SPOILER ALERT AND WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Westies Season 1, Episode 6. It also contains a mention of sexual assault.
The Westies Season 1, Episode 6 is the weakest of the MGM+ show’s season, because the audience is one step ahead of the characters. “Rad Tad” feels like a homage to Bright Lights, Big City, down to naming the title character Tad. And that just doesn’t quite jibe with the narrative that’s been set up in the previous five episodes.
The plotline featuring Jimmy Roarke and Mickey Flanagan is the least interesting part of the episode, and that’s not good when it’s the main story. From the moment yuppie Tad Guggenheim walks into the bar wanting to strike a cocaine deal, it’s obvious to the audience that Tad is a patsy. He’s just not believable—so when Jimmy eventually believes him, it feels like clear dramatic license. It’s a character who’s been the smartest guy in the room doing something dumb in order to start a story.
What follows is essentially a comedy of errors, but it’s not funny. Jimmy finds out that he and Mickey are actually short cash, forcing him to go to Eamon Sweeney for a loan in order to afford the cocaine that Tad wants. Sweeney once again proves Jimmy’s loyalty isn’t quite reciprocated by dismissing him, but does him the “favor” of sending him to a loan shark. Jimmy then tries to strike deals with the loan shark and his Colombian supplier which are basically the same scene twice over; Jimmy tries to do business and Mickey explodes. The Westies creators Chris Brancato and Michael Panes seem as if they’re shaping the story just to write Jimmy into a corner—the same corner he got out of in Episode 5. The big reveal that Tad is working for John Gotti is no surprise at all.
The best thing that comes out of this underwhelming plot—and the best thing in the whole episode—is the casting of Emmy Award winner Richard Schiff as loan shark Ruby Stein. Audiences will recognize Schiff from The Good Doctor and The West Wing, but his performance in The Westies is more akin to the shady character he played in Rogue. And he’s the exact right person to play the no-nonsense guy who gives Jimmy a piece of his mind on two separate occasions. Schiff gives Stein’s monologues weight and just the right amount of cynical wit. Hopefully he comes back for more than one episode, because he’s brilliant in this role.
Elsewhere, “Rad Tad” moves the IRA plot forward as Bridget decides to be the one to set off the car bomb, wanting to get her revenge on Markham for killing her parents. The Westies is much more effective at the end of this subplot, as viewers will be just as surprised by the Irish protesters that show up on the scene as Bridget is. There are even a few kids in the crowd with their mothers, just to make it clear that Bridget can’t push that button. It’s not really a question of whether she will or not; the question is what’s going to happen because she doesn’t. The suspense Brancato and Panes are trying for exists, but perhaps for a different reason than they intended.
And Glenn Keenan gets his revenge for the brutal beating he took in the prior episode—by returning the favor and then some to the henchman who humiliated him. Keenan convinces a prostitute named Alice to swear out a statement about Sullivan assaulting her, but instead of arresting Sullivan to flip him on Sweeney (as was the plan), he starts a fight. It’s implied that Keenan bashes Sullivan’s head in. This is a great sequence for actor Titus Welliver, because this is the type of stuff that audiences are used to seeing from him. Scenes like this are why he’s one of the most badass actors on television.
Of course, Sullivan being dead throws another wrench in the plot, so maybe Episode 7 will be stronger, just because it has consequences for Keenan and for Bridget to play with. What happens to them has more emotional punch right now than Jimmy making a handshake deal with Gotti. It would be more wrenching to see Jimmy turn sides if the prior episodes had put more strain on Jimmy’s relationship with Sweeney. That should have been a truly agonizing moment, one where Jimmy realizes that he has to leave his father figure behind, but it doesn’t have that impact. And that’s why “Rad Tad” doesn’t work. It feels like a purely functional episode, meant to get one step closer to the end, rather than an entertaining one.
The Westies airs Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on MGM+. Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Courtesy of MGM+.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
