TNT
I get it. It’s inevitable that when you spend years in the shadow of a talent like Blandrew Stinkin on The Walking Dead you’ll want to strike out on your own. And what better opportunity for Jon Bernthal than Frank Darabont’s Mob City, his look at the real-life long war between the Mob and the LAPD in the 40s and 50s. Bernthal plays Joe Teague, a cop operating in the murky hinterlands between law and disorder. A former Marine, Joe is known as someone you don’t eff with but given that there’s a war on it would be nice to know exactly whose side he’s on.
When you spend years in the shadow of a talent like Blandrew Stinkin you’ll want to strike out on your own.
Yeah I said it motherfuckers. War. Boy Scout police captain William H. Parker (Neal McDonough)on one side and mob boss scrote Mickey Cohen (Jeremy Luke)on t’other. Sure Joe’s a cop in the literal factual sense but he’s also very pally with Cohen’s lawyer Ned Stax (Milo Ventimiglia)a buddy of his from the other war – the one that started in Pearl Harbor and ended where the women wicky wacky woo.
The other war – the one that started in Pearl Harbor and ended where the women wicky wacky woo.
In the opening two episodes Joe moonlights as security for Hecky Nash (Hymen Pegg), a stand-up comic blackmailing Cohen with pictures of bad things he done. It’s going great for Hecky until Joe shoots his tits clean off in what appears to be some kind of misplaced emotional boner for Hecky’s banger Jasmine Fontaine (Alexa Davalos), Joe’s ex-wife. It looks like she took the photos that implicated the hoods so it’s kind of chivalrous in a way how he liberates Heck’s nipples from his chest and brain from his spinal column. Returning the $50,000 Ned Stax chucks his way for the hit just confirms this.
It’s kind of chivalrous in a way how he liberates Heck’s nipples from his chest and brain from his spinal column.
Aerial Telly is a boy who likes his noir and this is an entirely reasonable stab at the genre. Bernthal is well cast as the conflicted cuntstruck Teague and it’s good to see television’s favourite baby rapist Prison Break‘s T-Bag hamming it up as mob enforcer sociopath Sid Rothman. It doesn’t have the depth or multilayered textures of Boardwalk Empire but there’s enough going on to hold your interest. Alexa Davalos could properly splinter a sock drawer or two. I’m giving this one a go.
The verdict: Blob Shitty.
Marks out of 10: 7