The Gentlemen Recap Season 2 Episode 4 ‘The Bigger Picture’
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I was going to rate this episode a solid B — good but not exceptional — until the last few minutes, when Bobby Glass decided to walk off prison so he could personally scold his daughter and his general over what he perceived as their betrayal. ‘Brutus! I’ll f deal with you when I extract this dagger from my f back!’ I love British productions because the writing is often top notch. Bobby Glass was a working class criminal legend, and his emotional and Caesar referenced line to his daughter still fit.
Bobby had discovered Eddie and Susie’s plan to go against his wishes and push for the decriminalisation of marijuana, and acted accordingly. Lord Hawthorne ‘fell’ off his house window. The other members of the House of Lords, including the bishop whose son Eddie and Susie took pains to return to her, all changed their votes to ‘not content’. The bill was dead.
‘You’re beguiled by this f snake!’ Bobby screamed at his daughter. She had been his loyal soldier, his right hand. Suddenly, he was no longer her north star. Suddenly, she was taking another man’s side.
The Gentlemen is a show of multitudes, and I don’t want to mostly focus on the ship, but here we have to, because Bobby Glass himself diagnosed the issue. ‘It’s understandable. He’s a very handsome fellow.’ Susie tried to protest, but her father gently but firmly told her she was not to see Eddie again until he told her she could.
Was Susie already in love with Eddie at this point? I’m going with yes. They have been working together for two years. They worked well together. It was understandable that she did not want a relationship to mess that up. Also, it doesn’t look like Eddie ever made a move. Perhaps Susie could only silently, secretly, acknowledge a level of attraction, but her life was work, and that was where her focus remained.
But Susie breaking from her father was not solely about Eddie. She has been his general, and he has not treated her as such. He brought in an outsider, Eddie, to help do the work that she has been doing, as though she were not enough. She had ideas too, and though her father mostly treated her benevolently, even a benevolent dictatorship was still a dictatorship. Susie was not Jack; she was not content to follow orders. She gave the orders. She determined the moves on the board.
And what of Eddie? He did not take the scolding down. He yelled back and got on Bobby’s face. Eddie was a Captain before he became a criminal, but the one yelling back was Eddie the Duke. He had the backbone that many fellow aristocrats did not have — and he carried a soul tarnished by blood — but at the core of it was class pride. The 13th Duke of Halstead was not to be yelled at by someone who has lived most of his life at a Council Estate.
And this is where we take a tiny step back from the shipping, as fun as it is. People from old families — the landed, passed on through generations — tend to view attraction twofold: attraction to those one is simply attracted to, and attraction to those who are the right sort to be attracted to. Eddie has to know that his often seductive ‘Susans’ have the power to seduce. He also expected Susie to know that any teasing and/ or flirtation from his end, ended with teasing and/ or flirtation. They were from different worlds. Of course he would not date her.
Before we go any further, I still think something will happen between these two sometime in the future. What I am trying to articulate is that it may take time. Though we do not want to think it in this enlightened age, class is still a factor in romances. The social chasm between Eddie and Susie is especially embedded in Eddie’s core. He could sleep with her and still think nothing could ever happen between them in the morning. That he hasn’t, we could actually take as a sign of his care over what they had, this connection with physical and emotional lines uncrossed.
Eddie had no such concerns with Bella, because Bella was a fellow aristocrat who outright told him she would not play hard to get. Eddie figured that Bella may be able to help with the matter of the falcon which we will discuss later, and the two of them, along with Susie and Joe, ended up having dinner. Bella asked Susie to come with her to the washroom, where she outright asked about her and Eddie. The moment Susie acknowledged that Eddie had his charms, Bella immediately pointed out how well Susie and Joe looked together. She did it in the smooth way the born wealthy often do, as she just as smoothly mentioned to Eddie how cute Susie and Joe were. She was telling Susie she had her man. She was telling Eddie Susie was someone else’s.
The thing is, I don’t really see Joe as a romantic rival, and neither does Eddie. From an outsider’s perspective (mine), Joe represented danger, and Susie taking cautious inches away from her father. Joe had impressed upon Susie for most of her working life how they needed to stay away from the cocaine trade because it was too violent. Susie herself made the same argument when Joe tried to recruit her. Yet she still gravitated toward him. There was history there, Bobby himself acknowledged this. But frankly, Susie is too awesome for Joe, and her allowing him into her life felt like an indication of her feeling slightly unmoored.
Eddie saw danger, too, in Joe’s volatility and more outward gangster pose. At the restaurant where they had dinner, a couple of men Joe claimed he has not seen in the past 15 years recognised him, and sent wine and sparklers to their table to needle him. Eddie and Susie diffused the situation by cooly sending Dom Perignon and double sparklers back. Whilst the ladies were in the washroom, the men, Frank and Paul, came over. Whatever history they had got to Joe quickly, and when they did not immediately return to their table as asked, Joe showed them the gun strapped to his waist. Later, as they were leaving, Joe pretended he left his phone and returned to hit Frank before walking off. Eddie handed the waiter a thick wad of cash to stop him from calling the police.
Whilst they waited for the falcon story to be resolved — and Susie was in another room dealing with a Lord Hawthrone crisis over the phone — Eddie called out Joe’s behaviour and the fact that he felt the need to carry a gun to a dinner. ‘I am very, very protective of Susie’, he declared. Susie, because she was only Susan when it was just the two of them. Joe, who knew Susie longer, who was her lover, was an outsider in the private relationship where she was Susan and he was Edward and often, Captain.
For an episode that effectively separated them, as Eddie decided to pursue Bella and indeed began a sexual relationship with her, we were still given staging that spoke of Susie and Eddie’s closeness, whether they knew it or not, whether they acknowledged it or not. On the rooftop of a large manor, up front was a female falcon calling for her mate. Closest to her was Bella, who figured out the solution to this falcon problem. Standing next to each other, close enough to feel each other’s warmth — and bear in mind that this is a particularly spacious rooftop — were Susie and Eddie. Behind them, a few steps away, were Joe and Oscar.
‘What do you reckon, Eddie? Is she gonna reel him in, or is he having too much fun spreading his wings?’ Eddie replied with a casual we’ll see, but he made the decision soon enough. Bella was astonishingly capable on top of being a beautiful Countess. In many ways, she was a mirror image of himself. She was just right for him, and he was ready.
I would like to turn to Hugh Bonneville’s Lord Hawthorne, a moving performance of an ultimately tragic man. Back in the first season, I wrote of how one of the joys of watching The Gentlemen is how it seamlessly slips in a bit of pointed social commentary amidst this struggle between an aristocratic family at the sunset of their powers, and the rising billionaire criminal class. One of the show's most astute commentaries was when Susie thought of buying Lord Hawthorne’s allegiance with two million pounds, and Eddie, who knew aristocrats far better, said one hundred thousand would suffice. Then, Lord Hawthorne ended up asking for thirty thousand, a measly sum compared to the weekly profits from one weed farm alone. Aristocrats like Lord Hawthorne had only ever known privilege. He never had to pinch pennies to buy a home. He never had to struggle for social respect. He was surrounded by priceless art and antique furniture. Being cash-strapped whilst surrounded by things even the very wealthy would struggle to purchase could warp one’s understanding of money. Lord Hawthorne was in his element when dealing with his fellow aristocrats, but he had little understanding of the massive business that was a criminal empire.
He also did not know how it was to take a life. Eddie, who had seen the horrors of war, was haunted by visions of the accountant he killed, an innocent caught in the crossfire of his ambition. How much torment has Lord Hawthorne been under, labouring under the thought that he killed someone? He called Susie when he felt himself falling apart, unable to face his peers to lobby for what she and Eddie wanted, the decriminalisation of marijuana. Exasperated and already dealing with the problem of the missing falcon, Susie told him he did not kill anyone. They drugged him and placed the dead body on his bed so he would do what they asked him to do.
Lord Hawthorne pulled himself together and, it seemed, was ready to deliver for Susie and Eddie. But the realisation that he had been played changed something in him. In his final conversation with Susie, he told her he had realised there were certain lines he would not cross, including taking a life. That was the vast difference between the two of them. He was very harsh on Susie, and used words that had to hurt, uttering what felt like a curse on her being, on her future. It was staggering to hear, especially given that Eddie and Geoff killed Mr. Takashi, not Susie. Putting him on Lord Hawthorne’s bed was Eddie’s idea, not Susie’s. Susie had to pay for what Eddie did, and as the conversation ended, as she turned, there was Eddie gently caressing Bella’s cheek.
Jack was not in on Susie and Eddie’s plan, and when he noticed that Lord Hawthorne seemed to be having a wobble, he went straight to his father. Despite Susie’s reassurance when he called her, Bobby Glass told Jack to call Organ John. Remember how Susie seemed bothered when she saw Jack walk in with Organ John, and even more so when Jack told her it was Eddie who told him to go get him. Organ John represented a major escalation in violence. The episode did not have to show us what happened after Organ John showed up in Lord Hawthorne’s house posing as a masseuse. We already have a pretty good idea on what happened before Lord Hawthorne ‘fell’ from his house window. When the time to vote came, what was expected to be a victory for those campaigning to decriminalise marijuana turned out to be the opposite. Organ John got the information Bobby Glass needed, and Bobby Glass worked through the lords that were going to vote toward Eddie and Susie’s interest, and changed their minds.
Bobby Glass said there was a bigger picture that Eddie and Susie did not yet see. In the fullness of time, he would explain it. In the presence of Bobby, Eddie looked like a talented novice, with more pride than plan. Susie accepted the enforced holiday her father gave her, and asked what about the Duke. Bobby quietly told her he would take care of him. Later that night, inside the manor from whence generations before him ruled, two men in shadows placed a bag over Eddie’s head and yanked him off his posh couch.
Rating: B+
Strays
🏚️All right, let’s talk about the falcon. Lord Hawthorne explained to Eddie and Susie that they were short 20 votes. The Bishop of Sussex controlled 26 votes of the Lords Spiritual; these votes would push them over the edge of victory. Whilst a staunch campaigner against narcotics, they had a potential way in via her wayward son, Oscar Thorne. Eddie went to see her himself, got as much of the story as she knew, and made a deal to help out her son in exchange for her help in passing the bill.
🏚️What happened was, and this is according to Oscar, who was holed up inside the dilapidated but massive property he acquired, he borrowed 100 million from one Pat Gallagher. Susie knew him; he was a cocaine dealer turned fight promoter who was likely trying to wash his money via the property. Oscar still owed him 50 million. He needed another 20 million to refurbish the place, but Pat suddenly turned around and wanted his money back with interest. Oscar did not have it, not until he sold the place.
🏚️Susie and Eddie went to see Pat, to get the rest of the story. Pat was facing three life sentences; the conditions of his bail meant he could not leave the country. He agreed to forgo the interest on his loan to Oscar in return for an errand, to purchase at auction in America a precious white saker falcon worth one million pounds. Elite falcons were a status symbol in the Middle East; Pat wanted to hand this particular falcon over to Sheikh Khaled Suliman, the son of the third richest man in the Gulf, in exchange for a visa into his country.
🏚️Having gotten the bird, Pat decided to make some money for himself. He spent all the money he had left into purchasing female falcons so he could breed this elite falcon himself. But, the bird disappeared. He thought the females ate it. Eddie, however, figured out that the estate’s head of security, Aslan, stole the bird. Eddie got Aslan to hand the bird back, but Aslan foolishly removed the falcon’s hood, and the precious falcon took off.
🏚️Eddie was very stressed, because if he could not get the decriminalisation bill through, he was on the hook for 60 million with Moretti. This is a point of confusion for me, because the 60 million was supposed to help set up the infrastructure for a post-legalisation weed business. That is a lot of money to spend immediately. Has Eddie spent it all? On where? Presumably, some of these went to bribes to the members of the House of Lords, but what else? We don’t have details, and at this point (I am still watching and recapping on an episode to episode basis and have not watched ahead) we can only accept the deep hole he found himself in and was unable to dig out of because of one missing falcon.
🏚️Eddie had remembered that the Soranza coat of arms included two falcons, and figured Bella may have some falconry knowledge. She did. It was Bella who figured out which of the female falcons was the mate; the female falcon called for the male, and he returned. Pat presented the falcon to the Sheik, who was more interested in having Eddie in his country. The Sheik, however, decided to give Pat a one-year visa. Aisha introduced Oscar to the Sheik, a potential buyer of his latest project. All was supposed to be well until Bobby found out Eddie and Susie’s scheme and put a stop to it.
🏚️Susie’s description of Eddie to Pat: ‘A cunning linguist with criminal muscularity, and he can trace his roots back to the Domesday book.’
🏚️Marco yelled at Eddie about being let down after he heard what happened to the decriminalisation bill.
🏚️Aw Bobby’s punishment for Susie was to get her business class tickets to the Bahamas rather than first class.
Episode Title: The Bigger Picture
Episode Writers: Guy Ritchie and Matthew Read
Episode Director: Eran Creevy
Original Release Date: September 3, 2026