“I said if you help the Harrigans, the Harrigans will help you. You have not helped the Harrigans. Not at all. Okay? So now I, Kevin here, he’s gonna lose his family, I’m gonna lose my family, both of us are gonna die, and others, yeah? Thanks to you, okay, and Eddie. So I don’t think it’s very fair that you don’t share in some of that joy, you understand.”
Harry Da Souza has a strange way of speaking. Understatement is one of his primary rhetorical devices: “You have not helped the Harrigans” to a man who helped conceal a war-starting murder. “I don’t think it’s very fair” that you don’t die along with the rest of us. I keep circling back to that big in the first episode where he tells an eyewitness that unless he cooperates, either Harry “or one of my associates, depending upon my availability” will kill him for it. He’s a man with the power of life and death, but he talks like a slightly peeved Nando’s manager.
He peppers his speech with little stops and starts, little marks of inquisition designed to give the listener no other choice but to agree with him. Look at that paragraph above, the way it’s dotted with “Okay? Yeah? Okay. You understand.” It sounds like he’s merely commiserating with his interlocutor, relating to him, saying “obviously you and I agree that this is simple common sense,” even as he’s threatening to kill the man and his wife and children.
Because that’s what’s going down. In this week’s episode of MobLand, everyone finds out that Conrad Harrigan’s grandson Eddie has fucked everything up royally for the rest of them. He did kill Tommy Stevenson, son of the family’s great rival Richie Stevenson, planning it out in advance. He did task Valjon, the owner of the club where the killing took place (50 or 60 stab wounds!), with disposing of the body. So he did sign up the entire Harrigan outfit for a war with the Stevensons, one for which they are largely unprepared.
Harry’s plan for dealing with all this makes him seem a lot less lovable than he did when the episode started. After first spiriting his wife Jan and daughter Gina to safety on a boat owned by a guy who owes him money, he proceed to threaten the life of Valjon’s kids unless he goes to a tearful Richie Stevenson (played with surprising, gutwrenching tenderness by Geoff Bell) and “confesses” to killing Tommy. This will lead to his torture and execution, but that’s headed Valjon’s way at the hands of either the Harrigans or the Stevensons no matter what; if he falsely confesses to the crime, Harry swears he’ll protect the man’s family from a vengeful Richie. All Valjon has to do is keep his story straight while Richie pumps bullets into his kneecaps.
The funny (well, “funny”) thing about this is that Harry runs a whole ironic comedy routine to ensure that Valjon accepts the offer (well, “offer”). The fixer debates the bar owner’s fate with his best friend Kevin Harrigan, who as Eddie is his son stands the most to lose if things go south. He knows Valjon can hear him arguing flatly to just kill the guy and come up with some other plan, and he knows this will make Valjon more eager than ever to prove he can do what’s required of him.
Writers Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth are very good at this grim stuff, while director Anthony Byrne’s camera captures the real bleakness of the situation — Valjon’s mutilated face and head, the plastic-wrapped shipping container in which he’s been stashed so that blood from his potential execution isn’t left behind as evidence. All Valjon needs to do is look around and he’ll see these people mean business.
Unfortunately, so does Maeve Harrigan. The family matriarch seems bound and determined to set Eddie up as the future of the family, even though everyone else hates him because he’s a useless fuckup who stabs first and asks questions never. Because Maeve is being played by the irrepressible Helen Mirren, you half-expect her to just do her own thing when she’s on screen, but this angle is curious. By all accounts she’s a smart woman and a fearsome gangster — surely she can see what Eddie really is. So why is she constantly undermining Conrad, Kevin, and Harry where Eddie is concerned? Even Kevin’s siblings, failson Brendan and half-sister Seraphina, think the kid’s a piece of shit. Why does Maeve feel otherwise, if indeed she really feels otherwise at all? Or is she simply manipulating the guy for her own ends? In a family full of schemers, you never can tell.
Speaking of family schemers, Bella Harrigan, Kevin’s wife, comes to Harry for help with one of her own. Working with her shady French contact, she sets up a blackmail sting for her lord father, only to learn that the recording is being used against her more than him. She tells Harry, knowing he’ll take care of it for her; she also tells him he should kiss her, hoping he’ll take care of something else for her entirely. Harry demurs, but for how long?
And somewhere in the family, the scheme to end all schemes is unfolding. Remember Archie, the family confidante whom Conrad kills on Maeve’s word that he’s a double agent for the Stevensons? It’s since become apparent that he was a police informant — and some unknown person in the Harrigan family divulges the secret location of his dead body to the cops. Is it Maeve, trying to take Conrad off the board so she can rule the family de jure as well as de facto? Is it Seraphina or Brendan, trying to work their way inwards from the margins of the family? Is it Kevin, whom I only suspect because he seems above suspicion? It couldn’t be Harry himself, could it?
And as for Harry, one more thing needs mentioning. He takes time out of his busy day of covering up murders and framing other people for them to help his cleaning lady try to place one of her parents in an old folks’ home. He’s late, which would normally blow up her chances. But he happens to notice several repairs that the place needs, and leaves the director several plumber and contractor numbers to call along with his own: If she tells them “Harry sent me,” they’ll fix all the problems before the day is through. He knows it’ll work, and he knows the director will hook up the cleaning lady as a thank-you. See? It’s not all plastic-wrapped shipping containers and threats against children for Harry. Honey and vinegar, carrots and sticks — it’s about balance, mate.
The attractions of its many fine actors aside, MobLand’s selling point at this point is the plot, which it’s leveraging to maximum effect. It’s doing a Long Good Friday kind of thing: It’s a race against time in which we and the protagonists alike try to suss out who’s working to take down these gangsters before the takedown actually takes place. With Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, and Paddy Considine taking point, it’s hard not to enjoy. Do I wish there was something more to it than gangster shenanigans? Sure, but good gangster shenanigans are nothing to sneeze at.
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.
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