MobLand Season 2, Episode 8 Takes a Devastating Turn

6 min readLast week I wrote a giddy hagiography of Frankie Cooper. It’s embarrassing how much I like him. I really should grow up, be a man, maintain some critical distance, and write in wry asides like a real English journalist.But I can’t help it. He’s such an irresistibly murderous bastard that he makes me want to kill a cat just to see how it feels. (The lawyers have advised me to clarify that I don’t actually want to kill a cat; no cats were harmed in the making of this opinion.)Well, Frankie, it’s been lovely. But there’s a new psychopath in town. Of course the Medusa had a vengeful son by the name of “Mad Dog”! Just out of prison for murder, he’s seen CCTV footage of Eddie, who was there when his daddy was killed, and he’s coming to the Cotswolds.“I’ll find them, Daddy,” says Kelly, pouring a bottle of whisky over his father’s coffin.But all that’s for episode 9. We’ve got the admin of episode 8 to sort through first.Harry Screws FrankieRemember Harry’s words at the end of episode 7? “Is that Michael Cooper? At 3 a.m. you’re gonna get clapped.”Well, Harry did indeed have Frankie Cooper’s boy killed. But not quite so easily as we were first led to believe. He wanted to fuck with Frankie in the process. Harry knew that Michael would call his dad, who has Newgate Prison sewn up tighter than a dodgy tailor’s pocket. Frankie therefore arranged for Michael to be moved to the solitary wing, where he would be safe.But as Harry explains to Kevin: “What Frankie’s forgot is that a bent screw is a bent screw… So if the CM’s [custodial manager] gonna take a tenner, what’s he gonna do for a twenty? Or in this case, 200 grand in a black bag in the dead of night on a pissing-down Thursday.”Harry then pays a couple of hired goons to string Michael up in his cell. Frankie is not going to be happy.Luke Varley/Paramount+Feast your eyes on TV’s best villain right now.Risky MincemeatIt’s time we gave Emmett J. Scanlan his flowers . He’s been ticking over in the background, doing a solid, likable job as the Harrigan dogsbody Paul. But he is changing now and emerging like a butterfly into the show’s comic sideline. There’s a real touch of the Baldricks about him, with a stroke of Hamlet’s gravedigger—the loyal dogsbody who gets lumbered with the shitty jobs and stays funny in spite of it all.The poor sod thinks he’s in for the noose after the Sicily debacle of episode 7. He’s begging for his life, so desperate that he thinks VIP tickets to Rod Stewart might save him. But no. They were never going to kill Paul. It was merely a simple lampoon. They want him to cut up Donnie’s stinking body in a shipping container.So Paul strips down to his leopard-print pants and, swinging his hips to the Rolling Stones’ “Mr Charm,” sets about chopping Donnie into vacuum-packable “bricks.” It’s all very Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but with more blood and less hairbrush. Long live Paul.Maeve Makes Eddie SweatEddie’s sinking deeper into the soup—and it’s all of his own doing. If only he weren’t—in Kevin’s words—such a “lazy, spoilt, entitled little cunt.” Maeve finds him in the sauna. He tells her their “situation” isn’t going to work.“Maeve, I fear our relationship is sailing into choppy water. You’re 80. I’m barely legal.”“What’s your point?”“Us.”Maeve feigns surprise. “This approach, this ploy. It’s depraved. And deeply optimistic.”Conrad, Eddie explains, is going to “piss his kegs.” Suddenly, so is Eddie, but not out of laughter. “Please don’t tell him; I’ll do anything.”She agrees, but only if Eddie apologizes. On his knees. To her phone camera. It’s all fun and games for Maeve. I suspect we haven’t seen the last of that video.Luke Varley/Paramount+Consider this a Pierce Brosnan appreciation moment.Harry’s All Out of NightmaresJan agrees to meet Harry. She wants to come clean, to pour out her heart. She tries to explain that she had a brief affair with a man who was using her to get to Harry and Conrad. But Harry already knows.“That’s my job,” he tells her. “To anticipate danger. Control outcomes. Minimize unwanted consequences.”She asks him about killing. About the nightmares. He says he doesn’t have any. You get the feeling Harry is all out of nightmares. Then he offers to help Jan and Gina run. Forever.“I can make that happen. Tonight,” he tells her. “You never have to see me again.”“What about you?” she asks. “Does no part of you want that?”For a moment, Harry almost seems human. Almost.The Woods Have EyesIt’s clear now: Conrad is losing his marbles. He wanders into the woods, calling out for his dead dogs. Then he stops, surrounded by swirling mists and squawking crows, and seems to realize just how far he’s slipping. He summons Kevin to the Cotswolds, to which the latter reluctantly submits. Conrad tells his son he’s seen a doctor. He wants to talk succession plans. Kevin, astonished at being asked such a question, reels furiously through the options.First, Eddie: “A lazy, entitled psychopath who I wouldn’t trust to light the barbecue.”Then Seraphina: “She would make a world-class businesswoman, but a kingpin? I don’t think she’s ever even touched a gun.”Conrad Sees Dead PeopleAnd then, just as Kevin is about to pitch himself, Conrad reveals what’s really going on. “I see the dead,” he hisses with a haunted, hounded look, the air of the ancient mariner. “They come to me at night. I see them in the woods. All the bodies, in the clothes they died in, their wounds fresh. Standing there, staring at me. They’re in my head, they’re in my soul.”It’s all very King Lear. They embrace and it’s lovely.Kevin goes to get the old man a brandy to calm his nerves. When he returns, the fear is gone from Conrad’s eyes. In its place: pure steel. And a shotgun pointed at Kevin’s head.“If you breathe a word of this to Bella, I’ll kill you both,” he growls.Conrad is another man again. As though the whole confession were just a performance. But it wasn’t. It was a glimpse of the terrifying disintegration of a man who can no longer distinguish between his different selves.Kevin can’t believe it. “Pull the trigger then,” he shouts snottily.“Fuck off now, Kevin,” Conrad says. And, like a beaten dog (though of course, Conrad would never treat a dog in this way), off Kevin fucks.Tears of a ClownWell, we’ve spent most of this episode wondering about Frankie’s response to the murder of his son. But here we are. Harry calls Frankie. He wants to reach a treaty. He’s killed Frankie’s son, and now he hopes Frankie will back down.Here we see a side to Frankie we haven’t seen before: crying, blubbering, a human man in real pain. He’s looking through old photographs of Michael.“He’s dead, Harry,” he says through snot and tears. “Why did you have to do that? I can’t explain it. The pain.”“It’s the game,” says Harry, heavy as stone.To which Frankie replies: “Anyway, I’m sure you understand. After all, Harry, you’re a father too. Ain’tcha?”It’s a less-than-veiled threat; Frankie’s message: this war isn’t over until the babies are all dead. He’s going after Gina.Luke Varley/Paramount+How will MobLand season 2 end?Dead in the WaterAnd so we end the episode in truly miserable style. A montage of sadness, soundtracked by Johnny Cash’s cover of “Ain’t No Grave”:Conrad knows his mind is slipping.Kevin knows that all he really wants is his father’s love—and that he may never get it.Eddie is sliding toward something terrible: we see the Irish crew’s CCTV footage of him in the pub before Medusa was killed. Mad Dog now knows who he is.Jan has killed a man, and in doing so has lost a piece of herself.Harry knows Gina is in Frankie’s crosshairs.Tattersall has an informant in the Harrigan crew. And he knows something about the lake.And then there’s that body at the bottom of the lake outside the Cotswolds mansion.Is it Richie, Geoff Bell’s chief antagonist of season 1? The Harrigans have made a lot of enemies over the past eighteen episodes. And now, at last, the dead are joining the queue.