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***Spoiler Alert***

Episode 8: In Each One a Savior

“… in each one a savior is crucified.” – Herman Hesse

Also known as the episode in which Kevin utters my favorite line of the show, in regards to the Firecracker he says, “Crime is the family business, Sean, this is just a staging area.”

How is that not the greatest thing of all time!? I love it so much.

Post NBC’s cancellation of the show, on the same day that Episode 7 aired, and two weeks earlier than initially announced, the show in its entirety went up on both iTunes for purchase and on the NBC site for free streaming. This was online binging before it really existed. Definitely one of the first video purchases I made on iTunes. 

Episode 8 opens with Joey and the neighborhood priest talking in Joey’s jail cell, the Father asking to know what happened to the Donnelly brothers, who were “good kids”. Joey thinks it all started to go downhill the day he bought a car for Sean. Who, by the way, doesn’t have a license.

It’s morning, with Kate calling Tommy about a job for him, and Jimmy telling him to go live his life.  Easier said than done. Especially for Tommy, who cannot escape helping people, no matter how hard he tries.  The widow of an old friend of his dad’s, Mrs. McCready, asking him to clear out drug dealers in her building. Tommy is learning what it means to have a name and rep in the neighborhood, and feels obligated to help her out.  Until Dokey asks him to drop it, because “he doesn’t want his nephew hanging around someone who steals from his mother”. Just a bit ironic.

Meanwhile, Jimmy decides to start offering the neighborhood businesses protection, on top of what Dokey already charges them. While Kevin is running bets through Louie Downtown’s phone. Which should’ve been in the river weeks before, but he’s still taking bets from a guy called Cloudy.

Jimmy’s feelings for Jenny start to come to light. He’s feeling successful, gets himself cleaned up, and heads to the diner. Instead of his usual cheeseburger and fries, he tries changing up his destiny by ordering a pepper and egg sandwich (maybe not a New York invention, and certainly not to the level of a buttered roll, but a local food culture mainstay). And then asking Jenny out, to which she laughs and calls him a jerk. You feel his pain as he limps out of the diner when Jenny turns her back, tears on face, and you can see the rage that starts to build. 

This rage translates into Jimmy threatening Mr. Reilly into paying him for protection, on the surface at Whitey’s suggestion not to let them off the hook, but in many ways to take out his own anger. Mr. Reilly obviously doesn’t take it well, and gets punched in the face while Jimmy takes his fifty bucks out of the register. Jenny accosts him on the street, and once again you see the influence both the neighborhood and the Donnellys have had on her over the years. 

Turns out, both Tommy and Jimmy have had a thing for Jenny since they were kids. In a series of flashbacks, featuring a young Liz Gillies as Jenny, we see this play out with a young Tommy trying to help Jimmy after his leg injury. He asks Jenny if she’ll go out with Jimmy, and she says no, because she likes Tommy.  And then kisses him. What they don’t know is that Jimmy is on a neighboring rooftop and sees the exchange. 

Dokey is hell bent on getting a piece of the Reilly building, which is now paid up to the bank, thanks to Tommy. He comes close to threatening Jenny, and then decides the better of of it, for now. Like the basement axe session with Jimmy and Tommy wasn’t enough?

Tommy is deep into helping Mrs. McCready, recruiting Joey, Sean, and Kevin to help him forcefully remove the drug dealers from her building, after they decide not to go quietly. I love the way this scene is filmed and edited with the soundtrack, it’s really well done and is kind of a callback to the first episode. In between all this, Kate is making her move by asking Tommy to teach Matthew art, and you see where she’s coming from by not wanting the kid to spend more time with Dokey, but it comes off kind of desperate. I still wonder if the show had continued, would something more have actually happened between Kate and Tommy? One of many unanswered questions, thanks NBC.

Back to Mrs. McCready. Turns out, she’s the dealer in the building and used Tommy to get rid of her competition. Jimmy revels in telling Tommy he’s been buying from her since he was 14, and the brothers storm back into the building to remove her apartment door as punishment. I love it.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, Jenny storms into the Firecracker that night, making it known that Jimmy is extorting protection money from the diner. Tommy goes after Jimmy and they get into a fight, eventually broken up by Kevin and Sean. Tommy tells Jimmy he’s ashamed of him, and its a huge blow. As Joey puts it “Jimmy loved Tommy, more than anybody. But see, once you’ve been betrayed, but somebody you love, you’re capable of anything. Maybe it woulda been different, if Jimmy really knew what happened on the roof that day.”

We come to find out that young Jenny told Tommy she can’t go out with Jimmy because she likes Tommy instead, and then kisses him on the cheek, which differs from Jimmy’s memory of a full on kiss. All this time, Jimmy thinks Tommy betrayed him with Jenny. And yet, he doesn’t know that Tommy is responsible for his injured leg. Back in the Firecracker, Tommy, Kevin, and Sean leave Jimmy in disgust of what he’s doing to Jenny, and he turns to getting high.  

And Cloudy, Kevin’s better on Louie’s phone? He sets up a meet. Turns out its Nicky. 

Favorite Scene:  Tie between Sean and Kevin’s beverage manager/this is a staging area scene towards the beginning of the episode, and the scene where the brothers find out Jimmy’s been taking money from Jenny.  

Soundtrack:  I love the songs chosen for the baseball bat fight scene (“Burn like a Mutha” The Druts, a lot better than a later version BTW by Beasto Blanco) and for the fight between the brothers in the Firecracker “Believe in Myself” by Del Bombers.  

“The Black Donnellys” is available for purchase on iTunes, Amazon, and DVD.  Also available to stream, with extremely annoying and poorly placed commercial breaks, on the NBC app or NBC.com

At the time of posting, the episodes are still out of order on the NBC app and website, so Episode 4 = Episode 2, Episode 2 = Episode 3, Episode 3 = Episode 4. The title of each episode should reference the quote slide within the first 5 minutes of the episode.

Episode Notes: “The Black Donnellys” Episode 9

Episode Notes: “The Black Donnellys” Episode 7

Sleepers: “The Black Donnellys”