MobLand: Season 2, Episode 1 Review

Harry Da Souza returns… the only man who sees disaster coming

Tom Hardy's return as Harry Da Souza quickly reminds us why he is the show's true center.

Harry is not MobLand's craziest character, its loudest, or even its most powerful.

The problem is that almost everyone needs him.

Conrad and Maeve make a mistake; Harry cleans it up.

A witness goes to the police; Harry steps in.

Kevin starts operating separately from his father; Harry tries to understand what is happening.

Maeve hides something; Harry sends Zosia after her.

He sees the whole map while everyone around him sees only the battle they want to win right now.

The performance is excellent because Hardy does not play Harry as a man eager for violence.

Quite the opposite.

Every new crime seems to him like another task added to an already crowded schedule.

That makes him funny at times and deeply frightening at the same time.

This time, the problem is the Harrigans themselves

The episode's strongest idea is that the Harrigan empire is not falling apart because of an immediate external weakness.

It is falling apart because everyone wants a bigger piece of it.

Conrad still behaves as though time stopped when he became the head of the family.

Kevin is no longer willing to remain the son waiting his turn.

Seraphina sees a route to the top.

Maeve, as ever, plays by her own rules.

Harry is almost the only one who understands that these are not minor disagreements.

Paul calls the situation a death spiral, and the description is very accurate.

A family supposedly preparing to face a formidable enemy is busy weakening itself.

That makes Kat McAllister's plan highly effective even before we know all its details.

Conrad… strength becoming a weakness

The dog-track scene sums Conrad up completely.

He attends a business meeting, discovers that the Turks have started dealing with Kevin behind his back, and immediately turns the perceived insult into a massacre.

The problem is not that Conrad is incapable of violence.

He is very good at it.

The problem is that he uses it when it is the worst possible choice.

Killing men in public, in front of witnesses, does less to restore his authority than to reveal how thoroughly his ego now drives his decisions.

Even Paul tries to stop him, but Conrad does not want to solve the problem.

He wants to prove that he is still the man everyone should fear.

Pierce Brosnan is enormously enjoyable here.

The character has become more chaotic, but the performance roots that chaos in a man who feels power slipping away.

The more threatened he feels, the more violent he becomes.

Every time he does so, however, he weakens his position further.

Kevin no longer wants to wait his turn

On the other side, we have Kevin.

His relationship with Conrad has moved beyond a family disagreement.

Kevin has begun acting like a man who wants to run the business himself.

Contacting the Turks without his father is no small move.

It is a message.

Conrad is no longer his only gateway into the criminal world.

Kevin is convinced that he can build his own power, while Harry sees a far more dangerous possibility:

What if all these opportunities appearing before Kevin were designed to push him into a confrontation with his father?

Harry tries to warn him that someone is exploiting their rift. Like Conrad, though, Kevin believes he is too clever to be manipulated.

That is a compelling irony.

Father and son hate each other at this moment, yet they are more alike than either admits.

Kat McAllister… an adversary who does not need to fire a shot

The premiere establishes that Kat McAllister will be much more dangerous than the first season's adversaries.

Not because she is more violent.

She understands that the best way to defeat the Harrigans is to avoid fighting them directly.

Just let them fight each other.

Harry discovers that the Turks' approach to Kevin was not accidental, and that Kat is steering events in that direction.

For me, this is a very smart escalation.

After a first season full of direct confrontations, season two offers an opponent who uses influence, information and ambitions already present within the family.

Kat does not create the Harrigans' weakness.

She finds the existing weakness and applies pressure.

That is more dangerous.

Seraphina thinks she is playing the game… but who is using whom?

Seraphina also begins making her own moves.

She approaches Kat and effectively offers to help end Conrad's reign in exchange for support in securing a more powerful position within the family.

Kat does not offer favors for free.

The price is enormous.

She wants a large share of the family's income for years, along with inside information.

Seraphina believes she has found someone who can help her reach the throne.

From the way the scene plays, I do not feel that Kat sees her as an equal partner.

She sees an open door into the Harrigan household.

That distinction matters enormously.

Seraphina wants to use Kat to become stronger.

Kat may need Seraphina only until she has finished using her.

Maeve has not stopped creating disasters

Then there is Maeve.

If Conrad creates problems with raised voices and gunfire, Maeve's danger is that she can do the same while smiling.

Harry discovers that she is still in contact with Eddie.

Worse, Eddie is no longer simply in hiding: he and Gina have started an extortion and protection operation targeting online personalities.

Eddie gives Maeve a share of the money, but money is not her only interest.

She wants Eddie to herself and sees Gina's presence beside him as an obstacle to remove.

This makes the crisis intensely personal for Harry.

He is no longer simply cleaning up the problems of a family he works for.

His daughter has become part of the game.

That raises the stakes far beyond any business war.

Harry protects a family that is destroying his own

For me, the episode's best storyline is not the struggle for leadership of the Harrigans.

It is the collapse of Harry's marriage.

We see him in couples therapy with Jan after everything that has happened between them.

His daughter Gina has disappeared.

One phone call about Conrad's latest problem is enough to make Harry stand up and leave the session.

That alone explains why the relationship has reached its end.

Jan no longer wants promises.

She sees an ongoing pattern.

Whenever Harry must choose between his own family and the Harrigans, he says he loves his family, then goes to the Harrigans.

Eventually, she gives him divorce papers.

This is the most compelling contradiction in Harry's character.

He can protect an entire criminal empire.

Yet he cannot protect his marriage.

Why does Harry stay at all?

For me, this is the character's biggest unanswered question, one the episode itself raises indirectly.

Harry is not stupid.

He knows Conrad behaves destructively.

He knows Maeve cannot be trusted.

He knows the family is full of betrayal and lies.

He knows that working for them is destroying his private life.

So why does he stay?

Is it loyalty?

Does he feel responsible for them?

Has rescuing the family become the only role he knows?

Or can he simply not imagine himself outside this world?

If the season focuses on this, Harry could become much deeper than 'the competent man who fixes everything.'

The question is no longer whether Harry can save the Harrigans.

It is why he wants to save them in the first place.

The witness exposes the limits of Harry's control

After the massacre at the track, a witness emerges who can connect Conrad to what happened.

Naturally, the problem reaches Harry.

The way he handles the man is excellent because it encapsulates his character.

He does not immediately kill him.

He only needs to change the man's testimony and close the problem down.

He threatens him and sends him back to the police to retract his statement.

In a previous season, this would have looked like another success for Harry.

Now, the scene carries a different meaning.

It feels as though there are more holes to plug than one person can manage.

Conrad creates one problem.

Maeve conceals another.

Kevin acts alone.

Seraphina negotiates with the enemy.

Gina has entered the criminal world.

Even the show's most capable man cannot keep this up forever.

Frankie… perhaps most dangerous because he seems ordinary

The episode's ending introduces Frankie.

His introduction is excellent because it reverses the usual way of presenting a dangerous character.

He does not enter carrying a gun.

We do not see him kill anyone.

We find him in a thoroughly ordinary situation, living as though he has nothing to do with this world.

Tattersall sees something else in him.

Someone who can gradually be developed into a major player in London's criminal world.

Someone who can perform for Kat the same role Harry performs for the Harrigans.

That makes Frankie very intriguing to me.

The season is not introducing a fully formed adversary.

It is introducing an adversary in the making.

We will probably watch the process of creating a man capable of threatening the Harrigans.

With enough time, this could become one of the season's strongest storylines.

Tattersall moves from pursuing players to creating them

Tattersall himself has become more interesting too.

Instead of continuing to pursue the Harrigans in the conventional way, he understands that operating within the system may be more effective than attacking it from outside.

His idea is simple:

If the Harrigans have Harry, why not create another Harry?

This time, one who works for Kat.

That offers the potential for a very compelling conflict.

Not just family against family.

But Harry against a man deliberately being shaped into his counterpart.

Crucially, we do not yet know whether Frankie will remain a tool that can actually be controlled.

MobLand's characters rarely stay inside the roles other people choose for them.

Tom Hardy's performance

Tom Hardy remains my biggest reason to watch MobLand.

What he does with Harry is unusual and distinctive.

He can threaten to kill someone while sounding as though he is simply asking them to wrap things up because he wants to go home.

The low voice.

The fatigue in his face.

The calm.

The constant sense that he is thinking about five problems at once.

Together, these qualities distinguish him from a conventional gangster.

Harry is not dangerous because you feel his anger.

He is dangerous because you do not need to see him angry at all.

That is more frightening.

Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren

Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren offer an entirely different kind of performance.

Conrad and Maeve are larger than life.

Loud.

Chaotic.

Sometimes they seem to enjoy the problem more than the solution.

I know these performances may seem exaggerated to some viewers, but I think the show needs this energy.

Tom Hardy is so restrained.

If everyone had the same level of discipline, the series would lose much of its personality.

The contrast between Harry trying to avert disaster and Conrad and Maeve being capable of creating one during an ordinary business meeting is a major source of pleasure.

Direction and atmosphere

Guy Ritchie's presence behind the direction of the season opener is apparent in its rhythm and energy, but MobLand does not try to become a copy of his other work.

The series is rougher and less interested in visual showmanship.

The focus is on faces, dialogue and tension between characters, rather than attractive shots for their own sake.

The episode moves among many storylines, yet feels less scattered than I expected.

That is because all these strands connect to one idea:

Everyone is moving away from the center.

Kevin is moving away from Conrad.

Seraphina is moving away from the family.

Maeve conceals her moves.

Gina is away from Harry.

Jan wants out of the marriage.

Everything is coming apart at once.

Strengths and weaknesses

The episode's greatest strength is that it does not waste time building a new threat from scratch.

Kat is already there.

The conflicts are already there.

The episode simply begins moving the pieces on the board.

Hardy is excellent as usual. The split between Conrad and Kevin gives the season a strong engine, while Seraphina, Maeve and Frankie's storylines make the coming war larger than a direct confrontation.

Having Kat exploit the family's weaknesses instead of declaring open war also makes her a more interesting adversary.

The episode is very crowded, however.

A huge number of characters and plans are in play at once.

If you do not remember season one well, certain relationships and alliances may demand close attention.

I also think Frankie remains a promise for now.

His introduction is intriguing, but the real judgment begins when we see what the season does with him.