By Sabrina Cognata
Out here in viewer’s paradise, we left the Caffee brother’s in a dither at the end of last season. Michael (Jason Issacs) had been bludgeoned by longtime friend & police officer Declan Giggs (Ethan Embry). Tommy Caffee (Jason Clarke), Michel’s brother, was confronted with the problems in his marriage & the worsening of the relationship he has with his wife. Michael barely escapes the attack with his life and like we’ve come to expect things are neither good nor bad for the Caffee family, only crappy with a side of potential danger.
The show starts with Tommy working on flipping a house. He swings a sledgehammer and visualizes his wife cavorting with her dead, former flame, Carl Hobbs. Next we find Michael in a doctors office, big brother is watching him struggle with a puzzle that most autistic kids could do with ease. Poor Michael, he’s turned into Lenny from John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice & Men. The doctor says that Michael has cognitive damage that may or may not go away with therapy and time. Gee wiz, thanks for the assurance, he will either get better or he won’t. I guess I should be considered an M.D. also.
While all of this is going on Tommy spends the episode dealing with a bribery investigation being handled by the U.S Attorney’s Office and giving his wife, Eileen (Annabeth Gish), a really hard time about being a whore. Eileen on the other hand continues on her path of destruction. Turns out the monotony of family life is just too boring for this old minx. We find her sitting on the floor of her house smoking a joint after throwing around all of Tommy’s laundry. What a gem. Later on, she runs into Carl’s widow and begins to befriend her. Way to go slut bag, you only destroyed her life and now you want to suck her into your hellish vortex. I guess that’s what friends are for.
Meanwhile, Declan’s proving how wasted you have to get once you wake up from an alcohol induced haze and realize you have beat your childhood chum retarded. He’s been taken off any cases having anything to do with the Caffee brothers and his career is going down the tubes. Declan tries to avoid Michael. Michael finds him and tells him he needs him to check into who’s responsible for turning him into Baby Huey. Declan reluctantly agrees to help Michael. Intermittently, Declan wakes up in strange places and tries to maintain getting as messed up as possible.
Michael continues trying to be a badass and fails for the most part. In an attempt to reclaim his title as the guy to not to screw with, he decides to go about this by collecting an outstanding debt for Freddie Cork. In the middle of this debacle, Michael becomes disoriented again and nearly screws the entire thing up. In the end, the score is Michael two, debtors zero. Michael delivers the payment to Freddie and Freddie gives him back his bar to run.
Clearly, Jason Isaacs is running the show here—the newly added duality of Michael’s character, the new unsure and even weak character adds new depth to the ebb and flow of not only the character development, but the story line in general. Will Michael get better? Will Tommy stop treating his wife like the trollop she is? Will Declan get the finger pointed at him for being the idiot rage-a-holic drunk he is? I guess we’ll have to keep watching to know for sure.