S02E04: Overtime White and Overtime Stupid

[aghst]

Quote

Jackie reckons with the destructive consequences of his actions; with violence intensifying, Decourcy, Anton and Siobhan face off in the interrogation room; Grace makes an unfortunate miscalculation; Jenny makes friends with a mysterious woman.

Jackie confesses about his role in Holly's stroke to a priest, who tells him to perform an act of contrition, since God isn't going to cure Holly.

Anton gets reckless and tries to kill a rival gang member.  He's arrested with an illegal gun and crack.

EVERYONE knows he's dealing except apparently Grace.  Even Siobhan, who's representing Anton, tells Grace to face facts.

Nobody shows up at Jimmy's funeral -- who paid for the funeral then?  Jackie shows up and then the ex wife shows up.  He thinks Jimmy's ex will give him some but she shoots that down quick.

So Decourcy has no doubts that Cathy killed him.  The shot to the face is a tell.  He confronts her in her own salon.  These Charlestown gangsta wannabes aren't exactly criminal masterminds.  He even tells her if she cooperates, he might make sure her kids stay out of foster care.  She starts to give him some info but says she will never be a snitch like Jimmy.  A murderer and a drug dealer muling dope in her you know what but NEVER A SNITCH!

Siobhan has picked out names and a stroller for the baby before she even tells Dee.  And when she finally drops the baby bomb on him, she's not happy with his response.  Girl what do you expect, you half planned the kid's life before breathing a word about it to the father.

Jenny befriends a new arrival in her church and choir from Northern Island, invites her to dinner.  Jackie proceeds to insult the Irish.  Later, he suggests to Jenny that they could have a threesome with Maeve.  Why is Jenny still putting up with this BS?  Insulting Maeve's culture must be Jackie's idea of seduction or maybe he thinks he's spotted another doormat.

Grace organizes another walk/vigil, almost gets shot when Anton's rivals take out one of his crew.  She's been knocked down a few pegs.

 

[LibertarianSlut]

This is a completely different show from last season, where there was humor and tension and a layered plot.  I don’t recognize the stumbling through 47 minutes I’m watching, show runners apparently trying to cobble something together with spit and bailing wire.

I used to laugh out loud about half a dozen times per episode, but this episode I only half-smiled once, when Jackie made the self-deprecating joke about being Irish and Scottish.  I have no idea why he let that kid off the hook, the one whose mom drank beers with him last episode.  I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person and I follow the show pretty well, and it makes no sense to me.  How did that help Jackie?  (And Jackie only looks out for himself, so that is the only consideration).  

All of my questions are rhetorical, because if I have to go on the Internet to find out theories about how a show works, I’m not into it.  It should be self-evident if the viewer is paying close enough attention.  

Siobhan and Decourcy are not nearly as charming as Affleck and his cronies seem to think they are.  They are not leads, and I am quite unsure why they are suddenly acting like Beth and Randall Pearson from This Is Us.  They were so edgy last year.  Now they are just bland and prickly.  Why are Decourcy’s eyelids suddenly always at half-mast this season?  I really can’t stand Siobhan anymore.  She has become a caricature of who she was last season.  She acts like she fucking hates her husband.  I think he’s a decent guy—that’s the problem.  

Things that bothered me about my last episode watching this show:  ADA is not an administrative job, nor is it a cop’s job.  It’s a litigator, or at least Decourcy is supposed to be playing that role, as we have seen last season.  Yet Decourcy doesn’t go to court anymore, we never see him in his office preparing for a case; he is somehow now a acting as a cop.  Very odd.  Also what’s odd was the opening scene, when his boss came in and told him that there is going to be a grand jury investigation into Decourcy letting that kid off.  What was that kid’s crime, calling a cop the n-word?  Since when is that a crime?  Even if Decourcy did let him off for a crime, the prosecutor has discretion as to what kind of cases he will prosecute, so I don’t see this going anywhere, but if it did, there is a much higher likelihood that the body that oversees the DA’s office would launch an administrative investigation, as well as the bar launching a professional misconduct investigation.  If an indictment was coming down the pike, it would be a much bigger deal, and Decourcy would be on leave.  

He would not be showing up at the same interrogation as his wife, putting on a dog and pony show for the viewers, and not asking a damn question, even though the person under arrest was there to answer questions, per his attorney.  That was pure theatre for the cameras.  It didn’t advance Decourcy’s purpose at all.  I don’t care about grandiose speeches for the TV audience.  I find it condescending.  I have a wild idea—tell a good story.  

I will miss the AUSA Shimizu.  Whenever she is on camera, she pops.  She has the right amount of evil and cunning to propel this show forward.  I will miss Grace a little bit too.  She got a lot better after that cartoonish threat to divest all of the housing project’s funds from the bank in the first episode.  She has some complexity to her, and she is a decent actress.  I just can’t watch her marching around with Leon anymore.  He detracts from the subtlety of her work.  She is good enough that she can perform on her own.  She’s far better than the one-note Siobhan.  

Last complaint, and this is consistent with what they did last year:  when Decourcy went to Cathy’s salon to get her to flip, he had no evidence.  That’s a problem.  Cathy is written to be street-smart and she would have told him in no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of her shop.  Why the show didn’t write in some forensic evidence, I don’t know.  Laziness, I suppose.  But there is no way that she would have fed Decourcy info.  Even if it didn’t make her an official “snitch” or CI, it made her look like she had something to hide.  I do not believe the show that Cathy Ryan would be this stupid and shortsighted.  

Anyway, this new show, this City On A Hill: The Remix just isn’t good.  It’s not something that gives me any joy anymore.  

 

[DoctorAtomic]

14 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

Siobhan and Decourcy are not nearly as charming as Affleck and his cronies seem to think they are.

No, they aren't. Though, I do consider Bacon and Hodge the leads of the show. I'm just not interested in Siobhan unless she's in her own plot, but I think both hers and Jenny's should be a minimal part of the overall narrative. 

I think splitting them wasn't a strong narrative choice for S2. I would have gone with uneasy truce. I take the point that Decourcy kind of was full of himself, and despite Jackie being a sleaze, he was right about putting Jimmy on the stand with the blanket immunity. So it was self-inflicted on Decourcy's part, and kind of tragic. And Jackie did screw up the bust. 

I would have liked a time jump (small) with a more Boston-weary Decourcy. With him needing to get out of the doghouse and Jackie needing to placate the new US Attorney, there's plenty of material there. I don't think they would have needed the drug overdose for the Asst. plot. Again, she was snorting up the cocaine like a Hoover. Jackie wasn't forcing it on her. 

15 hours ago, LibertarianSlut said:

Yet Decourcy doesn’t go to court anymore, we never see him in his office preparing for a case; he is somehow now a acting as a cop.  

I was assuming he's kind of in the penalty box for court because of screwing up last season, so he's been relegated to a more investigative role. 

[Bluesky]

1 hour ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I would have liked a time jump (small) with a more Boston-weary Decourcy. With him needing to get out of the doghouse and Jackie needing to placate the new US Attorney, there's plenty of material there. I don't think they would have needed the drug overdose for the Asst. plot. Again, she was snorting up the cocaine like a Hoover. Jackie wasn't forcing it on her. 

 

This is what I don’t get. The woman was using drugs and alcohol- her choice, and she overdid it.   He dropped her at a hospital.  Maybe he felt guilty about dumping her but the outcome would have been the same. 

[DoctorAtomic]

I mean, it's not a good look for the Attorney's office. What's puzzling is that the US Attorney is seemingly treating the Asst like a lost little lamb. The fact that she overdosed isn't in dispute, so I'd think she would be suspended while the investigate the incident. It doesn't track that the US Attorney is already assigning guilt to Jackie. Even as viewers, we opened with them snorting up in the car. I don't recall if it was established who actually got the drugs. Which may be why she was silent when the Attorney asked about Jackie in not wanting to implicate herself. 

This is kind of a sloppy plot thread that I just don't think is necessary given the US Attorney told Jackie to shape up or forced retirement. 

[aghst]

Presumably they were seen together.

Jackie goes to visit Holly in the hospital again and it turns out she has a husband and young child.

so that is why they’d have been noticed if seen OG ether, whether at the US Attorneys office or at court or wherever.

[tennisgurl]

Jimmy was a total waste of space, but it is kind of sad that the only people who went to his funeral were Jackie and his kind of girlfriend who I forgot about. 

I really wish that they hadn't decided on this Jackie vs Decourcy plot for this season, the best part of last season was their odd couple type of dynamic, where they were almost always at odds but also saw each other as being someone to work with, even if Jackie thought Decourcy was an idiot and Decourcy thought of Jackie as a real son of a bitch, but also was the devil you know. Them off in their own domestic plots and just getting into pissing matches is a lot less interesting than their uneasy alliance. Its also led to neither of them being as interesting as they were last season, Decourcy is more boring and Jackie is even more sleazy, and thats about it. 

Grace has one serious blind spot when it comes to her sons, even as its become obvious to everyone else that they're dealers. Its understandable that she doesn't want her sons to be criminals, especially as she's a big community advocate trying to stop violence, but it seems like she is going to need them standing over a dead body to really have her get it. At least her younger son seems to want to get out of dealing eventually, Anton is a real piece of work. 

[DoctorAtomic]

I do not remember the girlfriend at all. 

While I do agree with the criticisms, and I've made plenty, I do enjoy the show. I thought this was the best episode of the season. Largely because the family plots were not as much. Or maybe I'm just not invested and time half out.

Far more interesting when they were in the interrogation room. Though why not ask about the gun they found on him?

I'm glad Jenny had a friend but I don't care that much. 

Jackie and Decourcy had good monologues. 

Cathy hates Jimmy because she's exactly the same. I liked how she bitched about how dare Decourcy want her to be an informant and then immediately rolled over. 

Segway from the Irish lass saying money to C. R. E. A. M. kicking in was brilliant. 

7 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Grace has one serious blind spot when it comes to her sons, even as its become obvious to everyone else that they're dealers.

That was a good scene too, especially on the tail end of the interrogation. Grace was quick to bring up her reputation to Anton when she visited him in jail. And then talk about saving face. 

And Jackie with Rickey and his mom. All three were great. 

It's almost jarring seeing people smoking inside and that wasn't long ago. 

I liked Decourcy with Eloise too. She was all revved up at Decourcy and came around to talk frank. Though not what he wanted. 

 

 

[Orbert]

I guess I was wrong about Cathy and the heroin money.  When Ward dropped in at the salon, she was packing things up and there was a sign on the window saying Commercial Space for Lease or something like that.  So what happened to the $10K worth of dope and/or the money from it?

Jackie letting Little Rickey off the hook was his Act of Contrition, assigned to him by the priest.  I guess the idea is that Jackie is a corrupt son of a bitch, but deep down somewhere, he can't shake his Catholic upbringing and feels the need to do something to atone.

Similarly, his apparent re-interest in... his own wife!  A few episodes back, when the three of them were having dinner, Jackie came out of the blue with a compliment on Jenny's voice and support for her joining the choir.  Both Benny and Jenny looked at him like "where in the heck did that come from?"  I'm fortunate to come from a reasonably functional family, so I never know what to make of scenes like that.  I guess I imagine dysfunctional family dinners being full of sniping and snarking at each other, parents bitching at each other, kids on their phones.  But I don't know.  I guess even families with serious problems still love each other and have dinner together, which is nice.  Again thinking back a few episodes, when Jenny was admiring Jackie and got horny and went out to the living room to (ahem) enjoy herself, Jackie gave her shit about it, which I thought was so sad.  For all his shit, she still loves him, and wants him.  Then this week, he seemed up for some lovin', then went and fucked it up by bringing up the pretty young girl Jenny had brought home for dinner, and how he was hoping for a threesome.  Was that supposed to work, to get her in the mood?

Overall, I have to agree with those saying that this season feels very different from (and inferior to) the first season.  The focus has shifted to things that I'm overall less interested in.  Everyone is miserable and horrible all the time.  But somehow I can't stop watching.  The actors are all killing it.  I just wish the show made more sense.

[DoctorAtomic]

1 hour ago, Orbert said:

I guess the idea is that Jackie is a corrupt son of a bitch, but deep down somewhere, he can't shake his Catholic upbringing and feels the need to do something to atone.

I actually thought Jackie respected the kid for sticking to his guns straight out and realized that if he forced him to lie, he'd be put on a path Jackie is on now. Sure, it did dovetail with the act of contrition.

I did have a huge laugh after the 90th time with threatening forced retirement that Jackie just told the US Attorney to step off. 

 

[aghst]

Or he probably realized that it wasn't going to work.

If the kid pointed out that Jackie came to his house, boozed up the mother to try to get him to lie under oath, that's even more trouble for Jackie.

[DoctorAtomic]

Well, Jackie isn't an idiot. 

[kathe5133]

3 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I actually thought Jackie respected the kid for sticking to his guns straight out and realized that if he forced him to lie, he'd be put on a path Jackie is on now. Sure, it did dovetail with the act of contrition.

 

Wasn't this kid killed at the end?  

[DoctorAtomic]

No, I think that was the kid who got into BU. 

[kathe5133]

3 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

No, I think that was the kid who got into BU. 

I thought they were the same kid?  He got into BU, but would blow it if he didn't set up the DA as Jackie asked?  This show.  You could be right.  But, why is it so convoluted?  Although I'm usually the last one to dis a show, this second season is truly disappointing.  I was riveted by season 1.  I hated Jimmy and his clan, but could not turn away.  This year, ehh.   I'd say I hope it gets better, but there are other things to watch and I may be watching them.  

 

[Orbert]

Marco was the one who got into BU, and was shot while Grace, the Reverend, and others were walking the streets.  Kelvin and Anton were talking about it afterward when Kelvin went to visit Anton in prison.

[amarante]

I think the Grace dynamic is interesting because it seems at one point she and Siobhan's mother were similarly situated but Siobhan's mother chose to get out of the ghetto - and so her daughter had the advantage of growing up in a relatively privileged environment.

When Kelvin said they wanted to use the money to get the mother out of Roxbury, the mother said she had the choice but had chosen to stay. So on some level, she was responsible for what happened to her kids. Bad influences all around and the reality of their being inferior schools.

 Obviously not every kid grows up to become a criminal but the pressures are really difficult to overcome. The season of The Wire which dealt with the school system in Baltimore showed how so many of the kids were victims of the environment in one way or another. That was a heartbreaking season.