“Birdland” picks up right where Mobland episode 4 left off, with the fate of JoJo, the unlucky Frankie Cooper thug, and kidnapped Conrad. It delivers one of the episode’s funniest scenes, as Conrad strolls out of the barn half-naked and covered in blood, his madness on full display. Conrad forgets that Brendan is dead, the first real sign of how serious his condition has become. Could it be dementia?
Why does Harry finish JoJo off? Probably to protect Seraphina, but it could come back to bite him. Conrad’s assessment of JoJo as a “silly ponce” for dying from his protracted torture is vintage Guy Ritchie. Meanwhile, Kavanagh is onto Harry, working out that Finch’s suicidal hanging was staged because the knot was on the wrong side.
The Harrigans at the table
Harry’s family “sit” brings every Harrigan under one roof, and Helen Mirren has some of the best lines. Maeve reaches for Gakbu’s name and lands on “Bazooka” and “Kabuki,” close but not quite. Every Harrigan has huge panache, immoral but magnetic.
Maeve is now openly hostile to Harry, making his place with the family untenable. Caught between Conrad and Kevin, who both value him less and suspect him more than ever before, who is Harry even working for anymore? Bella does coke alone while watching daytime TV, then admits to the whole family that she propositioned Harry. It’s a weird combination of not her finest hour and strangely admirable.
The sit pauses the feuding, but the enemies keep piling up: the Stevensons, Gakbu, Kat McAllister (whom Harry had to involve to save Seraphina from the Stevensons), and now the Medusa.
Jan and Donnie
The showrunner reveals Donnie’s deceit surprisingly early. Harry tells Jan that she has been recorded, and she proves it herself when she spots a call to Seraphina on Donnie’s phone at his house. The show could have dug deeper into one odd moment, when Jan calls out Donnie’s fibs about having a wife, then carries on enjoying his company.
Tattersall is more of a gangster than any gangster on the show. “That’s the whole Brady Bunch in a job lot. Gather your troops, sunshine,” he tells Frankie, the actual gangster, sending him to raid the house and kill every Harrigan in it.
Kenmare
In Ireland, Eddie introduces himself as Powell, the alias Maeve gave him in an earlier episode. His attempt to assassinate the Medusa is rubbish. The Medusa survives, so he will surely return as we learn what he means to the Harrigans.
Gina walks away from Eddie in the middle of a dark Kenmare road after their argument, and he looks devastated. It is the most human Eddie has ever looked, as if he has emotions deeper than annoyance.
Paul and Harry gossiping over what Paul overheard Maeve say plays like locker room chat and pitch-perfect Ritchie lad humor. It sends Harry flying a chopper to Kenmare, where he shoots down Eddie and Gina’s attackers.
Tom Hardy is brilliant in that final Kenmare scene, a small light in the darkness behind the wall. Harry is nothing like the deranged narcissists Conrad, Maeve, and Eddie, or the casually cruel Bella. He is twice the man Kevin is, who, as Bella put it, only finally found his balls in season 2. He is a soldier, a reticent one, and it’s all somehow in his face as he confronts Gina after killing around four of her attackers. He looks down as if ashamed, just about the only logical reaction to killing any MobLand character has ever had. Perhaps he is remembering Jan’s biting words, that Gina is better off with anyone but him. When he finally looks up, his pained expression says everything he doesn’t have the words for. This is now twice that Eddie couldn’t protect Gina, and Harry had to step in.
It does feel like plot armor that Frankie’s home invasion fails to kill a single Harrigan, but it can be forgiven. None of these characters is a drag on screen, and they should all get more screen time. The show must now reveal the fallout of Harry’s absence during the Harrigans’ darkest hour. It is, of course, Maeve’s fault for sending Eddie and Gina into a death trap, and surely only Conrad remains on her side.
Facing this reckoning, it’s sink or swim for Maeve—differentiate or die. Harry may have won back some of Gina’s respect, though she could just as easily cut him out after that harrowing gunfire. Frankie has burned the Harrigan home down, but will it push them together, or will their vitriolic chemistry explode the chopper they’re all in before episode 6?
New episodes of MobLand premiere Fridays on Paramount+. Check back next week as we recap episode 6.
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