City of Hope

Nick quits his no-show job and joins his friends on a break-in at an electronics store set up by Carl. The attempt is thwarted by a new security guard, who warns them off, even though his gun is fake. Bobby and Zip are arrested, while Nick escapes, leaving his friends to face the consequences and fueling Nick's drift into crime.

Joe Rinaldi is introduced arguing with idealistic alderman Wynn about hiring more Black workers, revealing the city’s racial and political fault lines. The exchange hints at the mayor's strategy to rally votes by shaping perceptions of progress. The scene grounds the conflict in city politics and personal ambitions.

Nick begins to fall for Angela, a waitress at a local restaurant, while struggling with debts and a drug habit. Angela's warmth pulls him toward a potential redemption, even as she is pursued by her ex-husband, Rizzo, a young cop. The budding romance complicates Nick’s loyalties and entangles him further with law enforcement.

Carl reveals Nick's involvement in the botched robbery to Joe and offers to have one of his henchmen set fire to the abandoned apartment building to force the redevelopment plan forward. The scheme ties organized crime to the city’s redevelopment ambitions. The revelation deepens the rift between Nick and Joe and escalates the danger surrounding the project.

Nick learns that his older brother, who died in Vietnam, was deployed there as an alternative to prison after injuring a young woman in a DUI incident. The revelation adds a weighty personal history to Nick’s choices and moral ambiguity. It compounds the sense of a doomed legacy tying the family to the site of redevelopment.

Two young Black boys are hassled by patrol officers and attack a jogger, later falsely claiming the jogger made advances. Wynn privately doubts the boys’ story but fears how he will be perceived if he doesn’t stand with them. The episode exposes racial tensions and the fragility of trust within the community.

Wynn expresses doubt about the credibility of the boys’ claims and worries about his political standing if he questions them too openly. He balances idealism with the pressures of public perception and the city's power structure. This moment marks his deeper entrenchment in the city's ethos.

Carl's henchman torches the abandoned apartment building to facilitate the redevelopment, but the plan goes awry. A young Hispanic woman and her baby perish in the blaze, turning the scheme into a tragedy and exposing the collateral damage of corruption. Joe realizes the full consequences of the scheme and the danger it poses to innocents.

Wynn visits Desmond, one of the boys involved in the jogger incident, and learns that the kids lied about what happened. He contemplates his next move in light of the new information and the growing controversy. The encounter highlights the clash between truth, power, and accountability.

Before Wynn can act on the new information, the community center reports that the professor involved will drop the charges against the boys. The shift complicates the protest movement and undermines Wynn’s moral stance. The development reveals how community influence and legal tactics intersect in the city.

Wynn, now fully embracing the city’s ethos, leads a contingent of Black and Hispanic community members to disrupt a fundraising dinner for the mayor. The protest marks a dramatic escalation in the struggle over race, development, and political legitimacy. It ties together the personal grievances with public power.

Desmond visits the professor they attacked, claiming he saw the address in the police report, and apologizes for what happened. The professor initially brushes him off, but Desmond asks to accompany him on a run, revealing that he is a professor of urban relations. The encounter broadens the circle of influence in the conflict.

Nick runs into drunken Rizzo, who fires at him after a scuffle. Rizzo’s old patrol partner later picks him up, while a new trainee questions whether Rizzo’s gun is legal, signaling ongoing tensions over law enforcement conduct. The sequence intensifies Nick’s peril and showcases a corrupt, unstable police environment.

Joe finds Nick severely wounded at the new development site and calls for help, but only Asteroid, a homeless man, hears his cries and repeats them into the empty street. The moment underscores the city’s neglect of its vulnerable and the cost of the corrupt power structure. It sets a grim note of unresolved consequences hanging over the characters.