The Gentlemen Recap Season 1 Episode 5 ‘I’ve Hundreds of Cousins’

I have tried not to ship Susie and Eddie, but what can I say? The chemistry was chemistry-ing on the very same episode that Eddie found out Susie lied to him about Jethro. In many ways, it was more than a little naive for Eddie to think that a criminal organisation would allow Jethro to live. But, Eddie still hoped to extricate his estate from the Glass family business, and with his every step, he was simply digging himself deeper. Bobby Glass would not let someone as useful as him go, and more to the point, he may not want to leave, this latest betrayal notwithstanding. 

Susie had a problem. Several of their shipments that went through the Port of Zeebrugge had been seized by the police, so much so that they needed to temporarily cease exports. She had Keith and Blanket bring their Belgian contact, Florian de Groot (Kristofer Hivju, Tormund Giantsbane in Game of Thrones), to the farm so she could question him, and asked for Eddie’s help in figuring him out. 

Florian wanted more money in exchange for allowing the goods through – 1.5 million pounds. Eddie thought Florian tipped off the Belgian police and was using it to drive the price up. He advised against paying more, and wondered if there was another route they could use. Their conversation was interrupted when the power suddenly went out of the farm.

The generators were stolen by travellers, who ended up providing a solution to their predicament. The leader of the travellers, JP, already knew about the weed growing in Eddie’s estate, and he wanted in. Eddie suggested utilising their group to get the product across Europe. After a night of drunken partying at the Halstead Manor – where Susie and Eddie may or may not have kissed – JP agreed to transport the product by stuffing them inside Virgin Mary statues.

The partnership worked, and money flowed into the operation. JP’s team effectively cut off the need for Florian, who seemed to be reporting to a yet to be revealed figure. He promised this mystery man that he would fix it, and soon enough, a fairly effective wedge was driven between Susie’s organisation and JP’s family. Four million dollars in cash went missing from the farm. Apparently, they did have CCTV, but it was not working. Given that Eddie only met JP because his family stole the generators in the farm, JP was the immediate suspect.

With the travellers gone, Eddie started thinking that perhaps they jumped the gun with JP. Who benefited from blaming the travellers for the theft, which led to the loss of their European distribution network? Florian. Susie and Eddie headed to Belgium themselves, and dangled the antidote to the poison they had placed on Florian’s food, to get him to give them the name they knew he had. Florian did.

The man on the inside, the man who betrayed them, was Keith. He needed to die, that was the rule in the violent world they operated in, and though Eddie claimed it was not his world, he was the one who went to JP to recruit him back. He was there when JP and his man walked Keith to the middle of the woods (Blanket remained with the vehicles). 

Keith got a few licks in before his inevitable demise. He told Eddie he worked for Bobby Glass now, there was no way out, just like him, just like Jethro. He said Eddie could not trust Susie, could not trust any of them. JP shot him before he could say more, but it was enough. 

When Eddie decided to leave his posh life, he joined the military. He was not exactly looking for a safe way to live. When he found out about his father’s secret business association, he dove right in and joined Susie. Even if he kept telling himself that he was only doing it to save his family’s estate, he was not a man without options, and he was choosing to work with Susie. Susie correctly read him when she observed that he had been enjoying himself. Freddy, too, saw that he was good at what he did, and that he thought the Glass organisation was grooming him; notably, Eddie did not seem alarmed by this. Would knowing that Jethro was killed finally make Eddie realise that Susie’s world was his world now, that he had been engulfed by the waves he thought he was riding?  

Rating: B

Strays

🏚️At some point during the initial negotiation with JP, Susie and Eddie turned for a private conversation, and the screen read ‘*Incomprehensible posh mumbling’. For a certain segment of the Internet populace, the show’s plot (a posh family allowing weed to be grown in their property because they needed the money) and this ‘incomprehensible posh mumbling’ would remind them of one name, and that is all I will say about this. 

🏚️The traveller who actually stole the generators with two kids, Kellie Ann, wandered to the stables when Eddie allowed the travellers to stay at the estate for a couple of days. Geoff found her there, and he allowed her to ride one of the horses. Sabrina joined Geoff and they watched Kellie Ann ride; she reminded Sabrina of Charly. I have suspected for a while that Geoff and Sabrina had an affair; this conversation implied that Charly was Geoff’s daughter.

🏚️JP noticed that Susie and Eddie looked cosy during that drink and coke fueled party at the manor, and sweetly warned her that she was the outlaw, and that Eddie’s kind had been locking them up since William the Conqueror. 

🏚️Who was Jimmy texting? Could it be Gabrielle?

🏚️They finally fixed the CCTV at the farm. 

🏚️ Susie told Bobby that there was a pattern -- the van filled with weed that vanished, the blockade in the continent, the rats in the kitchen. She thought dark clouds were coming. Bobby, however, wanted the business to go full steam ahead.

Episode Title: I’ve Hundreds of Cousins

Episode Writers: Stuart Carolan

Episode Director: Eran Creevey

Original Release Date: March 7, 2024