Summary
The Westies really gets going in “A Right Rose Tree”, juggling multiple interweaving subplots and delivering surprising turns in each.
The word of the week is once again “narcotics”. Who’s selling them? Who’s taking them? These are the big questions underpinning The Westies in Episode 5, “A Right Rose Tree”, and the answers are… well, let’s just say complicated. Alliances are shifting and contorting to suit everyone’s private personal agendas, but every alliance is fragile. “All bosses are snakes,” John Gotti says at one point, and the hour does absolutely everything it can to prove him correct.
His boss, technically, is Big Paul, who remains disinterested in selling narcotics and adamant that the Italians are not to whack the Irish, despite Gotti having just tried. There’s a tentative peace, and the agreement is that both parties will keep well away from cocaine, but neither party is really happy about it, least of all Sweeney, who thinks that the attempt on his life should probably be answered in some way. To do this, he decides to front Jimmy some cash to purchase cocaine from Leon, with the idea being that Jimmy will sell it as if he’s doing so behind Sweeney’s back, so he can’t be touched for going against Big Paul’s orders. “You can’t trust anybody”, Sweeney warns. Oh, the irony!
Of course, nobody knows that Charlie is snitching to Gotti, so he finds out about the plan pretty much immediately. After a crash course in drug dealing, Jimmy agrees to meet Leon to exchange a hefty amount of money for a sizeable amount of product, but Charlie turns on Leon and shoots him in the head with a mind to stealing both bags. However, Mickey is lurking nearby and shoots Charlie, so Jimmy and Mickey end up with the money and the drugs. They take both back to the apartment, still covered in blood, where Bridget spots them and pretends to take the moral high ground even though she’s working on an arguably riskier operation, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Jimmy returns the money to Sweeney, who tells him they need to find a new connection in Leon’s absence, but keep their dealing low-key so they don’t lose Big Paul’s protection. As it happens, Big Paul knows they’re dealing and doesn’t care. When Gotti, who had found out about the plan through Charlie, asks Paul for permission to whack Jimmy and Mickey, Paul denies the request and tells him that he’s happy for the Irish to poison themselves “because they’re animals”. Needless to say, that doesn’t satisfy Gotti.
Gotti’s ploy is to jump Jimmy and Mickey and pitch them a 50/50 deal. He still has connections with Latin gangs, which is what they need to keep dealing, and that way he gets his wish of getting into the narcotics trade behind Paul’s back. He’s happy to give Jimmy and Mickey time to think about it, but it’s obvious that they don’t really have a choice.
Speaking of people without choices, Keenan doesn’t fare especially well in The Westies Episode 5. Now that Danny is in a federal safehouse, Polk is using him to strongarm Keenan into wearing a wire and getting Sweeney on tape confessing to one thing or another. Her idea is to suggest that Eddie Breen, Sweeney’s right-hand man, is talking to the Feds, which is a pretty tough sell. Even though Keenan warns her of that, though, she persists, and he tells Sweeney that he saw Eddie’s name on a list of confidential informants. Sweeney seems to buy it, but he won’t admit to anything on tape, so Polk is unhappy with the results and pushes Keenan to arrest Breen, offering immunity on everything except murder as an incentive (this won’t protect him from the fact he whacked Pat, obviously, which I suspect may become important down the line).
Arresting Breen tips Keenan’s hand. He doesn’t admit to anything, and when Keenan, on Polk’s instruction, goes back to Sweeney to try and coerce him into a recorded confession, Breen is already free thanks to Sweeney’s high-power lawyer. Sweeney’s inner circle all beat up Keenan, who does a respectable job of fighting back, and discover the wire he’s wearing. He’s beaten half to death and even urinated on, but the fact that the Feds know where he is saves his life. Still, it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be able to get much from Sweeney now. He’s probably going to be keen on getting some revenge, though.
On the subject of revenge, that brings us nicely to Bridget, who is still working with Brendan to target Colonel Markham, a British operative who killed her parents for being revolutionaries (which, she proudly admits, they were). Brendan’s plan is to use a car full of Semtex to kill Markham while he’s accepting an award at the British consulate, which will almost certainly cause civilian casualties.
It also means acquiring Semtex, which isn’t easy to do. For this, they turn to a guy named Randall Kent, who needs $50,000 to make it happen. Brendan assures him he can procure the funds, but when Randall turns up with the explosives, Brendan just executes him, much to Bridget’s horror. Call me crazy, but I think that the torture Brendan was subjected to in the Maze prison on Markham’s orders hasn’t left him especially even-keel. And now poor Bridget is in way over her head.
