Attaf**kinboy
Season 1
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Netflix
“Attaf**kinboy” gives us the most comprehensive look at the type of movie Black Rabbit might have been in another world. The episode structures the lead-up to the fateful robbery with a neo-noir sheen, utilizing multiple points of view set within the same time frame. Not exactly reinventing the wheel here, but it does provide an entertaining and thematically cohesive onramp to the amped-up final act of the last two episodes. From each character’s point of view, the Black Rabbit serves as a crossroads where many deals with the Devil are possible. The returns on those deals vary, but by the time of the robbery, everyone pays handsomely for the sin of finding themselves at the crossroads in the first place.
For Jake and Vince Friedken, every street corner of New York has been a Devil’s crossroads since the night their dad gave them a pair of phony watches. “They’re as real as you tell people they are,” he tells them. Jake is our first character up, reiterating, in veiled platitudes, the real lesson he took from his father’s words. “Life is fragile,” he says at Anna’s memorial at the Rabbit. “Be grateful for the time you’ve got. And be thankful that your path crossed with hers for as long as it did.” Everything is ether, including the ground beneath your feet. The only solid thing you can grab on to is the thing you can sell. Both Jake and Vince have been handcuffed to this idea their whole lives. But Vince internalized it in a way that Jake didn’t and became a creature motivated by the grift. For Jake, living by the dirty deal has always been something of a burden and the only modus operandi that was ever on the table, as ill-fitting as a Nick Cave suit on a Coney Island rabbit.
It took a gun to his head to get Jake to hatch the meatiest Friedken-brothers scam yet: robbing the house safe at the Rabbit on the night of the big Ben Baller auction. Jake will leave the safe combo inside a matchbook in the office. All Junior and Babbitt have to do is open the door and boost the diamonds and jewelry inside. He’ll leave the service entrance unlocked to ensure they can get in easily. “No repercussions … for anyone.” That last note’s a jinx on arrival, seeing how Junior clearly doesn’t give a shit about keeping things calm or sticking to the plan.
The pressure mounts fast as Campbell pops in on Jake unannounced, right after he’s received another visit from Detective Seung, inquiring about the security-camera tapes. Jake shakes her off by lying about deleting their tapes at the end of every week, but Campbell catches wind of the interaction via his “birds in every precinct” and checks in to make sure all loose ends are tied up. He hands Jake a check for $500,000, the easiest and biggest take for the Friedken brothers so far. All he has to do is make sure the footage of Jules and Anna is gone for good. Upon viewing, this feels like an unearned narrative shortcut, giving Jake an unambiguously sufficient sum to pay off the Mancusos. It doesn’t help that we’ve been through one or two rounds too many of Jake and Vince coming into a hefty sum, then losing it on another bet before they can cash out. But it also reinforces the cruel irony of Jake having finally cleared the deck of hunters only to find the barrel of a gun in his brother’s mangled hand staring back at him.
But Jake still has plenty of frenemies to worry about as Wes and Roxie make their move to take away the Black Rabbit and the Pool Room. Wes revels in turning the screws on Jake. “Estelle’s her own woman; I just want her to be happy,” Wes tells Jake at the party. “I would tell you to keep a collar on her, but I don’t think you can afford her brand.” He executes his vengeance plan like a sniper from a gilded tower. As Wes, Sope Dirisu has played a compelling figure in the blind throes of a meteoric rise. His success is both what draws those closest to him and repels them from his elevated position. All the more tragic, then, that his revenge plot, to not only take over the Rabbit as majority owner but also swipe the Pool Room project from Jake, isn’t even really his. It’s Roxie’s. Roxie’s already done the groundwork, presenting herself as the Black Rabbit’s singular star and key to a secure future. Nevertheless, the ultimate price for playing dirty comes down on the guy signing the checks.
Until now, Tony has been more of a Greek-chorus presence than a fully fleshed-out character. His section doesn’t do a great deal to flesh him out further, but his strategically low vantage point, as the most normal, streetwise, and least privileged player in the game, is an illuminating one. “I didn’t do shit,” Roxie laments to Tony about Anna’s assault and subsequent death. “Before or after.” From outside the center ring of the battle for the Black Rabbit, Tony sees an effective way to “do something now.” He takes Roxie to Detective Seung and helps her explain what she knows of Anna’s assault and Jake’s cover-up. Then, from Tony’s point of view back at the Rabbit, we get this great high-angle shot of the conversation between Seung and Jake about the surveillance tapes. From the bottom rung of the social ladder, Tony sees the playing field clearly and identifies the most straightforward pathway to victory for his closest friend. Unfortunately for him, doing so ends up placing him directly in the line of fire on the night of the robbery.
The next perspective comes courtesy of Junior, who is fresh off his morning gangster-vogue sesh to Run the Jewels in front of the bathroom mirror, when Joe shows up and cuts him down to size. “Every week with you is a new disappointment,” Joe scolds Junior after finding out about the plan to rob the Black Rabbit. After he’s exiled to Florida for continuing the Friedken shakedown behind his father’s back, Junior hones his resentment on Jake, a fellow failson who is somehow more successful while less adept on the streets. “Thinks he’s smarter than everybody else ’cause he hangs out with dumber fucks,” says Junior to Babbitt on the way to the airport. “You tell me that’s the fucking guy that ruins everything?” I mean, yeah, dude, plenty of history’s most powerful “dumb fucks” have risen that way. But Junior’s all impulse, and there’s no stopping him from powering forward once he sees an opportune window for maximum revenge. He’s going to go through with the robbery with an unlikely partner.
Vince is also headed for exile in Florida, but the next bus isn’t leaving until the next morning, which gives him enough time to stop by Gen’s work and break the news that he’s bolting again. Vince offers to let Gen give him a tattoo if she’ll allow him to come inside and say his piece, which is a somewhat contrived setup for this scene, where Gen is tattooing Vince’s neck while he delivers his spiritually defining monologue about found family. But the sentiment itself is beautifully performed and well articulated. “Blood is not thicker than water. I think it’s snake oil,” he says. But bond is thicker than blood. “Bond is who you pick.” All Vince ever wanted with the Black Rabbit crew was a found family to spend the “good days” with, but he couldn’t shake the shackles of his own family enough to make it happen, and ironically, he neglected his own daughter in the process. All he can do now is keep the dream of unconditional love from people who found and chose you alive for his daughter to claim down the road.
“Fuck Jake. He had it coming to him,” Vince tells Junior when he agrees to join in the robbery. Sure, he didn’t have much choice in the matter, but he certainly chose to fuel his participation by cutting internal emotional ties with his brother. In the moment of truth, Wes gets shot in the back and Tony catches one in the neck. Jake manages to survive the ordeal physically unscathed. But he finds himself in the same position he’s been running from his whole life: on his back in mortal fear. Vince gets away with a bag full of diamonds but not without putting a bullet through Junior’s head to save his brother. A move made on pure instinct, proving that blood, no matter how much you want to deny it, runs thick.
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