The following post contains spoilers for Season 2 Episode 2 of The cleaner.
Scoundrels of The cleanersophomore season, note: There’s a good chance you won’t make it out alive.
One week after Tony’s husband Marco was killed in the Season 2 premiere of the Fox drama, it was lights out for crime boss Hayak Barsamian, who died on Monday’s episode when Armand injected him with a lethal injection during a fight between the two men in prison showers.
“Without Armand’s prototypical father and without Hayak supporting him financially, supporting him, guiding him, who is Arman? We’re stripping Armand of everything he had and watching Armand rise again,” showrunner Melissa Carter told TVLine about the decision to write Hayak. “When she met Tony last season, she challenged him to ask: Do you need this underworld? Do you need these horrible people? What would you be if you had taken a different path? As we gloss over Thony’s path, this issue isn’t as present as it was in the first season. They’re two characters holding a mirror up to each other and asking each other these moral questions about how dark you can redeem your soul.”
Now that Armand is both without Hayak and his gun business (but just released from prison), “he’s going to have to change,” confirms co-showrunner Miranda Kwok, who adds with a laugh, “and he apparently he’s never held a normal job before.”
“Part of the struggle this season is him trying to figure out where he’s going to land,” Kwok continued. “He starts to get involved in a criminal enterprise with Thony, but of course it grows from the beginning and it’s not necessarily that easy.”
Monday’s hour also introduced us to loan shark Robert Kamdar, played by Lost alum Naveen Andrews. A former lover of Nadia’s, Robert is what Carter describes as “the ATM for organized crime” — and now that he’s given Armand the $1.6 million he needs to get out of jail, Armand is now owed more a dishonest businessman.
“Robert Kamdar is really a chance to show the power that each of our characters has over each other,” Carter explains. “Throughout Season 1, Armand’s quest was to break free from Hayak’s subjugation, to wear the crown, to be his own man, to be strong. With this introduction of Robert, someone else will have Armand under their thumb. What will he do to regain his own power?’