Season 2 Episode 2

I'll say it just as it came to me while watching it: MobLand took about 40 minutes to remind me why I love this series so much. The first 40 of the roughly 43 minutes of "Song 2" felt more like preparation than a regular episode. Lots of conversations, quite a few parallel storylines, Conrad, Maeve, Jan, Gina, Harry, Tattersall, Frankie, and a constant sense that something is brewing. And then, within a few minutes, the show steps on the gas and reminds you that the war we've been waiting for has already begun.

And the man who pulls the trigger in this story is Johnny Flynn’s Frankie Cooper. The new player on the chessboard is not here to play by Harry’s rules. Tattersall essentially explains to him that to destroy Harry, you don't need to confront him directly. You have to strike the pieces that keep him standing: his family, his work, the people he protects. It’s a strategy that bears a strong resemblance to the way Harry himself has operated until now.

And somewhere around here, the episode pulls off a very nice twist. Harry was always the man who would walk into a room and everyone knew someone else would leave it dead. Now it’s his side that is taking hits from everywhere. Fergus is murdered, Zosia is kidnapped, Gina and Eddie are in the crosshairs, and Frankie goes to Bella in person.

And this is where the true meaning of the final three minutes lies for me. We don’t need to see a massive battle to understand that something has changed. Frankie calls Conrad, with Bella right in front of him, and essentially tells him one thing: “Bang.”The scene cuts and the episode ends. We don't see the gunshot clearly, so Bella remains a big question mark. And personally, I wouldn't rush at all to assume she's dead. The show purposely doesn't show it to us.

Bella, of course, is a character who, between us, has started to get tiring. Her storyline with Harry has lost some of the momentum it had in the first season, and several of her scenes now feel like they exist more to serve the plot rather than because the character has anything new to say. Nevertheless, the fact that Frankie chose her as one of his pressure points shows that she might actually have more significance than we thought. And if she has ultimately survived, this attack could be precisely the turning point that changes her role within the season.

At the same time, Zosia has now been kidnapped, and that interests me more. She is Harry's assistant and associate, someone who is very close to the way he operates on a daily basis. Her abduction is not just another blow. It is a message to Harry that Frankie can literally reach right inside his inner circle.

Amidst all this is Conrad, who continues to become increasingly unpredictable. The examination he undergoes reveals a problem in the areas of the brain related to impulse control and judgment. His reaction? He threatens the doctor and demands that the report disappear. There could not be a more Conrad Harrigan reaction.

And Maeve, on the other hand, seems to be playing her own game. Her investigation into poison, through the dog storyline, seems far from coincidental, while her attempt to bring Seraphina to the dinner table creates yet another layer of uncertainty. The Harrigan family is not just under attack from the outside. It is beginning to tear apart from the inside as well.

And ultimately, that is what I take away from “Song 2”. As an episode, it left me pretty indifferent for the most part of its runtime. I didn't feel like anything significant developed until we reached the final minutes. But those final minutes change the picture of the entire season. Frankie didn't just come to become Harry's next opponent. He showed that he can strike multiple points of the Harrigan empire simultaneously and, above all, that he isn't afraid to touch people we previously considered relatively protected.

In the first season, Harry was the one setting up the chessboard. Now someone else has started moving his pieces.

And for the first time, Harry is not the one doing the chasing. He is the one who has to react in time.

For me, then, Song 2 was an almost 40-minute setup for three minutes of real action. The problem is that those three minutes were enough to do the job. Now I want to see the next episode.