They blew up the Harrigans’ dock. They took over the Harrigans’ home. They killed Conrad’s beloved dogs. They killed Maeve’s beloved horses. Well, okay, Maeve doesn’t give a shit about the horses; to her, a horse is a horse, of course, of course. But it’s the principle of the thing. Conrad starved and tortured a man to death once just for kicking his dog. You know what has to happen to Frankie Cooper and Kat McAllister now.

To that end, Conrad rallies the troops. Telling the family to forget their internecine squabbling, Conrad turns the proceedings over to Harry, who outlines a simple plan based on Conrad’s idea of getting back to the grass roots. Two teams of two, Conrad with Paul and Kevin with Harry, will go around North London to everyone who works for the Harrigans to see who’s who and what’s what. Some they’ll pay for their loyalty, others they’ll punish for their disloyalty, and all of them will see that the Harrigans remain in charge.

But the family’s ducks are very much not in a row. Maeve continues to torment the younger generation, testing her chosen one Eddie at knifepoint and suggesting that Gina make a half-hearted suicide attempt to get Harry to quit his job for good. Believing Conrad is a dead end, Seraphina is making an end-run around him to set up “Harrigan 2.0” with her stepfather Charlton, both surprising and impressing Bella, who’s similarly bearish on a Conrad-led future for the family. 

Bella also explains why she and Kevin are on the outs: They discovered that getting revenge on their childhood abusers didn’t solve any of their current-day problems after all. They’re better off than Harry and Jan, though: Jan is now missing, and Harry discovers the dead body of her erstwhile lover Donny in his apartment after finding his address among the scraps of intel Conrad tortured out of Frankie’s mate Jojo.

And even as the Four Harrigan Horsemen ride through North London, shoring up alliances and settling scores, Frankie makes another move. Peeved at the way Kat McAllister is big-dogging him, he nevertheless follows her orders to speed up the conquest of the Harrigans. He can’t deny that she’s much better connected, with favors owed to her by half the organized crime outfits in the world and the entire Republican Party, which she’s bankrolling with blood money. (The Republican Party, in bed with international criminals? Well, now I’ve heard everything!)

Harry seizes a stripper named Sicily (Einy Medina), who had a thing with Paul that she called off, and forces her to lure him into a trap. He then forces Paul, who wants to save Sicily’s skin as well as his own, to serve as bait in an attempt to similarly snare the upper echelons of the Harrigan organization. But neither Frankie nor Paul, both of whom have their own dry senses of humor, believe Harry fell for it for a second. 

Nevertheless, Harry shows up at the appointed place, a riverside casino as beautifully lit as anything this show has put on camera. Frankie is, for once, dressed for the occasion, in black tie. It’s a striking visual, and a reminder, as if one were needed, that Johnny Flynn’s work as Frankie is giving us the show’s first real great villain.

But there’s something that’s keeping the otherwise omnipresent smirk from Frankie’s face. Harry’s not stupid, and he didn’t bring Conrad or Kevin with him, which means he knows it’s a trap. But because he came alone, he also has no way of blasting his way out again, sparing himself and Paul from inquisitional torture or just-plain execution. Indeed, Harry and Kevin hashed out every possibility prior to the meeting and concluded it is, indeed, a no-win situation for him. So why, Frankie wonders, would he show up anyway?

Two words, Harry says: Newgate Prison.

Frankie tries not to let his demeanor change that much, but it’s not hard to figure out what Harry means given what we know of what happened to him and Kevin in that place. Frankie’s got a son in there, and Harry is betting his life, Paul’s life, and the future of the Harrigan family on the idea that Frankie cares what happens to him. Call it a fellow father’s intuition.

Frankie makes him sweat for it, that’s for sure. Loading a pistol with three bullets in alternating chambers, he initiates a game of Russian roulette, firing harmlessly into Harry’s head twice. Maybe he doesn’t care about his son after all. But when Harry finally gets the jump on him, wresting away the gun and pointing it at Frankie’s head, he only has to pull the trigger once before Frankie gives up and orders his goons to let Harry and Paul go. The peak-level blend of stoicism and crazy risk-taking Harry has achieved, despite his protestations that he’s not a gambler, is quite beyond Frankie’s capacity.

So Harry and Paul live to fight another day. The moment he can, Harry places a call to the cellphone that Frankie’s son Michael (Conrad Khan) has in prison and warns him that at 3 AM, he’s going to to be beaten to a pulp.

Between the musical montage of the Harrigan chieftains’ patrol of their territory and the white-knuckle tension of Frankie’s capture of Paul and Harry, this episode breezes by. But it’s also a fine one in which to stop and smell the roses, from the complimentary brown color schemes of Seraphina and Bella’s expensive clothes to the softly psychedelic glow of the casino lights. There’s plenty of nasty gangster business, if that’s what you’re here for — a guy gets his hand dipped in a deep fryer, with his feet to follow — but there’s also the lingering sense that Harry is nearing his breaking point. 

Was he really that confident about his chances with Frankie, or was he wiling to commit suicide by gangster? Or was it neither, and this was simply a Hail Mary, a last desperate ploy with no guarantee of success that just happened to work out in his favor? 

I like having these kinds of questions about the protagonist of my rock’em sock’em gangster TV show. If you’ve ever watched Paramount+’s own Tulsa King, for example, you’ve seen how abysmally stupid this genre can get. MobLand is always several degrees smarter and crueler than it needs to be, while remaining a riot to watch.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.