Watching Showtime

This second episode of Brotherhood takes its viewer deeper into the lives and dealings of the Caffee brothers, their families and the rest of The Hill. From shady dealings by Tommy to hostile takeovers by Michael, no Brotherhood episode would be complete (I’m fast to learn) without a twist at the end to keep you guessing.

Waking early to take care of her girls, Eileen doesn’t seem to interested in wishing her husband luck as he heads off to his other job, developing real estate. Tom is meeting with two buyers looking to back a warehouse-style condo project, although they seem more interested in abusing his “priveledges” in government to help pass along some tax breaks for them. We find out Tommy only makes $12k a year as a government rep, and instantly start to wonder how he makes ends meet with a wife not working and a job just above the poverty line. After meeting with the developers, Tommy heads to work at the House, and finds no resistance to writing up a bill granting tax breaks to out of state developers, only to find the highway he’s been fighting moving through his territory will go ahead as planned (and despite his shady dealings). When he confronts the Speaker about their deal, he finds out Judd Fitzgerald is the true leader of the state government, and everyone’s afraid of him. When he asked the speaker to move ahead as planned, there was literally nothing the speaker could do. So Tom heads off to visit Fitzgerald.

Michael, meanwhile, is scouting locations for his new base of operations, and takes an interest in a local liquor store, despite the fact it’s already owned by someone else and isn’t for sale. How does he convince Dina, the owner, to sell to him? By playing Russian Rulette with Slow Charlie until she agrees to sell to him for half the value. He wants the space to house operations for the whole of Paddy’s turf, which he’s taken over now that Paddy is conveniently out of the picture (no thanks to paying off a young black kid to kill him). The one kink in this plan? Mo is rather pissed Micheal’s got all of his territories now, and it’s only a matter of time before retaliates to being shoved out.

Eileen spends her day sleeping with her old high school flame again, laughing at the mail he carries, making fun of the names of people in their area (obviously made funnier by all the pot she’s smoking). Done with him for the time being, she heads to her doctors, where she finds out her last pap smear had an irregularity, most likely caused by an STD. In the parking lot she runs into Tommy and Michael’s little sister Mary Kate, who has fibroids and will most likely need to have a hysterectomy, and who also fears her husband will leave her over it. Nothing like slapping you with how good you have it!

After watching Slow Charlie threatened with Russian Roulette, Dina heads off to see Tommy to get him to control his brother. Rather than throw himself under the bus, however, he calls up Declan (called Deco by his friends) to tell him the story, ask him to arrest his brother and that Dina will testify. He then sends Dina down to the police station to file a report. Not satisfied, Dina storms out.

That evening, Tom heads over to Fitzgerald’s house to meet with him as he was obviously unable to get an appointment with him earlier in the day. In a very brief conversation, Tom convinces him to keep the highway off The Hill if he can get it moved to a different neighborhood by convincing two other reps to change their minds. Tom also finds out Fitzgerald used to know his mother, but neither Fitzgerald nor his mom are letting him know how or why.

Michael takes the girl he helped in the first episode on a date, and it goes so bad! It looks like she agreed to go out with him only to treat him like shit (despite the fact he comforted her after her friends’ leg was broken and her ear ripped to shreds by a rival thug), and he responds by leaving her at the bar and then beating up two kids drunkenly peeing on the street.

In the end, Tom keeps the highway out of his neighborhood by blackmailing reps in another to allow it to head through theirs, only to find out Fitzgerald’s wanted the highway to go through that neighborhood for years and simply used Tommy to make it happen. Michael gets to keep his newly acquired liquor store as Deco has stonewalled Dina for the time being and Freddie somehow thinks it’s a good idea. Tommy gets no closer to figuring out how his mom and Fitzgerald know each other, and still doesn’t know Eileen is cheating on him. And Mo rats out Michael to the feds for his counterfeit money.

Showtime, Brotherhood, Michael Caffee, Jason Isaacs, Thomas Caffee, Jason Clarke, Eileen Caffee, Annabeth Gish, Declan Giggs, Ethan Embry, Freddie Cook, Kevin Chapman, Rose Caffee, Fionnula Flanagan

Catch up on previous episodes:
Mark 8:36