Grid Effect

In all mob and sport movies, there is a female love interest that claims to love the protagonist despite his shortcomings and/or misdeeds, this is a fine if overused gimmick and is occasionally used pragmatically to study both characters in-depthly, more so than if they had never been introduced.

Which brings us to The Black Donnelly’s. I have no idea why Tommy is so infatuated with Jenny. None. Other than Joey “Ice Cream” narrating it, there has never been any indication as tp why he is so smitten with her. It has only been stated, never explained. There has never been any deep sincerity between the two on camera, they seemingly share nothing in common and to top it all off, they have been friends since childhood and she, at some point GOT MARRIED! Set aside a few pleading, lovelorn stares, an impartial viewer would think they hated each other, if it were not for the fact that Joey “Ice Cream” says something along the lines of, “But Tommy would do anything for Jenny”, every ten minutes.

Last nights episode bordered on ridiculous. For God only knows what reason, Jimmy is under the impression that since he killed Louie “Downtown” and retained his cellphone with all of his customers numbers and gambling debts, that he is now entitled to those debts. Tommy was the lone voice of reason for about fifteen minutes, until discovering that an old high school friend named Maxwell who married a past love interest of Tommy’s was the person Jimmy was trying to shake down to the tune of $5,000.

In addition to this, Jenny’s dad, who is apparently suffering from Alzheimers, has been making bank deposits inside the neighboring mailbox. So out of nowhere, Tommy feels in the right to extort this guy for the five grand in order to help Jenny save her family’s diner, which we have never seen more than two people in at a time. To her credit, Jenny did not ask for any help and was unaware as to how Tommy came across the $2,500 (he split it 50/50 with Jimmy, who, by the way, was going to kill Maxwell for money he owed someone else). But when he offered her the money, she acted all conflicted about accepting it, she could have left it lying on the counter for someone else to pick up, or even put it back where Tommy found it or donated it to her favorite charity, but predictably, she took it presumably to save her diner.

Nothing about any of this is noble or selfless. Jimmy’s running around like a mad man threatening to murder people for essentially no reason, Kevin is complacent in all of it, Sean still hasn’t left his mothers apartment, Tommy justifies everything he does for duh purrty girl and Jenny is attracted to all of it, regardless of how much she pretends like she isn’t. I know he is presented in a overly sinister fashion, everytime he appears on screen the room gets smokey, the lights dim and they que up the suspense numbers to inidicate we are supposed to hate him; but at least he realizes he’s a scumbag and acts accordingly.

I carry much more respect for that than I do for three brothers (leaving out Sean, he has yet to do anything unredeemable other than mope around like a twelve year old), an unmerciful girl and an insufferable tagalong who all do remarkably horrible shit under the guise of “for the family”.

With all that said, this show literally has me by the balls for no explicable reason. I guess I am interested in seeing how they tie everything together and where they plan on taking Tommy’s character. So I suppose I’ll continue watching, though I probably won’t like it.