It's a so-called O.Z. Opportunity Zone, a depressed area slated for renewal with a combination of public and private money. And money of course attracts Bobby, and Mike.
Each candidate postures before a community committee, spewing all the good they will do. Since Bobby grew up in Yonkers, from a lower class, poor upbringing, he pitches the Horatio Alger/favorite son card. The home he lived is now occupied by a black family. Bobby shoots hoops with the black kid in the same driveway he did as a kid. Bobby spins the snow shoveling story on how he created a network of youthful shovelers who cornered the market for snow removal.
Bobby wins the rights to develop by virtue his nostalgic charm. He promises to eat a meal in his old house, with his chef bringing all the food. But when the photo-op comes, be disappears, telling us he's got to get away from "this dipshit town."
The recent episodes gives us some insight to this. Bobby is fearful of even going in his old house because of the memories it brings back of, I guess, his drunken, abusive father. When the bailed meal is reveled to an eager reporter, Bobby goes through hoops to suppress the story.
He succeeds, but not without buying the people out, and getting them nicer digs in Scarsdale. They keep quiet about the missed repast.
Wendy, the ever-on-call psychiatrist and life coach, comforts Bobby as he sits in his old room and relives the parts of his childhood that he hates, which is pretty much all of it, and all of it directed toward his dad. To say Bobby has issues with dad, is to put it mildly.
But the absolute best part of the episode revolves around Axe and company wanting to get a state bank charter. They meet with who I will assume is the state banking superintendent (again in New York, not Albany), a woman, Leah Calder, who so reminds you of Lauren Bacall you might forget Lauren has passed away. But not before Chuck and Kate Sacker get there to pitch their desire to road block Axe.
The casting is pitch perfect. She's a well coiffed, expensively, smartly dressed woman in her Turnbull and Asser blouse, just unbuttoned enough to revel a fetching neck with an elegant gold necklace and sensible, dangling earrings, that she cuts an image of style, power, and no nonsense.
Ms. Calder, played so well by Wendy Malick, gets Chuck's horse-trading vibe when she lets on that Axe's application seems okay. Chuck offers the power of the Attorney General's office to right all wrongs, which Ms. Calder describes as her son's fiancé's refusal to return the engagement ring, a family heirloom smuggled out of Europe in the lining of a coat during WW II.
How the writers avoided telling us the ring was her mother's, smuggled out during the Holocaust is something I can't understand. Whatever.
Leah would like the ring back. Chuck proposes legal action against the never-to-be-daughter-in-law that will make her head spin. Leah subtly agrees to throw road blocks at Bobby's application.
A meeting of the legal minds of Chuck, Kate Sacker, and the chief-fixer Karl, convinces them that a court case doesn't have to result in the return of the ring, even if they win. The devious light bulb goes off in Chuck's head.
We already know Chuck is devious, but outright planning a safe cracking job does seem to go beyond the pale of what an Attorney General of New York State would do. But then after all, Chuck is never in Albany, so it can't count.
Chuck and Kate Sacker enlist Brian Connerty's safe-cracking brother, the one who broke into Chuck's father's safe last season and made off with documents that Chuck planted that landed Brian in jail. We do get to see Brian a bit in this episode because Jackie Connerty insists that he'll do the job if Chuck himself will meet with Brian in prison.
Chuck has dangled a better prison location for Brian, Otisville vs. Coxsackie, if Jackie will break into the never-to-be-daughter-in-law's East Side safe, pluck the ring from its safekeeping, and deliver it to Kate and Chuck.
Chuck visits Brian in prison. Brian looks a little heavier. Chuck instructs the guard to remove Brian's cuffs, whereupon Brian sucker punches Chuck clean on the left eye, and waits to be ushered out by the guards. It was a setup, and Chuck accepted that he probably deserved it. After all, he's into pain.
Jackie delivers the ring to Kate at her apartment. Kate tells Jackie there's one more thing he has to do, since he set Chuck up to be punched. He has to gain access to Leah's safe and place the ring in it.
Kate, with a few tumblers of scotch in her, through Italian banter and body language, in no uncertain terms signals to Jackie that she's interested in an evening of sex with him. She must like the bad boys, and Jackie is certainly one of the bad boys.
She glides onto her bed, visible from the foyer, and crosses her legs like Sharon Stone in 'Basic Instinct', while starting to unbutton her blouse. No need to know more.
Jackie completes the job, and Chuck shows off by making Leah open her safe and seeing, through unspoken magic, the ring has been returned. Chuck is glowing.
Meanwhile, Axe has not taken the news lightly that his banking application is not being considered because there is a community bank already in place, Vark, that his given as the reason by Leah that bobby's bank is not needed.
Axe arranged for several of his trader commandos to pose as potential lenders, all while being secretly recorded by Spiros as they pose an an international, just married gay couple, who are not U.S. citizens to average white guy. Loans rates offered vary greatly to 8.75% for the gay couple, to 2.5% for the white. working man. Thus, the captured video shows predatory loan practices and systemic xenophobia, homophobia and racism. Axe is ready to pounce.
The advantage to splitting Chuck and Wendy up is that it puts two horny people back in circulation. Wendy has hots for the Axe's artist, and Chuck is attracted to the brains and body of Catherine 'Cat' Brant, a feminist author, played by Julianna Margulies, who lectures at Yale, just like Chuck.
They have each other in their lectures and the body language starts to ignite. Brant knows Chuck is a submissive, since who doesn't, after he fully well admitted it while running for Attorney General. She just plain asks Chuck, "do you like penetrative sex?" As a scholar. Chuck says yes.
Well, they finally do get together, in a very traditional missionary position, but wait, is Chuck have performance issues? Paul Giamatti jumping someone's bones is not great television, and thankfully it is dark. It looks a bit like his eager mounting of Abigail Adams after he, John Adams gets back from a lengthy European trip. Way too many petticoats there.
It's not clear, but the next episode may reveal something about Chuck that surprises him. Maybe he's not turned on unless he's being submissive. Oh boy, Wait till Brant uses this in her next piece of research.
Banking Superintendent Leah Calder is so over-the-top at getting the ring back, she formally turns Axe down, even after he's exposed his competition as an unfair lender.
We get a quick appearance by Taylor Mason and his quest to partner with Wendy in an "impact" fund, a fund designed to make money while also moving the wold to green, renewable sources of energy. Wendy is very much a player in this venture, and has been given a hefty percentage of the equity—if there will be any. Taylor Mason Carbon sits inside the whole suite of Axe Capital products. If this were a publishing house, this would be an imprint.
As if the episode doesn't have enough going on, we get a scene of Chuck Roades Sr. playing with his newborn as he imitates Marlon Brando in the tomato patch chasing his grandchild, stuffing his mouth with plastic to appear as a monster and paddling around on all fours pretending to scare her.
Well, he gets the scare, and so do we, because the expected happens: down goes Senior. Only, unlike Brando's fate, Senior survives, and is shown in a hospital bed with the news he needs a kidney, but is not likely to get one, since he doesn't practice a healthy lifestyle.
Big deal. If Mickey Mantle can get a liver transplant after years of ruining his health, Chuck Sr. is going to get a kidney. Mark my words.
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