Anytime Netflix’s The Gentlemen wants to do math, or break down a negotiation, or explain some heady criminal or financial concept, it breaks out a pen. Yellow, handwritten-style text will appear on the screen, showing sums and percentages, facts and figures. It’s such a helpful way of keeping the audience up with the show’s convoluted schemes without resorting to repetitive, hand-holding dialogue that I’m amazed no one’s thought of it before. But maybe it requires a show with The Gentlemen’s breezy, scratched-off-on-a-napkin vibe to make it work.
The show has never used this technique better than during the dizzying art and history lesson delivered to Eddie Horniman in his dreams by Mr. Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito), the American meth kingpin whose ambitions made him Season 1’s secret big bad. (He’s currently in the same luxe prison as Bobby Glass, though we don’t see him there.)
Johnston asks Eddie if he understands why monarchs hold both a scepter and an orb when they are crowned. He explains that just as gothic cathedrals have a nave and a spire and classical architecture features a domed roof and an obelisk or column, kings hold the orb to represent feminine energies and the scepter to represent masculine ones. The crown, he says, is their metaphorical reconciliation, making the monarch not just a ruler but a symbol, a great unifier. Only Eddie, he says, has this power, which the yellow marker renders as scribbly glowing fire.
After that Eddie wakes up, but this episode spends a lot of time proving Johnston right, for better or for worse.
We’ve already seen Eddie’s unseemly ambition at work last episode, when he told Geoffrey that he wanted to rule the land as far as the eye could see, just as his ancestors did. To that end, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the help of the powerful men he needs on his side. For Lord Hawthorne, he sets up “a night on the town” with Jack Glass, the voraciously straight boxer with whom the aristocrat has become smitten, in exchange for help getting into the House of Lords. For Marco Moretti, boss of the Italian mafia, he agrees to “take care of” an accountant whom the mob’s been hunting, now in witness protection in Britain, as a gesture of goodwill.
Both plans go tits up almost immediately. Lord Hawthorne is disappointed when Jack proves more interested in shagging two birds they meet at an upper-class rager than spending time with him. (There’s some difference of interpretation as to what constitutes “a night on the town.”)
Meanwhile, Mr. Takashi (Masayoshi Haneda), Moretti’s hand-picked assassin, proves to be a sadistic psychopath who refuses to stand down when their quarry returns home with his wife and kids in tow.
What follows there tests both Eddie’s morality and his ability to think on his feet. He and Geoff kill Takashi rather than allow him to run amok against innocents. Taking on the burden of the assassination himself, Eddie quietly approaches the accountant and tells him to send his family back into town for ice cream, using an imaginary rat problem as an excuse. In a surprisingly moving moment, the accountant’s wife sharply and sadly guesses what he means as they say goodbye.
In the end, Eddie can’t go through with it. But we never learn what he plans to do instead, because the accountant attacks him with a kitchen knife and Eddie shoots him reflexively in self defense. (Not the kind that would hold up in court, of course.)
Remarkably, Eddie kills two birds with one stone. He and Geoff take Takashi’s corpse and stage it in Hawthorne’s bed at the party house, then offer to help him cover it all up…for the price of his support in Parliament. (It’s the Senator Geary subplot from The Godfather Part II, basically.)
Susie, meanwhile, has been busy with a handsome acquaintance, Joe Green (Tyler Conti). He’s eager to get her family in on the cocaine trade, but Susie says the risk isn’t worth the reward. She does still sleep with the guy, though. She’s much colder to Bella, who has replaced her tiger-eaten boyfriend Cico as the liaison between her and Eddie in England and Moretti down in Italy.
When Susan helps out with the Hawthorne/Takashi scheme, she also confronts Eddie with what she has found out via her own personal Geoffrey, the former Johnston employee Gabrielle (Ruby Sear), whom she’s had following Geoff and Eddie around. She has realized he plans to support the marijuana decriminalization bill in Parliament rather than kill it, believing they can sell their illegally grown weed in the legal market at for huge margins versus their competitors. Her dad and boss, Bobby, may oppose the plan, but sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. I’m not convinced dealing with Bobby Glass is one of those times, however.
Finally, Eddie’s disinherited older brother Freddy makes his first real appearance when his mother, sister, and baby nephew come to visit him in rehab. They quickly see that something is off, both with Freddy and the rehab center. It’s actually a religious rehab center, and Freddy’s sponsor is none other than John the Gospel (Pearce Quigley), the fanatical Scouse crimelord whose brother he killed, kicking off the events of last season. That season nearly ended with a shootout, until the Gospel called things off; now he’s back for round 2, and he plans to wield Freddy, who wants everything Eddie has, as a weapon.
Each set piece and storyline works this episode. It’s a blast to watch Hugh Bonneville party the night away as Hawthorne, or listen to the obscenities spewed by the Glass siblings. Eddie’s dilemma with the accountant is revealing about him as a person. Even if he dodged the consequences of refusing to kill the guy out of sheer dumb luck, his conscience is still active, and for a man in his line of work that’s a problem. But you can never fully like the guy, who is, after all, a duke who occasionally murders people to keep his family rich.
I’m surprised how much mileage actor Theo James has been able to get out of this core contradiction. He keeps Eddie suspended somewhere in the grey zone between “likeable guy,” “decent person,” and “good character,” which is right where you want the handsome, slightly amoral antihero of your comedic crime drama to live.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.
