‘MobLand’ Episode 2 Recap: “Jigsaw Puzzle”
It’s a day in the life of Harry Da Souza, and it seems pretty exhausting. The mob fixer runs around, cleaning up messes, putting out fires, and digging up leads, but at no point does he do anything of his own choosing. His bosses largely leave him to his own devices, but he’s still following his masters’ orders. If this is a day in the life, it’s a life that’s really not his own.
In a flashback, we see a snippet of how this situation came to be. Years ago, Harry met a young Kevin Harrigan in juvenile detention. Even back then, Harry was quick with a disarming joke and slow to be intimidated by powerful people: When Kevin tells him his father is the infamous gangster Conrad Harrigan, Harry says “Never heard of him” with a grin. As he does in the present, Kevin comes across as a humble and likeable guy for a man in his position. This leads me to believe he’s secretly up to no good, of course.
We’ll get back to Harry in a moment, but it’s worth talking about the rest of the Harrigan clan first, because they’ve been keeping busy too. Foremost among them is Eddie, Kevin’s ne’er-do-well son, who’s now being hunted by rival gangster Richie Stevenson for his alleged role in the disappearance of Richie’s son Tommy. It’s all that Harry’s top guys Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) and Kiko (Antonio González Guerrero) can do to keep the guy alive long enough to make it back to the relative safety of grandpa Conrad’s country house.
Once there, he falls into the loving arms of Maeve, his adoring grandmother. Already suspected by Harry and Kevin of giving Conrad a bum steer when she told him Archie was a double agent for the Stevensons — it seems more likely he was a police informant, if anything — she’s equally at odds with her husband over Eddie’s potential. She sees greatness in the wastrel, while basically everyone else sees a liability. “There, there,” she coos to him, holding his head to her breasts, which are helping to hide a bag of coke that she then pulls out and gives to him. “Nan of the year,” Eddie says, echoing what I suspect a lot of male viewers would say if Helen Mirren cradled them against her bosom before giving them free blow.
While Conrad, Maeve, Kevin, and Eddie hole up at the house, other family members are out wheeling and dealing. Brendan, apparently seen as the Fredo of the family for his past failures, approaches his half-sister Seraphina with a business proposition he assures her will get him back in Conrad’s good graces and earn her a lot of money if she helps out. Unfortunately for, well, both of them, he couches this in a crude sexual come-on that leaves his sister (“half sister!” he keeps insisting pathetically when called on his comments) aghast, not that she was going to team up with this doofus anyway.
Kevin’s wife Bella also has big plans, ones that seem to put her at odds with the family interests. Though estranged from her aristocratic family, she nonetheless approaches her father, the condescending and casually, creepily sexist Lord Pennock (Steven Pacey), on behalf of a mysterious French client, Antonie (Grégoire Colin), Antoine wants his lordship’s government contacts to meet with his own unnamed partners or clients or backers or whatever.
Bella attempts to bring Harry in on the scheme — and on more than just that. Though he advises against her attempt to “leverage” Conrad, whatever that may mean, she barrels right ahead and propositions Harry to come up to the hotel room where she’s staying while her family’s gone to the mattresses to avoid Richie Stevenson’s wrath. Harry ignores the way she’s hitting on him, but there obviously used to be something there, and seemingly a lot more recently than their respective weddings.
This brings us back to Harry, of course, and his unpleasant rendezvous with Bella is just one in a series of such encounters. His day starts in the wee hours, as he oversees the cleanup of Conrad’s murder of the allegedly treacherous Archie. Shortly after returning home, he’s rousted by the cops, who knock down his door and bring him in for questioning regarding Archie’s disappearance. Surely this is no coincidence, but after Harry rules out surveillance (if they had a video or recording, Conrad would be in prison already), he can only assume that either someone talked or Archie was already a grass whose disappearance has them worried. C
As Harry tells O’Hara, the family attorney, it’s Maeve who’s his main concern. Conrad’s killing of a childhood friend over mere suspicion is completely out of character for him, but well within the behavioral parameters of his wife, it seems. But Conrad insists that while he can picture Archie selling him out to a rival for more money, becoming a rat would be completely out of character for him. Indeed, when we enter the police’s anti-Harrigan task force’s HQ, they mention receiving a call from an anonymous informant on the inside. They don’t know who it is — but if they sit back for a spell and let Harry do his job, he’ll lead them right to the snitch.
Harry is also racing to find out what happened to Tommy Stevenson before a war breaks out. He knows that war can and will hit home: Richie Stevenson calls him in to show him surveillance photos his men have taken of Harry’s daughter, and informs the fixer that unless he produces Tommy, they’ll kill his child as payback.
Harry interrogates Eddie, who finally admits he was with Tommy, but not much else. He tracks down the two other guys who were with him and Tommy during that disastrous night at the club, but they really don’t have any information on Tommy’s whereabouts; all they know is that Eddie knew the club owner, Valjon (Peter Ferdinando), personally.
That gives him the lead he needs. Harry and his minions return to the club, which apparently only ever plays the Prodigy’s greatest hits (“Firestarter” last time, “Breathe” this time; believe me I am not complaining). Once there, he beats the absolute dogshit out of Valjohn, who finally coughs up Tommy’s location: cut into pieces and stashed in a box in the basement of the club, with all his body parts — including his surprisingly large penis — wrapped in plastic.
There’s one bit I’ve saved for last, because Harry himself seems to have it lowest on his priority list: saving his failing marriage to Jan. Harry blows off the couples therapy session he swore he’d attend in order to deal with the Harrigan/Stevenson mess after he gets released by the cops. Jan winds up attending alone, then pouring a big glass of wine and telling Harry her next appointment will be with a divorce lawyer. Harry tries to bullshit his way back into her good graces, lying in a frankly irresponsible way that their daughter Gina isn’t in any danger over the Stevenson crisis. His options are admittedly limited — Richie has vowed to besiege Conrad’s house, so theoretically he’d be able to get to Gina even if Harry sent her to safety at the family manse — but he’s avoiding the truth because he knows it would harden Jan’s resolve against him. It’s a very understandable reason to lie, but no less shameful for it.
One thing I’ll say for this episode is that it’s some of the calmest filmmaking I’ve ever seen from director Guy Ritchie, once again working off a script from series creator Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth. There aren’t really any splashy images or flashy cuts, more just lingering shots of people aged 40-80 looking older and wiser than the various lads and louts who are giving them headaches.
And sexier, too. From Tom Hardy and Lara Pulver as the extinguished flames Harry and Bella to Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan as IGILFs (Irish Grandparents I’d Like to Fuck) Maeve and Conrad, there’s a lot of simmering going on here for actors of various demographics that can be sadly underrepresented in the simmer department. You love to see it.
I would, however, also love to see this show make a stronger argument for its existence. MobLand is very entertaining while it’s on, with a bunch of fine, fun actors making the crisp tough-guy dialogue sing. It’s just that the recipe is so familiar that the taste doesn’t linger when the meal is done. I’m looking for something that’ll make me say “Ooh, new MobLand is out!” instead of merely “Oh hey, new MobLand is out.”
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.
