Season One, Episode Three
The gang head to Prague for Nidge's stag, and on their return are told Jimmy Byrne has come back to Ireland. Darren goes to meet Rosie, trying to talk to her about why he left --- well, not that; she knows why. But why he didn't ask her to go with him. It's possible that Darren knows he may end up getting killed when he goes after Jimmy and wants to set the record straight. WIth the aid of Tommie and Nidge they get Jimmy but he says it wasn't him. Not surprising, but when he mentions that he is sueing the prison over the attack Robbie made on him and stands to make a hundred grand, Darren starts to believe him, and they let him go, now no wiser as to who killed Robbie.
John Boy however is not happy: he doesn't think Darren should have let Jimmy go, and so when Huey offers to sort him out, he gives his tacit approval. He will be out of the country anyway, so no suspicion can fall on him. Huey enlists the aid of an itinerant who owes him money to help him carry out the hit, while Darren tries to make Rosie see that they could start again: he doesn't care whose baby she's carrying, he says he would love the child as if it were his own. Huey and the tinker, Martin, go to Jimmy's house and shoot him in front of his wife and baby, while Stumpy is searching through Rosie's personal effects and comes across pictures of her and Darren together. In a rage he beats her when she comes home, putting her in the hospital.
In the wake of Jimmy Byrne's killing, the usual suspects are rounded up and the gang all find themselves in the station, though their slimy lawyer gets them out within a few hours. On his release, John Boy, who has just flown back into Ireland, is enraged when he sees the newspaper headline about the slaying. So this is how his brother does things quietly, is it? He then has to help Stumpy when Rosie's unconscious body is found in his house; John Boy lets him use one of his apartments to lie low for a while.
The enormity of what he has done is beginning to sink in for Huey and he's starting to panic. John Boy tries to calm him down, but Huey is reading reports that John Boy may want to now rid himself of the liablity Huey has become, and even though his brother reassures him this is not the case he worries. He goes back to see Martin, gets him drunk and then uses his favourite method of violence, a cueball wrapped in a sock, to try to find out who Martin has been talking to, where the papers got his name. However his interrogation methods are rather too severe and Martin won't be talking again. Ever. Huey rings his brother and on his instructions burns the caravan Martin was living in. During the course of their conversation Huey confesses to John Boy that it was in fact he who shot Robbie.
John Boy goes off the deep end, especially when he learns that his brother committed murder over a paltry sum of 300 Euro! But there is nothing he can do about it now: the mystery has been solved, and a man died for nothing. John Boy's name has been splashed across the headlines for a killing that need not have taken place had Huey just confided in him sooner. Even knowing it was him who had killed Darren's brother, he still shot an innocent man (well, innocent of this crime, anyway) in cold blood and risked the wrath of the law coming down upon them.
Darren goes to see Rosie in hospital, then calls John Boy. He's finally put two and two together. Who was the only one --- the only one --- who said he had heard it was Jimmy Byrne who killed Robbie? And who then made sure that Jimmy could not refute this by killing him? He knows now who really killed his brother, and John Boy or no John Boy, he's going to be out for revenge.
FAMILY
Far from "having each other's backs", as they would like to think they do, the gang care little about each other. John Boy and Huey, being brothers of a sort, probably have a bond but as far as the rest go it's just like "guys at the office", and this is epitomised when Huey asks if Darren is going to kill Jimmy, now that he's back. John Boy says "I don't give a bollocks what he does!" They will obviously help Darren get revenge for the killing of his brother, but only because they can't allow such a slight to one of the gang members to go unpunished; they don't even care if Jimmy is the right man. Somebody has to pay, and they're not really fussy who. When they hear about his return, John Boy mutters "Dead man walking, that's what he is!" but he doesn't truly give a damn; he just knows that Darren will not shirk what he sees as his responsibility and duty, and truth to be told, it might reflect badly on the gang (and on him) were Darren not to take revenge, which would be seen as his right. But other than that, John Boy, like the rest of them, could not give a damn what happens to Jimmy Byrne.
What is interesting is that once they let Jimmy go, believing he is telling the truth when he says it wasn't him, John Boy and Huey are not satisfied. In their eyes, the fact that Jimmy was going around saying he was the one who killed Robbie (though this is second-hand hearsay; they never personally heard him say this) is damning evidence enough to convict him. Not only that, but John Boy now worries that the reputation of the gang --- his reputation --- will be tarnished when it gets around that they had Jimmy and then let him go. When you cross John Boy, or one of his gang, you're usually not expected to walk away.
Stumpy is annoyed that Darren came on the trip to Prague, both because Darren steered clear of all the prostitutes they partook of --- and he believes he knows, or suspects why --- and also he possibly thinks that Darren may be reporting back to Rosie about Stumpy's behaviour while away, either to show her how much better a catch he is, or just to drive a wedge between them.
Darren is mildly annoyed when Mary suggests Tommie accompany them to the swimming baths as a "family day out" with Nidge, Trish, Warren and her kids. Darren says carefully, "Tommie isn't family." And he never will be, unless somehow he ends up marrying Mary. The implication could not be clearer: though he may be a mate, a comrade-at-arms, a work colleague, a fellow gang member, just sleeping with Darren's sister does not qualify him as family. In truth, this actually says a lot more about how upset Darren is with his sister. Though he has brushed off the idea, it does bother him and the moreso that it was Mary Tommie was in bed with when he was supposed to have been picking up Robbie, which led indirectly to the death of Darren's brother.
When Huey reveals to John Boy that it was he who shot Robbie, though his brother is furious he still makes sure that Huey is covered. He almost laughs when Huey tells him the piddling sum of money, in comparison, that Robbie owed Huey and which he shot him over, but he worries what will happen when Darren susses out what has happened. Apart from himself, and as we will see later his daughter, there's only one other person in the world whom John Boy cares about, and he'll move heaven and earth to make sure he's protected.
HONOUR AMONG THIEVES?
Despite the fact that he has little but contempt for the man, John Boy realises that Stumpy is better under lock and key than roaming the streets. His attack on Rosie is bound to draw unwelcome attention, and he knows too that Darren will be on his trail once he finds out what happened. This is the only reason he shelters him. Were there no blowback that could hit John Boy he would let Stumpy hang, but here the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and he feels the best thing he can do is get Stumpy hidden away before someone comes looking for him.
When Trish pushes Nidge to tell Darren about Rosie he is reluctant, muttering that he doesn't want to get involved. It's darkly hilarious, as he's been in tougher situations than this, but when there's nothing to be personally gained (and a lot to lose, if John Boy were to find out he grassed Stumpy) he's not interested. Even when Trish snaps that Rosie might die, he just claims his phone is out of power; he does not want to be the one to break the news to Darren. In some ways too, he probably figures that where Rosie is concerned, Darren is more a loose cannon than he is, and when that cannon goes off, anyone in the vicinity is likely to get hurt.
MIRROR, MIRROR
Again we see the dichotomy between what the gang do and the face they can present to the world at large. Nidge and Trish go to an upmarket hotel to book their wedding reception, like any other couple, and the hostess has no idea what the groom really does for a living. If she did, that plastic smile would soon leave her face! She's no doubt surprised when, asking for the two thousand Euro deposit, after Nidge makes a face, he then fishes in his pocket and counts out two grand in cash!
LETTER OF THE LAW
John Boy's lawyer explains to him that, while he may worry that any property he should buy with his ill-gotten gains can be seized by the CAB (Criminal Assets Bureau), John Boy is entitled to sue for a settlement, and the usual outcome of these is that the State can only hold ten percent of his assets back, the rest he gets back himself. He grins and tells John Boy "It's a tax clearence certificate!"
ONE CUEBALL SHORT OF A FRAME
Huey is thinking about setting up a debt collection agency --- "Call it
Repo Man ---whaddya think?" --- God help anyone who fell foul of his mercurial temper! We learn why Huey's nickanme is Cueball, when John Boy points to blood on Huey's shirt and a sock also covered in blood on the floor, and Huey shrugs. "Some English thick was singin'! I got the cueball." The intimation from this is that he put a cueball in his sock and made a weapon of it, then pounced on the --- probably unsuspecting --- poor singer. This is later proven when he uses the same trick on Martin. The fact that Huey thinks nothing of this violent, unprovoked act speaks volumes about the kind of psycho he is.
When John Boy is berating Darren for having believed Jimmy Byrne and let him go, Huey steps up for the job, says he could do it on his own. He doesn't care whether the guy killed Robbie at all --- in fact, by the end of the episode we know the truth --- but it's just another opportunity to exorcise some violence out of his system. If there's one thing Huey loves it's breaking heads, bones, fingers, legs. Also, he may feel some sense of displaced loyalty to his brother, and want to sort out this problem for him so that John Boy's image is not tarnished. In reality though he's protecting himself, as he knows that it's him all along who is the killer.
Huey of course screws up. Instead of luring Jimmy to a deserted place and plugging him, he and his cohort go charging in, literally, all guns blazing, and shoot him in front of his wife and child. Later, Huey tries to atone for this by killing Martin, after unsuccessfully trying to get information out of him, and when he tells John Boy that he was the one who killed Robbie, over a mere three hundred Euro, his brother laughs harshly: he knows this is the sort of thing he's come to expect from his psychotic brother. But he may have gone a step too far this time.
There's an almost tragicomic moment after Huey has beaten Martin to death, and the itinerant is lying there dead, his lips fixed in a rictus grin. Recalling the annoyance he felt with JP last episode, Huey glares down at him and asks him why is he smiling at him? A moment later the penny drops and he begins to panic, but that tiny scene encapsulates Huey perfectly: after beating someone to death he's more concerned that he's being laughed at than at the deed he has just perpetrated.