Summary
MobLand builds excellent tension in Episode 5, but it also reveals that we’re following the wrong family and should probably be Team Stevenson.
The fifth episode of MobLand is built around a single sustained run of tension that plays like a breath held long enough to sting the lungs. This was to be expected after the surprising reveal that Richie Stevenson had invited the entire Harrigan clan to Tommy’s funeral. But the real reveal of Episode 5 is surprising. I’m pretty sure we’re following the bad guys here.
You can blame Geoff Bell, who’s really fantastic in “Funeral for a Friend”. But you can also blame Maeve and Eddie, who’re both in the running for the most easily detestable TV characters in recent memory. The creeping dread of Tommy’s funeral isn’t whether Richie will try to kill everyone, although he might, or that the Harrigans will jump the gun and set off a grenade at the wake, although they almost do, but that you come to realize throughout it how much you want the Harrigans to get smoked. I wasn’t really expecting that.
I didn’t care before. I thought the show was entertaining, obviously, but in a mob drama about two warring crime families, both sides are fair game, and the one you tend to root for is the one you’re following. But it’s hard to look at the events of the previous few episodes and see any scenario in which this isn’t entirely the Harrigans’ fault. Nobody on that side of the aisle has yet shown a flicker of emotion as relatable and human as Richie’s outpouring of grief for Tommy. And he’s still the most reasonable figure, even despite that. He’s willing to avert a war that the Harrigans are distressingly intent on causing.
Not all the Harrigans, to be fair. And I think this is why Harry is such a compelling protagonist. He doesn’t make the decisions, he just ensures that things go as smoothly as possible once they’re made. He’s the only one who seems to realize that Richie’s invite is a genius tactical play. Accepting leaves the Harrigans vulnerable, but the optics of refusing would be worse. The decision is made to reluctantly attend, but measures need to be taken to ensure there’s a back-up plan.
The responsibility for this once again falls to Harry. Luckily, he’s good at his job, and has an inside man; one of Richie’s goons has been sleeping with his wife, Vron, and Harry has the evidence to prove it. Unless he wants that evidence to come to light, he needs to hide a small arsenal of firearms and explosive ordnance in Richie’s garage, so that when the wake is underway, the Harrigans can arm themselves. Just in case, of course.
The wildcards remain Eddie and Maeve, who’re clearly in cahoots and determined to start a war at any cost. Eddie is intolerably smug, so it was great fun to see Harry terrify him in MobLand Episode 5. But as long as he has the support of the family matriarch, he seems to be able to get away with anything, much as I doubt he’ll survive the rest of the season. Richie knows that Eddie killed Tommy, but he’s willing to let him live as long as he doesn’t see him out and about. But you can probably consider that goodwill gesture irrelevant given the events at the end of the episode, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Geoff Bell and Tom Hardy in MobLand | Image via Paramount+
But we can’t talk about that without talking about Maeve. She’s eager to attend the funeral just to rub it in Vron’s face, and when Vron rightly throws her mockery back at her, she tries to push Eddie into starting trouble. It almost works, but cooler heads prevail. It also helps that Kevin drugs her champagne. It’s almost as if her acting this way isn’t an entirely new or unexpected thing.
But Maeve wakes up back at the Harrigan country pile fuming. She knows she was drugged, and immediately places an angry phone call. The next thing we see is Vron getting into her car and the vehicle exploding with her inside. It’s so obviously her who arranged it that it’s going to be interesting to see how Conrad responds. As for Richie, I think it’s pretty obvious how he’ll take it.
It’s the peripheral subplots that feel a little light for now. We don’t hear anything more about Bella’s arrangement with Antoine and nothing is mentioned about Harry’s past with the American who was asking about him. There’s also a deal brewing between the black sheep of the Harrigan family, Seraphina and Brendan, though it’s hard to see how that’s going to relate to anything else going on. Oh, and we also get a snippet of backstory involving that prison guard Harry recognised in the nursing home – he and his goons seem to have raped Kevin when he was in jail – but, again, no real indication of where this might all be going.
But I’m invested. Ironically, I’m mostly invested to see all of our main characters – with the possible exception of Harry and Jan, the latter of whom continues to develop a budding friendship with an undercover cop – get killed. That’s a new vibe, if nothing else. We’ll have to see how it all shakes out.
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