Much like many (but not all) of its main characters, The Gentlemen is, above all things, clever. For six episodes, it places one proverbial Chekhov’s gun after another on the mantle, to the point where there are more guns than the mantle. Do any of these guns go off in the end, leading to the explosive conflagration we all knew (and admittedly hoped) was coming?
They do not. In fact, the final two episodes of The Gentlemen’s crackerjack first season involves Eddie and Susie painstakingly aiming all those Chekhov’s guns directly at one another, triggers tied together with twine. One pull and bang — all those loose cannons and loose threads almost instantly cancel each other out, leaving our heroes, if that’s what you’d call them, the last people standing when the smoke clears.
Episode six is the start of this spectacular act of slate-wiping and table-clearing for the coming reign of Eddie and Susie, partners in crime. It centers on two of the show’s longest-dangling plot threads: whether Freddy’s murder of Liverpool gangster Tommy Dixon will ever be revealed to Tommy’s psychotic brother John the Gospel, and whether Jimmy’s continued catfishing by mystery woman Gabrielle will ever be revealed to Jimmy’s almost certainly murderously unhappy boss Susie.
The answer to both questions is yes, though they get resolved in reverse order. With their relationship in disarray, Susie refuses to take Eddie’s calls while she’s busy targeting and killing people associated with Henry Collins, the man who put her brother in a coma. So he gets her address from Jimmy and shows up at her flat to confront her. (Side note: Both Kaya Scodelario and Theo James have looked consistently incredible in their expensive tailored clothes, but if seeing a sweaty, makeup-free Susie in workout gear is something you’d be interested in, this is the episode for you.)
But when Collins himself arrives at the apartment to intimidate her, intimating he’ll kill her as soon as he gets the go-ahead from his mysterious backer, she knows there’s a leak in the operation. With Eddie’s help, she fingers Jimmy as the man responsible. But fortunately (for him as well as for us), the adorable, kind-hearted, slightly muddled botanist is too nice a guy to punish for this transgression.
Instead, they use him to (rather unhappily) lure Gabrielle to them. The poor woman talks only when Jimmy is threatened — it turns out she really does care about the guy and has only been continuing to work him out of fear for her own life. That’s when they get the name they’ve been waiting for: Stanley Johnston, with a t, has been the man responsible for all their misfortune via his right-hand man, Mr. Stevens (Alexis Rodney), right up to maneuvering Collins into position to take the Glasses down. The beating of Jack was Collins’s idea. However, not Johnston’s, but “Uncle Stan” is still willing to do whatever it takes to acquire the Glass infrastructure and use it for his own, more lethal product.
Eddie, meanwhile, has been pursuing a way out for his family, and it leads directly to Johnston. By acquiring the names of all the other lords in his weed-farm network through some poor aristo whose estate has been turned into a flophouse for low-level gangsters after a dispute with the Glasses, Eddie can take this vital intel to Johnston and take away the Glasses’ leverage of secrecy. But if that’s his game, why does he go directly to Bobby Glass himself to let him know?
Susie doesn’t know and doesn’t care. When she finds out from a cornered and wounded Collins that Eddie has allegedly sold out the operation, the furious young druglord tips off John the Gospel that Freddy killed his brother. It’s not until episode eight that she finds out the truth from her dad: He and Eddie are working together, so call off the dogs.
Thus, the first big Chekhov’s gun is removed from the mantle without a single shot being fired. Susie calls Eddie, apologizes for the mess, and sends arms and reinforcements via the farm. Freddy, who’s already confessed to trying to have Eddie killed, volunteers to go out and sacrifice himself to save the rest of the family — the only dignified thing he’d ever be able to do with his life, he insists — until Eddie talks him out of it long enough for Bobby to work his magic. One phone call from the incarcerated crime boss and a placated Gospel and his men simply drive away, shootout averted.
Bobby, however, has had enough of all this scheming and maneuvering. He announces his attention to retire and sell the entire operation to the highest bidder — bids to be submitted via carrier pigeon, per his Mike Tyson–esque obsession with the surprisingly tenacious winged messengers.
The bidding parties are a whole arsenal of Chekhov’s guns. Mercy, the machete-wielding car saleswoman with a Colombian connection. Sticky Pete (Joshua McGuire), the posh git with Russian backers who stole Freddy’s money until Susie’s goons beat it back out of him, an experience he credits with showing him the value of pure power. Johnston himself, who finds out his list of weed-growing lords is bogus but is welcome to place a bid regardless?
Finally, there’s Eddie himself. With the encouraging (and slightly morally daming) words of Freddy ringing in his ears, he finally realizes what’s been obvious all along: His title, connections, cunning, and — this is key — ability to kill without losing sleep over it make him an ideal gangster. Aren’t these the traits that gave the Horniman family ancestors their rank in the first place?
Eddie puts together a whole consortium of Chekhov’s-gun investors: the other lords, the Irish Travellers, himself, Susie, and even Henry Collins, who coughs up 15 million pounds to cover the final shortfall in exchange for having some of the heat taken off from him with the vengeful Glass family.
This is when the guns start firing at each other one by one. Eddie uses Collins’s bookkeeper, Thick Rick (Gary Beadle), to tip off the authorities to Johnston’s tax evasion and take him off the board. He uses Mercy, whose bosses won’t tolerate being outbid, to kill Sticky Pete — and Sticky Pete’s Russian associates to kill Mercy.
But all this, it turns out, is a fatal miscalculation by Collins. Acting every bit like one of the villains of the piece, Eddie straight-up double-crosses the guy, taking the money and immediately handing him over to Susie to be killed. Susie, however, suggests that Eddie do the honors: “As part of your … journey,” she says.
By now, Bobby has revealed he has no intentions of retiring: He was testing Eddie and Susie to see if they had what it takes to run the empire with him, not for him. So the final gun that goes off is Eddie’s. He kills a bound and gagged Henry Collins out in the woods in cold blood. He doesn’t just have the requisite skills to make a good gangster anymore. He is, with no caveats, a good gangster. After everything the show has done to maintain the idea that he’s a good person underneath it all, it’s a hell of a final shot in both senses of the phrase. (To be fair, there’s one last mini-scene, with Bobby and a freshly incarcerated Johnston sitting down to eat together like perfect, drumroll please, gentlemen.)
Look, I’m not going to lie and tell you I wasn’t looking forward to some kind of cataclysmic Sam Peckinpah gun battle for the Horniman estate, with the likes of Jeff and Freddy and Tammy and maybe even extremely pregnant kid sister Charlotte opening fire on a small army of extremely religious scousers. But what we get in these final two episodes instead is to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, not as clumsy or random as a blaster — it’s an elegant denouement for a more civilized show.
With the exception of the young Nazi from episode three, who’s implicitly involved in the consortium at any rate, pretty much every major supporting character left alive pops up in this thing. Some make it through, others don’t, but every single storyline in this Byzantine show is brought to a tidy conclusion. There really is something, well, gentlemanly about how neatly it wraps up — something as steady, stately, and crisp as composer Chris Benstead’s staccato, Baroque-influenced choral-orchestral score.
And with Eddie’s transformation into Walter White with much better health coverage complete, the stage is set for a second season with a new premise: Instead of digging himself out from under, Eddie (and Susie) will have to find a way to stay on top. Writer Matthew Read, who developed the story with creator Guy Ritchie, can run with this thing as far as he wants to as far as I’m concerned. The Gentlemen is one of the most purely enjoyable shows of the year. Like the British aristocracy, I see no great reason for things to change in the future.
Sean T. Collins , 2024-03-08 22:39:41
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