MobLand is not thinking deep thoughts. That’s a compliment. Unlike, say, The Last of Us, this show about violent people doesn’t spend its runtime weeping and sweating and getting stress hives as it LarryDavidCantDecide.gif’s the morality of torture and murder. Turns out it’s not that deep. The characters on MobLand revenge-kill each other in painfully theatrically ways because they’re not good people. Simple as. Creator Ronan Bennett and his cowriter Jez Butterworth have no interest in trying to persuade you otherwise. After the carnage of this particular outing, they couldn’t if they tried.
Directed with panache by Lawrence Gough, who has to make both an intimate but duplicitous conversation in a real country pub and a chainsaw massacre in a spooky crime-boss warehouse work, this episode picks up right where the last one left off. Harry and his motorbike arrive a few minutes too late at the site of the slaughter during the jewel deal gone bad. Neither Seraphina Harrigan nor her half-brother Brendan are anywhere to be found. The word WAR, written in blood across the floor, is hard to miss, however.
It doesn’t take long to learn where the missing siblings went. They’ve been shipped in boxes from Antwerp to Amsterdam. They’re now being held prisoner in a fortified warehouse owned by Richie Stevenson’s Mexican allies, who contracted out the hit on the jewel deal to their Moroccan associates. Harry murders an enormous number of Moroccans, including unarmed guys who just work at their drug processing facility and have nothing to do with the muscle or brains ends of the operation, to find this out.
But Conrad finds out on his own, from a surprising source: Maeve. She claims Richie texted her this information. She refuses to show Conrad the text when asked, though, because of course it doesn’t exist: She actually found out from a phone call she place to Richie, during which he simply cackled about double-crossing her and hung up. That would be a lot harder to explain.
Before long, Richie calls up the family for a video chat between himself, them, and their missing relatives Brendan and Seraphina, who are both about to be chopped up with a chainsaw. (Maeve has Donald Trump’s talent for deal-making, apparently.) This is happening under the supervision of Jaime López (Jordi Molla`), a stylish, sunglasses-indoors type who runs the cartel in question and hates Conrad for racistly insulting his father 30 years earlier. There will be no bargaining with this man.
But there may still be a way to stop him. Harry finally contacts Donnie, the American who’s been pestering Harry to call someone named Kat all season long, and places the call. Kat (Janet McTeer) turns out to be an obviously either very wealthy or very powerful (or both) American woman, who ends the chainsaw massacre with a phonecall. Not in time for Brendan, unfortunately, but Seraphina will live to scheme another day. Now Harry owes Kat a favor, a debt he’s clearly been trying to avoid incurring.
Back at the ranch, Maeve keeps pouring poison in Conrad’s ear regarding Harry and Jan. Jan sneaks down to the village for a drink with her undercover-cop pal Alice, who is threatened by chief Harrigan hitman Paul (a menacing Emmett J Scanlan). Jan and Harry’s daughter Gina spends the day getting to know Eddie Harrigan, quickly seeing through his lame pick-up artist trick — but whether because she finds his sleaziness perversely attractive, wants to get back at her parents, or simply appreciates the effort, she fucks him anyway. Kevin Harrigan gets in touch with Harry’s housekeeper to get the location of the nursing home where her mother — and, more importantly, the prison guard who raped him — now lives. Kev’s wife Bella continues running her ill-advised influence-peddling scam.
And Conrad seems increasingly out of touch. He’s as blustery and bombastic as ever, but he can no longer grasp the finer details or see all the angles. His closest allies all pursue schemes of their own. And his organization is full of turncoats, rats, and spies, either for their own benefit or the enemy’s. He’s at the wheel, but he’s in the dark. Take a look at the world right now, take a look at the man who runs it, take a look at the situation he and we find ourselves in, and ask yourself: Is that good?
I’ll tell you what is good, though: Tom Hardy, action antihero. I never wanna see this actor do this kind of bang-bang shoot’em-up style stuff wearing a uniform or a badge, unless he’s explicitly playing a bad cop. As all his best roles prove, Hardy is an agent of chaos, a fly in the ointment, a monkey in the wrench, a pain in the ass. He shoots people to prove he means business, he uses unarmed men as human shields to open doors he knows are heavily guarded, he interrogates a man he disemboweled. The closest this man should ever get to playing a cop is if they ever need to reboot the Punisher.
“As all his best roles prove, Tom Hardy is an agent of chaos, a fly in the ointment, a monkey in the wrench, a pain in the ass.”
And for what, by the way? For what reason is he killing a couple dozen people, creating scores of grieving wives and husbands and mothers and fathers and daughters and sons and friends and coworkers? Why is he giving dozens of families just as much cause to launch a vendetta as the Stevensons and the Harrigans themselves have? Because he’s a Harrigan soldier, and Harrigan lives are more important, and he’s gonna kill and torture whoever he has to in order to save those Harrigans. Again, simple as. We’re not asked to understand, we’re not asked to excuse, we’re not asked to forgive. This guy’s a scumbag. It’s just that because he’s the star of the show, he’s our scumbag.
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.
Leave a Reply