of the episode, Englehart cooperates and starts a true investigation into his arson investigator.
With every dead end and unusable piece of evidence, Calderone, Esposito, and police captain Steven Burke (Rafe Spall) come to, Englehart essentially shrugs and says, “I told you so.” We’ve gotten glimpses of it in previous episodes, but Smoke episode 6 is the first instance we truly see how much this would hurt the fire chief if Gudsen truly is a criminal. It’s like they have a father-son relationship. So when the heartbreak comes, it cuts deep.
We’d like to forget about the book — or maybe the chaos from the last episode made us forget — but it’s Gudsen’s mediocre book that seals the deal for Englehart. By including a detail from a fire that was never formally recorded, it’s clear Gudsen’s been writing about fires he started — not fires he witnessed or learned about on the job. It’s not entirely clear if that or anything else is actually usable in court or to build a legal case, but that’s not really what this episode was about for this arson.
The themes of power and control have been present throughout the entire Apple TV+ series, especially when it comes to relationships. And Gudsen’s relationship with Englehart seems to be the only one he has left in good standing. Seeing how this betrayal will impact them moving forward will be key.
Though it’s not as conclusive as literally stopping a criminal in the midst of a crime, Englehart’s discovery about Gudsen is a good milemarker. The story has progressed in a way where we know it’s almost the end, but there’s still a lot to uncover. Like, what’s up with the storyline involving Calderone’s mom? And why is it in the story at all?
New episodes of Smoke on Apple TV+ are released Fridays through Aug. 15.
