from Decider.com
‘Peaky Blinders’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 3: Who’s Going To Screw Up Tommy Shelby’s Plans?
Photo: Netflix
We’re halfway through Peaky Blinders Season 5, everyone’s favorite British period gangster drama. This season’s enemies have been identified; on the right there’s the Billy Boys, Scottish hooligans with a penchant for crucifixion and soccer chants, and further right there’s Oswald Mosley, smug father of British fascism. This is about the point in any Peaky Blinders season when I start wondering, “Hmmmm, I wonder how Tommy’s big plan is going to get screwed up?”
You see, Tommy Shelby, Peaky Blinders‘ main character played by Cillian Murphy, always has some big plan brewing. While everyone’s worrying about fixing horse races and running a bookmaking operation out of the Birmingham slums, he’s hobnobbing with the aristocracy and getting elected to Parliament. He’s the criminal and strategic mastermind behind the Shelby family and Peaky Blinders gang, cool as ice, cutting side deals you didn’t see coming, and keeping his demons at bay.
Couple flies in the ointment:
- He’s got A LOT of demons, from PTSD to drug addiction to suicidal thoughts to talking to his dead first wife’s ghost.
- Everyone in his gang and family are balls out crazy. Episode 3 is titled “Strategy,” but you know whatever Tommy’s strategy is, it’s going to go sideways with the quickness.
The episode begins with Tommy and Aunt Polly, played by Helen McCrory, paying a visit to St. Hilda’s Orphanage, where they curse out and threaten a bunch of nuns, which, you know, is generally speaking, not a good way to get into Heaven. But, these nuns do seem rather mean and reports have gotten back to the Shelbys of child abuse. I’m not sure where this plot line is going, but it gives Tommy a chance to say, “There is God, and there are the Peaky Blinders…We’re much, much closer at hand than God,” which is a pretty bad ass line.
Speaking of Heaven and Hell, Tommy then brings Tommy and Michael to London to meet with Mosley, saying, “You’ve both met bad men before. The man we’re about the meet is the Devil.” Tommy wants to know if Mosley is mixed up with the Billy Boys. Mosley plays dumb but then proceeds to tell the gathered Shelby men everything he knows about them and almost catches a chair across his mustache when he tells Arthur his wife Linda’s been seen with another man. Then he asks Tommy to join his new political party, which, you know, seems nice of him, oh, and by the way, they’re FASCISTS!
Polly has been dispatched to visit Aberama Gold in the hospital, who’s still healing from his wounds and mourning the murder of his son at the hands of the Billy Boys. Tommy sends Polly to caution against immediate retaliation because he’s already got a plan worked out (what did I tell you about Tommy’s plans?). Gold will listen to Polly, he says, because he’s in love with her, even cut his hair for her (so THAT’s where it went). When Polly protests that it’s her 45th birthday, Tommy says, “45 years old and still breaking hearts.” Instead she breaks Aberama out of the hospital and he heads straight to the Scottish border (what did I tell you about people messing up Tommy’s plans?).
Linda visits Lizzie to tell her she can’t find a solicitor (English to American translation: a lawyer) to divorce Arthur. Lizzie says don’t do it. Linda says she’s met another man. Lizzie says, seriously, don’t do it, “He will die without his eyes.” Lizzie tries to tell Linda that whatever the downsides are to being married to one of the Peaky Blinders, they’re not as bad as the downsides to trying to leave one of the Peaky Blinders. Besides, it’s got his upsides, which she explains with the quote of the episode; “I used to fuck seven men a day and now I’m learning how to ride a horse side-saddle.”
Arthur, of course, learns about the man and murders him at a Quaker meeting house, where the man and Linda are congregants. It’s a horrific scene, as the man and Arthur are mostly shot in silhouette, often with music playing over the sounds of Arthur cursing, the man groaning and the sounds of flesh and wood and wall on flesh. In an age when so much on screen violence seems casual, even playful, it’s nice to know there are still directors and filmmakers who can frame violence with the narrowing ugliness it deserves. At the end, Arthur straddles the man, saying, “There is good in my heart…These hands belong to the devil.”
The violence continues up in Scotland, where Aberama Gold and his gang catch up with some unsuspecting Billy Boys, beating them silly and pouring boiling tar on one of their faces, which is a really, really, really mean thing to do. He says he’s coming for gang leader for “Mad Dog” Jimmy McCavern. When McCavern and a parade of Billy Boys show up at Gold’s caravan, Arthur arrives in the knick of time to whisk him away and lay a booby trap. As a grenade falls to the floor and blows the caravan and assorted Billy Boys to smithereens, McCavern’s eyes light up. “So Tommy Shelby, it’s war you want. It’s war you shall have.”
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.
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