Skylines – Season 1 Episode 5 “Rose in Concrete” Recap & Review

Boiling Point

Episode 5 of Skylines sees us back in the studio with Kalifa finding blood lining the floor, prompting him to confront Semir over what he did. He warns him there will be consequences and Ardan will not take this lying down.

Meanwhile, Sara’s informant gets cold feet and decides he can no longer hold up his side of the bargain. However, she blackmails him into continuing, offering up the gangs to get involved too which certainly changes his tone. Rifts continue to grow with Lily too as she speaks to her Father and tells him she’s quit her job. She doesn’t have the drive like Jinn has and leaves him in his car as she heads back to her flat.

Jinn catches up with Zilan soon after and shows him her auto-tuned track. Through it all, he’s managed to turn the beat and her singing into a compelling and well written rap song, backing up the ethos that hard work and perseverance will prevail in the end. As they get drunk together in a bar, Jinn and Zilan run into Kampshoff and after following him into the parking lot, he shoots Jinn before she tries to wrestle the gun from him in the car. As he chokes her out, she brandishes a knife and stabs him in the neck repeatedly.

With the Kelmendi case drawing to a close, Sara is warned against pursuing Ardan while Jinn is brought in to the station and arrested for his involvement in the murder. After a long night in a cell, Jinn is eventually brought into an interview room where a man named Miro greets him. They’re from the homicide department and given he could be arrested for life, tells Jinn he needs to give them information around the murder. He lies and tells them he doesn’t know Zilan but goes on to disclose some of the details from the incident.

While Sara’s informant gets a little too close, despite managing to secure some precious information, the officer learns that Jinn has been brought in for questioning. Arriving there soon after, Sara looks over the photos while the informant is cornered and knocked down. Tied up and questioned, they ask who he is and who sent him. Eventually he talks and tells them the police sent him. As Ardan appears from the other room, he takes the hot-seat  and tells him to describe her. Hearing everything they need to, he’s choked out and killed as they go after Sara.

Unfortunately they know where she lives and they post her informant’s severed hand through her letterbox. This prompts her to hurry out and, realizing the jig is up, she bolts from her property as Kalifa makes up his mind and decides he and Ardan should work together. After their meeting, Sara shows up and tells Kalifa the truth and that she he wants to know where Ardan is. After slapping him in the face, she asks Kalifa once more where he is before he replies, telling her to stay out of his life. If she doesn’t have a search warrant then she can leave. As she gets into the elevator, two men working for Ardan enter and prepare to descend to the basement.

With an episode chock full of drama and dramatic characterisation, Skylines looks set to erupt into a flurry of action in its season finale. There’s some good work done here to progress all the storylines too, even if Jinn’s story falls to the back-burner a bit in favour of the growing gang wars igniting the series. Quite where the finale will go from here remains to be seen but Skylines’ penultimate episode is one of the strongest of the season, doing well to keep things interesting and leaving us eagerly awaiting what’s likely to happen in the finale.