Grid Effect

The Black Donnelly’s sophomore episode was substantially more coherent than its premiere, but it didn’t return in the manner I was hoping. Many of the same cliches stayed prevalent and the dialog didn’t improve one iota. But still, I fully plan on watching this show next Monday. Why is that? Everything I respect and enjoy about scripted television (outside of plot development) this series misses its mark on, clearly this is something of a guilty pleasure for me.

For starters, remember when I said Kevin Donnelly was a cross between Sonny and Fredo? Yeah, he is just Fredo. When he unflinchingly murdered those two people outside of the bar where Sal and Huey were congregating, I just assumed that was going to be Gary Cooper, “strong, silent type”. Considering all we saw of Kevin in the premiere was that he had a mild gambling problem and he viciously shot two people with seemingly no remorse, I would venture to guess the continuation with this character was handled somewhat poorly, as he essentially started crying on two separate occasions in the same scene.

Tommy Donnelly, on the other hand, is setting up to be not “good guy forced to do bad things” brand of character, but rather a cold-blooded killer along the lines of Paulie Walnuts or Sylvio Dante. As of now, its hard to even label him an anti-hero because he is fighting for the virtue of Jimmy (a character only portrayed negatively) and Sean. And the only thing we know about the latter is he is very comfortable around women and he might die.

The only (and possibly sufficient) motive we have from Tommy is he swore to himself and God to never let anyone harm his family after he ran over Jimmy’s leg with a stolen car when he was ten. But there has to be more reflection about the past, if for nothing else than to redeem Tommy in some capacity. The only such instances we have seen thus far is flashbacks and some teardrops when he murders three people. How does he devolve from that into bludgeoning the knees of a corpse (Downtown Louie) to fit him in a barrel so he’ll sink to the bottom of the river? I understand his role as protector, but still, there should be some sort of transition.

Speaking of which, one of the pet peeves of mine on crime series’ are the horribly cliched nicknames. Such as “Downtown” Louie and Joey “Ice Cream”, its pretentious of me, I know, but why not simply go with Louie and Joey. Downtown Louie had maybe five minutes of screentime last week before Jimmy shot him in the face, so I guess the sole purpose of the nickname is to distinguish him from the pack, because the entire story is going to stem from his murder, but what are the origins of the nickname? At least we know Joey Ice Cream’s name is an honorary title, because he melts under pressure. But then why even bother? He’s the fucking narrator, the audience doesn’t need any precursor to identify him.

Also, Jenny Reilly continues to agitate more and more with her insipid obviousness. First she makes out with Tommy, then cleans the blood off the basement stairs of the Donnelly’s bar for them, then gets lectured by her father about the lack of morality on the Donnelly’s part, then she sleeps with him and then claims that she cannot be with him. And according to Mr. Ice Cream, its because he has agreed to protect his brothers, even though the two things are mutually exclusive and never really intersect. Whatever, what’s a mob narrative without a faux-noble love interest.

Again, a lot of inconsistincies and shortcomings, but for whatever reason, it seems the content alone is triggering my patience.