‘Copenhagen Cowboy’ Episode 4 Recap: I Want a New Drug

Copenhagen Cowboy is best experienced while profoundly stoned. Perhaps that’s an obvious point, but it’s still one worth making. Nicolas Winding Refn’s work can certainly be enjoyed stone-cold sober; honestly, I think of watching Too Old to Die Young high and get a little frightened. But the lurid colors, the sumptuous naturally lit scenes, the throbbing glowing score, the pregnant pauses, the leisurely-to-the-point-of-indolent camera movements: All of it is tailor-made for weed’s time-stretching, sense-enhancing effects. Don’t say you weren’t told, is all I’m saying.

Titled “From Mr. Chiang with Love,” this episode is delightfully disorienting in its pacing. Specifically, it kicks off with Miu dispatching the blank-faced blond serial killer Nicklas in a matter of minutes. Pretty much every detail of the sequence is perfectly executed: Miu’s vision of Nicklas’s victims, dumped in the nearby stream; Nicklas’s sudden appearance, so jarring it seems like it must be part of the vision; the tension of their foot chase and the catharsis of Miu absolutely whipping Nicklas’s ass before seemingly kicking his head in and leaving him to be devoured by his own pigs.

Of course, Nicklas survives being brained and partially eaten, and his horrifying father arranges for a nebbishy trio of en vogue architect/designers to construct a monstrous prosthetic cock for the guy to replace the one swallowed by the swine. The episode ends with a lengthy shot of him on a surgical table, rising up like Frankenstein’s monster before sinking down again, gnarly wounds all over his body and a blue sheet over his bathing suit area. 

But we don’t know any of this until the very end of the episode! So for a long while, we’re watching Miu’s continued adventures at least partially convinced that the Nicklas portion of the series is over for good. Like I said, delightfully disorienting.

At any rate, Miu goes through the rest of the episode in much the same manner that she’s spent the previous ones: careening (if a habitually slow-moving character like Miu can ever be said to careen) from one crime family to the next. This time out, she brokers a deal with Mr. Chiang: She will pay him a substantial amount of money in seven days in exchange for the return of Mother Hulda’s daughter. Interestingly, Chiang lets the kid visit her mom first, I suppose to prove he’s dealing in good faith.

In order to raise the dough she needs, Miu goes to Miroslav (Zlakto Buric), yet another immigrant and a past acquaintance of hers. (When he hears a “lucky coin” has come to visit him he leaps into action to see her while his goons flee in apparent terror.) Miroslav has risen to become consigliere to what appears to be Copenhagen’s largest native-born mob. 

In repayment of an old debt he owes her, he gets her a job as a drug dealer, working under a very friendly and optimistic fellow named Danny (Ebriama “Eebz” Jaiteh). Danny’s kindness, lack of prejudice against “the Balkan people” (he himself is Black), and confidence in his future prospects all make his presence feel like a giant release valve for all the misery and tension we’ve experienced in the show. He even takes time away from work to bring food to a mentally ill friend having a psychotic break, and the very sight of the felafel he delivers brings the poor soul back down to earth. (That said, his forecasts of a bright future virtually guarantee the poor guy isn’t gonna make it.)

For her part, Miu takes to Danny’s tutelage right away, even in the face of very different kinds of customers. She has to kick the asses of a trio of boxcutter-wielding women, but her meet with that trio of designers (one of whom is NWR himself in a wordless cameo appearance) goes a lot more smoothly, if comically.

But her problems keep stacking up, is the thing. She’s got Chiang and his minions to worry about. Nicklas and his family might come after her if he’s able to describe his assailant, and the designers they’ve hired connect directly to her via her coke delivery. Her new bosses have expectations of their own, and promised her that her friendship with Miroslav won’t protect her if she screws up. And I’m not even 100% convinced that André perished in the fire Miu lit at the brothel. 

This engaging dilemma is the skeleton across which the show drapes so many aesthetic sensations it’s difficult to track them all. Off the top of my head, I love how Nicklas’s mansion and its environs, as well as the forest where the business with Chiang and Hulda goes down, are entirely free of the usual synthwave lighting style, all dull winter sunlight instead. I love how the music sounds like a repeated exhalation during Miu’s after-hours conversation with her old “friend” Miroslav. I love the brown and gold color scheme of his office, unmistakably a Refn color composition but so different from his trademark style. I love the eruptions of comedy, like the bickering between the designers over whether one of them is preoccupied with his penis or not, or Nicklas’s father saying the question of whether his son had any of his sperm frozen is “his mother’s business.” I love the mentally ill friend getting down on all fours and hissing like a cat through a crack in the door, which gave me a genuine fright. I love that there’s martial arts combat in this show for some reason.

I pretty much just love Copenhagen Cowboy, which is a double-edged thing, because it reminds you of how wimpy and lazy so much TV feels in comparison. But I’ll take the hit.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.