To be totally fair to MobLand season 2 episode 9, “Nervous Breakdown,” it’s extraordinary from start to finish. The laughs don’t let up, and it tenses increasingly till it reaches a fever pitch in its final scene, leaving us on a cliffhanger.
The way Tom Hardy pronounces “burgundy” is a whole episode in its own right. All hail Ronan Bennett and this (hopefully) genre-defining tomfoolery. It’s the stuff of finale magic, but this isn’t even the finale. No, we have the good fortune of one more installment of this raucous season.
The special of the day
The episode opens with really the most unhinged scene yet, which is extraordinary in this show, because no one dies. It’s Frankie (Johnny Flynn) in a tux at a black-tie event Kat (Janet McTeer) is attending, posing as a silver-service waiter. Has a more passive-aggressive icebreaker ever been spoken than “Hand-dived scallop, Orkney crab tartlet, or gougère with black truffle custard and winter thyme?” Frankie gestures artistically at the platter as he introduces the special of the day: “My son is dead.”
We surmised in the last episode that the show’s main character, fixer Harry (Tom Hardy), decided to kill Frankie’s son to throw him off-kilter and give himself an edge in their mob war. While it wasn’t clear how Harry intends for that to pan out, and it still isn’t, we were clearly right. As Frankie himself confirms, “He wants me to go mad, go off task.” Has he, perhaps, been propelled up in confidence to a level where he may be dangerously unstoppable?
“I know the president. I’ve got Beelzebub’s WhatsApp,” is Frankie’s impression of Kat. This show has the best writing, and Frankie has some of the best lines, amen. He also distantly threatens to “sneak in here while you’re asleep and cut your f***ing heart out,” proving that while he is just a funny guy and there’s nothing any of us can do about that, he’s also a little bit done with the jokes. Kat’s counter-threat is calling “Black Flag," a diplomatic code word that could see him carted off, no questions asked.
He must be in a dangerous mood to insult the titanically powerful Kat on this level, and just like that, this episode is dripping in petrol, waiting to blow. He finishes his threat: “Finally, the scallop, poached in oat milk and finished with a brown butter emulsion and caviar.” Don’t mind if we do.
Then he leaves, scallop in mouth, proclaiming “F*** me, that is gorgeous,” wiping his hand on a waiter and yelling “black flag” for no reason whatsoever. Heath Ledger’s Joker is strong in this one. If Flynn isn’t immediately cast in an assortment of roles just like this, we are truly living in the Matrix. What Frankie is actually doing here, besides being deliciously sinister, is setting up a ploy he plans to execute within the next 24 hours. Bring it on.
Bonnie and Clyde ride again
Gina (Teddie Allen), Harry’s daughter, has absconded from the Cotswolds. About time. Eddie (Anson Boon) wakes up to Grandma Maeve (Helen Mirren) leering over him in bed. It’s simply disgusting, without any saving grace, and we’re here for it. She gives him one last task: Harry. That’s going to go so well.
Conrad (Pierce Brosnan) and Maeve are back to their roots, Bonnie and Clyde on a job, and why they can’t always be this is an open question, because they were born for it. They call Paul (Emmett J. Scanlan) to heel, and he comes, but not before sneaking a peek into the bag going into the boot. Nothing he says or does is not hilarious, so we’ll leave his reaction for your unspoiled viewing enjoyment.
The same applies to him going to the pub with Eddie later, Eddie trying to get him on board with Maeve’s latest hare-brained scheme. In terms of characters, this show is an embarrassment of riches. It’s rare to have so many characters who are all actually the best character at the same time. That said, when Eddie later says to Paul, “How’s it feeling? Your bollocks in my briefcase,” we’re cheering. Maybe because takedowns in this show are so savage, they’re brilliant no matter whose mouth they come out of.
Perhaps one of the best shots in modern television is Conrad driving while Maeve stuffs her face with chips from the chippie, in her sweater-weather loungewear in the passenger seat, looking for all the world like a middle-aged couple off to an Airbnb, if it weren’t for the recording of the gangster Conrad tortured to death screaming on the in-car entertainment system. They’re listening out for his directions to the spot where a 500-kilo sale is going down for 15 to 18 million sterling.
Happy families
Jan (Joanne Froggatt) and Harry are back to playing happy families, and with all that’s gone on between them (she stabbed him “accidentally,” their daughter became a criminal, and he saved her life twice), it’s funnier than it’s ever been. He asks if she can hurry up in the bath; she obviously doesn’t. She has her headphones in as the balaclava’d men Harry is worried about come knocking, and he guns them down, which she only just hears through her mellow folk. She opens the door to the carnage, and Harry whispers sorry, bazooka in hand. Sorry for the disturbance, as you were. But please do hurry up, if it’s all the same to you.
In a stroke of genius, this is cut together with Frankie’s kidnapping of Gina. We get our first glimpse of Frankie’s home life, and it’s heartbreaking, a huge credit to this show’s emotional range. His ex is so viciously abusive she makes Maeve look sweet. While blocking out the abuse from his ex, despite it ringing in his ears like tinnitus, Frankie gets the call that greenlights his mission to get to Harry. His face lights up. In his dressing gown, with toast still hanging out of his mouth, gun in one hand and brew in the other, out he dashes, making time to coo at his two confused infants in highchairs on the way. There appears to still be blood on his face. Well, at least he’s eating.
“Runs some reds” doesn’t quite cut it for this kind of driving, but it gets him where he needs to be, which is right in the middle of the road Harry is walking up. But his ship has come in: Gina is walking past, on her way from the Cotswolds. “Get in the f***ing car” is delivered with such jovial levity, it’s kind of an actual delight. He sticks his gun in the air, and it goes rat-a-tat-tat as he drives away grinning. For reasons, which he definitely has for everything, all the time.
Kevin takes over
Cut to Jan having a breakdown and Harry telling Kevin (Paddy Considine) he will really struggle to fix this one. Kevin decides to agree to Frankie’s terms: kill Conrad and Maeve, and they can get Gina back. And who can blame him? “Harry, I’m taking over today, and either you’re with me or against me,” Kevin says. Harry replies, “I don’t think you can do it. I don’t think you can kill your dad.”
It’s great when there’s real tension between these two, because you don’t know where it’ll end up. When it’s anyone else on the wrong side of Harry’s plans, you kind of do.
Gina in the panic room
Kneecap blares in Frankie’s huge house. He’s still in his dressing gown, breezing past his many henchmen on his way to his underground panic room, hidden behind (yes) a secret door disguised as a bookshelf, with a book as a lever. Is MobLand parodic, or is it Frankie with the taste for parody? That’s a commendably indistinguishable concern, and the end result is that Frankie is exactly the rock star his terrible-brilliant shell suits indicate. Kneecap are Irish, by the way, like Fontaines D.C., who wrote the theme song, just one more little detail that communicates MobLand’s central family, the Harrigans, so well.
Gina is holding her own in this panic room almost more than she’s being held hostage. Notably, she has finally shown her dad some respect, and it feels like a light in the darkness (“He’s my hero... ’cause anyone who f***s with me always ends up dead.”) She’s a gargantuan character for someone with far fewer lines than the show’s leading gangsters, and she has chemistry with Frankie. But who doesn’t?
It's almost hard to tell if she’s going to pull an Eddie and jump Frankie’s bones for no reason other than to annoy her dad. That is, if he doesn’t jump her first. Which he does, actually, but one gets the impression it’s only because she brandished a knife at him. Which he gave her. Because, of course, the cat-and-mouse between Frankie and Harry plays out just the same between Frankie and Harry’s daughter. Why wouldn’t it? The symmetry is expressive.
Gina taunts Frankie about his dead son, and he cries suddenly and vulnerably with shocking credibility. It’s not the least compelling and original thing about the shell suit-wearing, Kneecap-listening, abuse-surviving kingpin in touch with his feminine side. He later cements his chemistry with Harry with bona fide flirting, utterly homicidal intent notwithstanding, or you could’ve fooled us. Either way, it’s some of the funniest dialogue of the season.
Final thoughts on the new episode
And now, the climax. Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones) tells Frankie that Kavanagh took his bait and sent the cops to the Cotswolds to unearth the body in the lake, sure to cause significant inconvenience for the Harrigans. Conrad has a full-blown break from reality while driving to the job. Frankie calls Harry and sets up his trap, which Harry walks right into, meeting him one-on-one in a pub with Frankie’s army outside.
“It’s not loyalty, it’s my job,” Harry explains to Frankie. It feels, somehow, like the most honest he’s been all series. Then he unleashes what may be MobLand’s most diabolical monologue, about what he’ll do to Frankie if he hurts Gina, including wearing his face to Notting Hill Carnival, or something. We’re not quite sure; we blocked it out from the actual horror of his soulless smile as he said it. Could it be we might actually end this series on Team Frankie? Harry’s always been terrifying, but he’s never been as terrifying as this.
Harry walks out of the trap, perhaps thinking he’s won, having surmised he could physically destroy Frankie in seconds with just the two of them in the room, and so he gets Frankie to call off the hit on Gina. But Harry may be wrong. On his way out, he takes a call from Kat by necessity and gets poached for real, receiving the news that the Harrigans are over and congratulations on his new job — working for her, of course. She has been headhunting him for a mighty long time. And indeed, Kavanagh and her cronies stand over the Harrigans’ lake, possibly about to blow their crime empire wide open with the crucial evidence lifted out of it.
New episodes of MobLand premiere Fridays on Paramount+. Check back next week as we recap the season 2 finale.
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