The world is less safe, but far more colorful. Which is to say: Conrad and Maeve Harrigan are outta jail and once more among the free as “MobLand” Season 2 gets underway.
The series’ season premiere, which began streaming Friday on Paramount+, finds the crime family patriarch and matriarch liberated from the jail where we left them in the Season 1 finale. And while they’re cavorting and celebrating like nothing has changed, their empire is crumbling from beneath them.
Will they heed Harry’s increasingly insistent advice that they’d better get their crooked ducks in a row? And how did that whole Jan-stabbing-Harry thing work out? Read on for a brief overview of “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”
Lord and Lady Harrigan are at the dog track for a meet with a Turkish druglord with whom they’re doing a heroin deal. Only problem: Kevin Harrigan went around Conrad and struck his own deal with the guy, cutting his folks out of it. “That son of yours is making you look like a sad, obsolete clown,” a member of the opposing family tells Conrad… which is enough to surreptitiously demand that Paul give him his gun so he can shoot up the entire place. The bodyguard tries to talk his boss out of this very bad plan, but Conrad won’t hear it. “We’re on, babe,” he whispers to Maeve, just before he pulls out the weapon and starts laying waste to all the Turks in the room. (Conrad manages to catch a bullet in his shoulder, but is otherwise unscathed.)
“We are the Harrigans!” he shouts as he, Maeve, Paul, and Paul’s nephew — a staff newbie named Fergus — strut out of the place. “You don’t know the name? Then f***ing Google it!”
Conrad won’t heed Harry’s counsel
Where’s Harry in all of this, you might wonder? He’s at couples’ counseling with Jan, where the therapist is taken aback slightly by the revelation that Jan stabbed her husband during an argument. Harry’s quick reassurances that everything turned out fine don’t seem to be doing much, either. We learn that Gina took off, and the only communication she’s had with the family came via a letter to her mom: “Mum, you saw a way out. There’s another one. It’s called a door. Love, Gina.” The postscript adds that the teen wishes Harry had died in the altercation.
But Harry didn’t even know the dogtrack meet-up was happening, which is alarming. He first hears about it when Paul calls, interrupting the session, to announce that “Conrad’s off the f***ing reserve.” Harry quickly exits — because someone’s gotta clean up the crime scene — and Jan is once more left by herself in something they started together.
So he does, thanks to some help from a dirty cop, then heads out to the Cotswolds. Maeve has just dug the bullet out of her husband’s arm when she greets Harry and breezily tells him it was her idea not to have him at the track, given how friendly he is with Kevin. Harry absorbs this, then moves forward with the reason he’s there: to drum some sense into these insane old coots.
The family is in “a death spiral,” he says quietly. While they’re waiting for Kat McAllister to make her move, they’re starting wars with their own allies and generally doing stuff that is bad for the longevity of the enterprise. He suggests a first step: Conrad talk with Kevin. Papa Harrigan loudly rejects that notion.
“Conrad, you are making a mistake,” Harry says on his way out. “Slainte,” Conrad replies, raising his glass in a toast.
Kat McAllister’s fancy new role
When one of the waiters who survived the track massacre goes to the police and names the Harrigans — after all, Conrad announced who they were — Harry has to round the guy up and threaten him into recanting. (Side note: The way Tom Hardy plays this scene, as though it’s the hundredth thing on his To Do list for the day, and he’s just trying to get it done, is pretty great.) Then Harry goes to see Kevin, if for no other reason than to gently point out that he’s a pawn: Someone told the Turks to come to him “in order to drive a wedge between you and your dad.” He adds that Kat is bigger and scarier than their previous enemies, but Kev doesn’t want to hear any of it. Aw, like father, like son.
Speaking of Kat, we learn she’s the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and she’s having meetings with Seraphina (with whom she strikes a deal to help the younger woman claim the Harrigan throne) and Sgt. Det. Tattersall (who offers to find her a “paladin,” or an on-the-rise criminal who, in five years, will “run London with your help, and as such, you will own him”). By the end of the episode, Tattersall seems to have zeroed in on his choice for this person: a lowlife named Frankie (played by Johnny Flynn, “Ripley”).
But back to Harry. He has Zosia tail Maeve during a trip to London, which is how he learns that Maeve has been in touch with Eddie — who’s been MIA since last season — all this time. Turns out that the teen has been bilking dumb YouTube influencers out of “protection” money, and that Gina has been helping him do it. Maeve is happy about the money he brings (£30K!), but not about his taste in ladyfriends. She asks for more money, and significantly less Gina, the next time she sees him. (A moment, please, for the always excellent Helen Mirren.)
Near the end of the episode, Harry waits outside the home of the head Turk (his name is Gabku), and strafes his car with bullets the moment the gate opens. Gabku is hit but not yet dead when Harry pokes his face into the backseat and asks for “the name I want to hear.” The older man wheezes “Kat McAllister,” then Harry shoots him some more and he’s gone.
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