Season one
Episode Two
As it's the rumour going around, Darren is waiting outside Jimmy Byrne's house waiting for him to come back so he can take revenge for the killing of his brother. Meanwhile, John Boy and his crew are getting ready to colelct a shipment of drugs coming in the next morning, and Mary intends to see a psychic, worried about where her late brother's activities may have landed him in any afterlife that may exist. Trish phones Nidge, angry that he appears to have forgotten his own son's birthday, which is tomorrow. As Darren leaves Mary's house she fumes that someone keeps putting their rubbish in her wheelie bin. This may seem a small thing but will be seen to evoke a violent overreaction at the end of the episode.
Darren goes to see the so-called psychic and warns him that he had better tell his sister what she wants to hear, or ... he places a pistol on the desk meaningfully, and says he'll be back if Mary gets told anything that will upset her. The gang collect the drugs at the docks, but as they arrive in the van to the lockup Darren realises the police are staking out the place and they have to fall back on plan B, which involves finding another place on the fly. Tommie knows a guy, JP, and they're able to use his garage to store the gear.
The drugs are distributed to various dealers in John Boy's network, and Mary rings Darren to tell him that she has received a call from Peter, the psychic, to tell her that Robbie is in Heaven. Nidge proposes to Trish, who is delighted and accepts. JP turns up at the party Tommie invited him to in gratitude for getting them out of a scrape, but he's high and soon gets on Huey's nerves. The night does not go well. Rosie visits Darren and they reminisce, but Darren says he realises she is with Stumpy now. Anything he can do for her he will. She seems disappointed. Later Darren gets a call from Jimmy Byrne, who tells him he didn't kill his brother, but he had better stay away from his wife or he'll kill him. He says he's coming back to Ireland, and Darren will be waiting.
As a final coda to the show, Darren then hears someone putting their rubbish in Mary's bin. With displaced rage bubbling up inside him and needing to let it out, he runs out, catches the guy and pounds the crap out of him.
QUOTES
Trish (on phone): "Ah where the hell is that clown?"
Nidge (annoyed): "Ah what are ye givin' out about now?"
Trish: "The clown? The clown for Warren's birthday?"
Peter (the psychic): "What I was saying to your sister, to Mary, is that in cases of violent death, the spirit of the loved one is sometimes unable to move on."
Darren: "Stuck?"
Peter: "In a sense."
Darren: "That's the thing that upsets Mary the most. So his spirit is stuck someplace?"
Peter: "It's not a place as a state of being."
Darren: "But his spirit is still stuck?"
Peter: "Stuck wouldn't be right in the sense that the soul itself of its own volition decides to stay."
Darren: "So this place that he's in..."
Peter: "Well it's not a place..."
Darren: "I understand. But this place he's in, it would be somewhere sad?"
Peter: "Well, that would be my sense of it."
Darren: "But all this **** is making my sister very upset, yeah? So I want you to call her, and I want you to tell her that Robbie is gone to a good place. Will you remember that? And that he's happy, and he's going to Heaven, and he loves her, and all the rest of the other bull****. Or else I'm going to have to come back."
Rosie to Darren: "I wish, I wish I could just click me heels and go back, and all this was different."
John Boy to Darren, on his arrival at the party: "Here he is! Man of the Match!"
John Boy to Darren: "Ireland is ****ed for the next ten years, you know that don't ye? This is the only game you can make any money. Make your money and get out. People are going to be selling up all sorts of stuff, houses, land, all you need is the money. Banks won't give it to you. Here, I was thinkin' , maybe I could set up me own bank. What do ye think? Couldn't be worse than the bastards that are there now."
QUESTIONS?
It's obvious Stumpy suspects Rosie is meeting Darren, but how much does he actually suspect, and how far is he willing to take it?
MIRROR, MIRROR
We've already seen how Nidge balances family life with being a career criminal, how he dotes on his son while extorting money out of people. Now we see Darren, the "hero" of the whole thing, lose his rag with someone who is doing an annoying thing but not deserving of the beating they get at the end. Of course, he's just tranposing his anger at Jimmy Byrne towards the neighbour, but it's still a brutal act, which shows us that, pretty boy though he may be and with a good heart, Darren is still in his blood a violent criminal.
Nidge, too, takes out his anger at nearly being caught with a van full of drugs and releases the pressure he feels by threatening the clown Trish has booked for their son's birthday party. When he tries to pay him less than the clown is asking, the entertainer gets stroppy but Nidge turns on him. He is used to dealing with people in a violent and aggressive manner, and he won't change that behaviour, whether the object of his anger is a gun-toting criminal or a Garda or a man dressed as a clown. He knows no other way to respond, and more to the point, he knows it gets results.
LETTER OF THE LAW
We've recently had a case of a gangland boss, already inside for a long stretch, getting an addition seventeen years on his sentence for orchestrating a drug empire from behind bars. So the fact that here, John Boy, who is in court on some unexplained charge --- probably drunk driving or speeding, as he mentions the judge has decreed he must resit his driving test --- is able to arrange the pickup of a huge shipment of drugs while in court, is quite true to life. Sometimes nothing stands in the way of the criminal ensuring he carries out his nefarious business, on occasion right under the noses of the guardians of law and order!
FAMILY
Although she knows, or suspects, what Nidge gets up to, Trish is far more concerned with maintaining a normal family life --- or as normal as possible --- for their son. So when Nidge, driving the van loaded with drugs and worried the cops are following him, and waiting for a new destination gets a call from her to see where he is, that the party is in full swing and he promised to be there for the cutting of the cake, he really can't believe it. Nidge loves his son too, but he has to devote all his immediate attention to the job he's on, and has no time for family matters. When however Trish realises how serious this is, she backs off, trusting her boyfriend and worrying that he'll be all right.
HONOUR AMONG THIEVES?
Both Darren and Tommie distinguish themselves well in this episode. Darren is the one who susses that the lockup is under surveillance, while it's Tommie who arranges the alternative location at short notice. Both have now proven themselves valuable to the gang. Not that this will count for anything as soon as they step out of line, or once they've served their purpose.
ONE CUEBALL SHORT OF A FRAME
All right, all right: I'm not that well up on snooker terminology. But John Boy's psychotic brother (half-brother, I think: it's mentioned at one point in the first episode though I don't believe ever made that clear the actual state of the relationship between the two) is a typical example of the unhinged criminal at his worst. It's this unpredictability that scares people, even on occasion puts John Boy on edge (more for the worry that a loose cannon can screw everything up than actual fear of what he might do) and will eventually come back to haunt him. In this section I'm going to be looking at the crazy wild world of Huey, known "affectionately" as "Cue Ball".
As the guys unpack the heroin (or cocaine, whatever the drug is: never clarified) in JP's garage, Heuy sees a cool old car and wants to take it out for a ride. JP though is reluctant. This is the conversation between the two:
Huey: "Cool car JP man!"
JP: "Thanks."
Huey: "Don't mind us havin' a look?"
JP: "Nah it's fine."
Huey: "Can I take a spin in it?"
JP: "It's me da's."
Huey: "He'd mind, would he? (Pause) What's the story with the car?"
JP: "It's me da's."
Huey: "I'd bring it back!"
JP: "You're good thanks Huey."
Huey: "What do ya mean?"
JP: "Thanks but you're all right."
Huey: "What are you thanking me for?"
This conversation serves to illustrate certain things about the little gangster. One, he truly and honestly believes anyone will give him anything he wants, and he can do anything he likes. When you're a little psycho and everyone's afraid of you, this is in fact usually the case. Secondly, a darker part of him loves making people squirm. He knows, probably, that he has no chance of getting a "spin" in the car, but he pushes JP just to see how far he can intimidate him, and then when he's bored of that he mocks the desperate efforts of Tommie's friend not to seem like he's being awkward, all based on the fact that he doesn't want to get on Huey --- or John Boy's --- wrong side. Huey enjoys exerting control over people, and he loves it when the fear of him leads to either him getting his way, or if not, him being able to push people around.
He has now latched onto JP as a target, and despite the fact that the guy did the gang a favour, he will force the issue later on in the episode. There is, really, no percentage in helping the gang, and one would also suppose none in refusing to help. In the latter case, you make an enemy of some very powerful people who will make sure you regret it, and in the former, they will not see themselves as owing you anything, and you will certainly not become their friend, or part of their circle, unless for some reason they want this to happen.
Later, at the party, with JP high and this time not caring, or seeming not to, Huey broaches the subject again, but this time JP just relaxes and smiles when he asks:
Huey: "Maybe if you asked him (his da) he wouldn't mind?" JP smiles. This annoys Huey. "What are you smilin' for? You think I'd rob it?" JP makes a motion with his hand like an aeroplane taking off. "What's that mean?" asks Huey. "You think you're Superman do ya?" Turning to John Boy "If he keeps that up I don't care, he's goin' out the window! See if he can ****in' fly then!"
Here I think Huey is even more annoyed at JP that he can't intimidate him, scare him because the guy is out of his head, and even his threat to throw him out the window doesn't faze him. He quite possibly sets up Elmo, one of the other criminals, to punch JP out when he thinks he's making fun of him. His laughter is maniacal. He has managed to get the man he has taken an instant dislike to beaten up without having to lift a finger. Now
that's power!