Harry Da Souza is your worst childhood nightmare come to life. Not that your worst childhood nightmare involved a hulking British gangster unless you were accidentally exposed to The Long Good Friday at an inappropriately young age — I mean that horrible feeling that if your foot’s sticking out from under the covers at night, a monster will grab you by that foot while you sleep. That’s exactly what happens to Antoine, the seedy white-collar criminal acquaintance of Harry’s former lover Bella Harrigan. No wonder Harry doesn’t have to make good on any of his physical threats to get Antoine to cough up both the incriminating thumb drive and the backup he initially claims he doesn’t have. He might as well try to haggle with the Thing Under the Bed.
Bella’s gotten into plenty of beds, as it turns out. As Harry and his best mate Kevin Harrigan hang out, waiting to find out whether rival ganglord Richie Stevenson bought their ruse and will be letting the family off the hook for the death of his son Tommy, Kev confides that Bella was initially his father Conrad’s girlfriend, not his. When her role in Conrad’s life became too much for his wife Maeve to handle, Conrad essentially gifted her to Kevin, who was so in love he didn’t really care about how “medieval” the arrangement was. All of this comes as news to Harry, just as I’m sure Harry’s relationship with Bella would come as news to Kevin. I get the feeling, though, that after bumping into Harry leaving her hotel room, he’s starting to suspect.
Suspicion is the order of the day for the Harrigans. With a rat in the family and the two prime suspects, Conrad and Harry, basically unimpeachable, the search for answers leads Conrad to Jan’s door. Even though Harry has finally opened up about the chaos that’s been keeping him so busy, it turns out Jan doesn’t want that any more than she wants it all to be a total mystery. All she wants is for him to leave work at work and be fully present for the family when they need him. But his adoptive family, the Harrigans, will always come first.
But Conrad has been having Jan followed, and he knows she’s been seeing a marriage counselor, often by herself. His unannounced visit and his vise-like grip on her knee imply what he’ll do to her if she ever returns and talks family business out of school. When Harry returns that evening, he delivers much the same message, albeit in a less threatening register.
If Jan can’t turn to a therapist, who can she talk to? Unfortunately for everyone, I’m guessing it’s Alice, her flirty friend. Conrad actually interrupts their latest wine date when he pays Jan his visit — which is a lucky break for Alice, because she’s secretly an undercover cop. (I love the way she flatly refuses to try to cozy up to Conrad. When her supervisor says he wouldn’t ask her to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, she says “Then you go blow Conrad Harrigan.”)
It seems the real people Conrad should be keeping an eye on are his wife Maeve and failgrandson Eddie. Eddie strongly implies that he and Maeve were in cahoots on some job, possibly even the assassination of Tommy Stevenson itself. Maeve, meanwhile, keeps planting doubts about Harry in Conrad and Eddie’s ears. Given Conrad’s apparently legendary philandering — Maeve says he believed in “the Three Fs: Fishin’, Fuckin’, and Fightin’” — I wonder if she isn’t tired of playing second fiddle to a man who only occasionally honors his vows. At the very least she thinks all his country living has made him soft in the face of the Stevensons’ growing threat.
Also, am I the only person who’s gotten the impression that Eddie might be Harry’s son rather than Kevin’s? No? Okay, good.
There’s a pair of plot points to cover quickly before we arrive at the main event. First, an American named Donnie (Alex Fine) shows up at the body shop where Harry’s lieutenant Zosia works, asking after Harry even though neither Zosia nor Harry has any idea who he is. Elsewhere, while talking to Kevin, Harry casually brings up Rosby (Jay McDonald), the prison guard who sexually assaulted Kev when he and Harry were friends in juvie. Kevin’s so badly traumatized he denies remembering the guy, but flashbacks tell a different story.
It’s in this grim register that the episode closes out. Harry is summoned to Stevenson HQ by boss Richie for one final test. So far, Valjon, the poor bastard the Harrigans are using as a scapegoat for Tommy Stevenson’s murder, has held up his end of Harry’s devil’s bargain and insisted he was Tommy’s killer through a night of torture. (Recall that the alternative is Harry murdering the man’s children.) But Richie wants Harry to finish the job, and based on how he and Valjon interact, a final decision about Eddie’s guilt or innocence will be made.
So Harry does what he always does, which is whatever he has to do. He rejects the gun Richie gives him, smashes off a splintered chunk of table leg, and guts Valjon with it. That’s good enough for Richie, except for one final condition: The Harrigan family, all of whom hate Richie’s guts, have to attend Tommy’s funeral.
It occurs to me now that Harry is a Mike Ehrmantraut, as in the similarly employed cartel fixer from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. Played by Jonathan Banks with the same kind of seen-it-all sad-sack professionalism Tom Hardy brings to Harry, he’s a character far more likeable than the things he does would lead you believe if you heard about the in a vacuum. Harry is a huge piece of shit, but he’s also Tom Hardy, making the most of his natural gift of coming across like a hard man with a heart of caramel. In wrestling parlance, he’s a tweener, a guy with heel tendencies who’s treated like a face by the audience. You want him to succeed, despite yourself.
The other weapon deployed to great effect by this episode is director Anthony Byrne’s camera. Repeatedly, he creates painterly scenes using twilight colors to create a world of beauty in which all this ugliness unfolds. The windows of an expensive apartment, the hanging light of a kitchen island, the lake on Conrad’s estate — these places look lush and magical, a sunset jungle where predators roam.
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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