This week’s episode of MobLand marks the halfway point for the British gangster show’s second season, though it almost felt like a season finale. Despite its relatively short runtime, “Birdland” hit hard, and left the Harrigan family in full retreat . Spoilers ahead.

Two main storylines and one side-story all play out in tonight’s episode. In the main thread, Harry (Tom Hardy) gathers all the Harrigans he can find to the Cotswolds for a “sit." Naturally, Maeve (Helen Mirren) is angry about this and tells Harry she’ll sit whenever she pleases after trying to goad him by asking where Jan (Joanne Froggatt) and Gina (Teddie Allen) are.

I have to admit, I’m getting a little tired of Maeve. Mirren does a terrific job, of course, but she’s become almost a one-note character, driven always by spite and jealousy, and somehow even more reckless than Conrad (Pierce Brosnan). She’s a terrific villain in many ways, but there’s only so much you can do with a character like this before she plays all her cards and has to face a comeuppance. If they delay that too long, it’ll start to feel forced.

Her recklessness is part of our second major storyline. She’s sent her puppet, Eddie (Anson Boon) and Gina to Ireland on a mysterious quest. She only tells Eddie what he’s there to do once they’re already on the Emerald I, and Eddie keeps the mission a secret from Gina until he’s about to go through with it. The mission, should he choose to accept it, is to kill an Irish gangster known as Medusa (Colm Meaney) and bring Maeve his head (I assume figuratively, but who knows with Maeve). Eddie is such an idiot that he drags Gina along with him on what is obviously a suicide mission, and one he botches almost instantly.

The big question in my mind is why would Maeve send her darling Eddie on a suicide mission? I understand why she’d want Gina along. She despises Gina (because Maeve hates everyone who isn’t Conrad or Eddie, and now I’m really not sure if even they’re beyond her loathing).

Finally, we have Jan’s storyline with Donnie (Alex Fine). When Harry tells her that she’d been recorded, she accuses him of hiring someone to follow her around ( because Jan is the most annoying character on the show ). Still, she must believe him deep down because she arranges a meet with Donnie and manages to get a glimpse of his phone and a missed call from Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon). This is enough evidence to convince her Harry wasn’t lying and she makes a smooth exit. At least the writers didn’t have her confront him, which is about the level of stupidity on display from some other characters this episode.

Take Gina, for instance. She’s smart enough to get out of the car when she learns of Eddie and Maeve’s extraordinarily stupid plan. She tries calling her mom (the wrong parent in this situation, but better than nothing) and her mom, distracted by the Donnie situation, ignores her call. Bad parent alert! Gina’s phone dies before she can call anyone else. You’d think at this point she would put as much distance between her and Eddie and the Irish mafia as possible, but instead she goes back to the house and bangs on the window when she sees Medusa about to brand Eddie’s buttocks with a hot poker. Stupid Gina!

Fortunately, her father arrives just in the nick of time and kills Medusa and all his goons in a series of really well-executed headshots. I immediately recalled Conrad’s words to Gina last week: Your father is a wall against the dark.

Maybe Gina will stop running around with Eddie now, and actually give her dad the respect he’s due. One might think that Maeve would come around as well, given that Harry killed her mark and saved Eddie, but I doubt it. My guess? Maeve will accuse Harry of being a turncoat, given he absconded with a chopper just before Frankie (Johnny Flynn) and his goons showed up. That Harry will have an alibi and a very good reason for running off – thanks to Paul (Emmett J. Scanlan) overhearing Maeve’s call with Eddie – will not matter to Maeve. She’s still trying to poison Seraphina, after all. She hates any of Conrad’s children that aren’t her own (including Harry, who may as well be Conrad’s son) and isn’t very fond of her own son, Kevin (Paddy Considine) either.

Lots of great action but also plenty of stupidity on display in this week’s episode. Why are the Harrigans so lax about security? Sure, they had some armed thugs around the house and a few helicopters, but why don’t they have any kind of wall or gates between them and the enemy? I swear I’ve seen them drive through a security gate in a previous episode, but here Frankie and his crew just drive on up and open fire. No safe room? It’s as though, without Harry around, they are totally and utterly defenseless. I love that Harry is so good at his job, but I don’t want everyone else to be totally incompetent.

In the end, the only thing that saves the Harrigans is plot armor.

And oh boy is there a lot of plot armor. Frankie’s goons are terrible shots. Star Wars Stormtroopers, basically. They are cut down as they enter the manor house, and when the Harrigans escape in their helicopters, they don’t manage to hit any of them. Why? These are civilian craft. They aren’t armored choppers. How can such a massive attack result in zero casualties (at least when it comes to named characters). Frankie is a great villain but he’s downright awful at actually killing Harrigans. At least he burned down their base.

All told, I enjoyed this episode but I’m tired of three things: Stupid character choices that serve as easy outs for the plot; plot armor that makes the story too safe for too many characters; and Maeve being such a one-note witch at this point. I did enjoy her scene with Conrad, when he finds the antifreeze and calls her out and she knows just the strings to pull to make him docile again. Their relationship remains fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. But Maeve as a character is just too much at this point. She needs something to do beyond plotting against her own family.

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Read my previous episode recap/reviews below:

  1. Episode 1 Recap and Review: No Rest For the Wicked
  2. Episode 2 Recap and Review: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
  3. Episode 3 Recap and Review: Frankie Declares War on the Harrigans ’
  4. Episode 4 Recap and Review: Pierce Brosnan Goes Full Conrad