Summary
The Westies is really heating up on all fronts in “Rad Tad”. While there’s a hint of predictability to the main storylines, there are enough twists and turns elsewhere to keep viewers on their toes.
Things are going from bad to worse in The Westies, but the misfortunes of all of the characters are good news for the audience, since nobody ever made a great mob drama about things going really swimmingly. Season 1 has been a parade of bad decisions since it began, but in Episode 6, everything is going so badly for everyone that it’s genuinely impressive. If things are this much of a mess with two episodes still to go, one can only imagine how fraught everything will be by the end.
We’ll start with Jimmy and the drugs, I suppose. After his recent maneuvering, he’s moving product hand over fist, but Jimmy’s problem is that he’s too generous, and his secondary problem is that too much of the supply is being siphoned off for personal use by his overly enthusiastic friends. Jimmy’s all about paying people what they’re worth and treating the neighborhood with respect, but maybe he’s starting to realise that the reason Sweeney doesn’t do that is that it’s bad for business — and he likes being alive.
To Jimmy, then, the titular Rad Tad Guggenheim seems like a solution to multiple problems. He’s a strung-out yuppie with a sales pitch. If Jimmy fronts him a key of pure cocaine, he’ll sell it to the rich circles he moves around in at enormous profit. A kilo costs $100,000, a figure that Tad claims he can drum up without fuss. Jimmy, somewhat inexplicably, believes him. But Jimmy is also short on the latest haul because he gave too much of the cash and coke out to the boys. He can’t afford to buy the kilo he plans to give to Tad.
Initially, Jimmy goes to Sweeney, who isn’t inclined to front him any money to teach him an important lesson about business. He does, however, direct him to Ruby Stein, the city’s premier loan shark, but he’s not inclined to lend to Jimmy either. The best he can do is $50,000, on double his usual vig. Jimmy then puts that money up for a key from his Latin connect, Nelson, almost getting everyone killed over the other half. In short, Jimmy leaves with the drugs, but with hefty debts against them that he needs Tad’s business to pay off.
Naturally, Tad isn’t reliable. He’s actually waiting for Gotti, who confiscates the uncut coke that Jimmy was trying to sell him, keeps Tad as a hostage, and instructs Nelson not to sell to Jimmy under pain of death. Basically, Gotti is now Jimmy’s only option to have drugs supplied, and considering he owes Ruby Stein fifty grand, he’s stuck. He has to make the deal Gotti wants. They agree to a 75/25 split and a pact of secrecy, since neither Sweeney nor Big Paul can find out about the arrangement. The only entry fee is shooting Tad, which Mickey handles. I’d say Tad earned it.
Elsewhere in The Westies Episode 6, Keenan is on the warpath. Despite being a little worse for wear after the beating he took, he’s doubling down on his work with Polk, determined to ruin Sweeney’s entire operation. And that starts with his other lieutenant, Dukey Sullivan. Dukey’s much more liable to flip than Eddie was, and more to the point, Keenan knows how to entrap him, since he has a habit of raping and cutting the faces of working girls across the city. Keenan approaches one and swaps her heroin in exchange for a signed affidavit. Just like that, Dukey is dead to rights.
But that isn’t enough for Keenan — he wants Dukey dead, period. Despite claiming to Polk that he’s not out for revenge, he corners Dukey — who, coincidentally, is the guy who urinated on him in the previous episode — and instead of arresting him, viciously beats him to death. I assume he’s dead, anyway; it isn’t explicitly confirmed, but it’s certainly the implication. Earlier, Keenan had laid out some of his backstory to Polk, describing how his wife’s stillbirth, drug addiction, and eventual death by overdose sent him spiralling. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest he’s still not entirely on an even keel.
The most dramatic turn in “Rad Tad” arguably involves Bridget, who volunteers herself as the triggerwoman in Brendan’s plan to kill Markham using a car loaded with Semtex. The detonation requires a clear line of sight, and since Markham personally interrogated Brendan at Maze Prison, he’d be liable to recognise him. Bridget offers to go instead, though accompanied by Mary in case she gets cold feet.
And, naturally, she does. Bridget was already worried about civilian casualties, so when the “Mothers for Irish Freedom” — an activist group of mothers who have lost children to the cause — turn up to protest, getting in the way of the car bomb, Bridget refuses to pull the trigger. Markham gets away unharmed, the opportunity is lost, and Mary, who seems a bit more radicalised than Bridget is, knows that it was her fault. I’m sure Brendan won’t be best pleased.
