"Run Rabbit Run" - Lucky Man S03E02 Review

Let's start with a recap. Harry (played by James Nesbitt) and Eve (played by Sienna Guillory) somehow get from Hong Kong to London in a cargo container. The cargo container apparently has an arc welder inside, because Harry cuts a hole in the side of the container. Two of Samuel's (Rupert Penry-Jones) men are (somehow) waiting, and open fire on them a few seconds after they emerge. They kill a dock worker caught in the crossfire, but Harry deflects one shooter's bullet with a pipe, bouncing it back into his head and killing him. Harry and Eve escape with the dead man's wallet, leaving the second shooter--Bo Jing (Yoon C Joyce) --behind.

Harry calls his brother Rich (Stephen Hagan) and convinces him to get the doctored footage of Harry killing Isabella (Thekla Reuten). Conveniently, Suri (Amara Karan) goes to Rich and shows him the footage in the hopes that he'll lead him to Harry once he's convinced of his brother's guilt. It doesn't work, and Suri secretly puts a tracker on Rich's phone while he secretly downloads the video file to give to Harry.

Rich evades Suri and Steve following him and meets with Harry, giving him the footage. Harry convinces his buddy Kalim (Omid Djalili) (who we haven't seen since season 1) to take him to a dealer who works for the triad that Samuel is connected to. Kalim then takes him to a forger, Bobby Hayes, (Joey Batey) who is more OCD-ish than Adrian Monk. Harry and Bobby bond over their addictive behavior and later, Harry takes the footage to Bobby to prove that it's doctored. Bobby does so and then hides the laptop with the footage when Bo Jing arrives and kills him.

Harry sneaks into Samuel's import/export business and learns that he has a heroin-manufacturing workshop for the triad. Eve and Harry go there and break it up. But when Harry calls Suri and tells her to go there and get evidence against Samuel, it turns out that Samuel has somehow cleaned the place out.

Meanwhile, Harry sends Bobby's video log with the evidence of the doctored footage to Elsa (Neve McIntosh). She agrees to meet with him at an open-air restaurant. Samuel steps out and Elsa explains that he's an MI6 agent and that he's working against the triads in London and Hong Kong. At least, that's his story and he's sticking to it. Elsa places Harry under arrest and everyone in the restaurant stands up to reveal that they're MI6 agents. Harry jumps off the rooftop and lands in the back of a passing garbage truck. Samuel makes an ominous comment about Harry's luck eventually running out, and... that's it.

I have no idea what's going on. Supposedly Samuel "sabotaged" Harry's bracelet last week. Which turned everything good in Harry's life into something bad. But this week Harry's luck bracelet seems to be working at full force. It lets him deflect a bullet into a killer's head, it knocks a syringe into a drug dealer's foot as he attacks Harry, it causes an accident that draws a policeman on guard away, he wins heavily at mahjong to get the money to pay off Kalim and Bobby. There are several other "coincidences", like Harry and Eve stumbling across the heroin workshop.

There's some lip service to Samuel's sabotage of Harry's bracelet last episode. But we never see anything going wrong for Harry. Other than the whole "frame Harry for murder" scheme. But if Harry's luck can bail him out of the other jams, why can't it help him against the frame. Eve mentions at one point that Samuel has her bracelet and maybe it's some kind of counter to Harry's bracelet. But Samuel's scheme has a lot of moving parts. Does his bracelet really protect them so thoroughly that Harry's luck can't overcome any of them? Harry's bracelet deflects a bullet and kills the shooter, even with the extra line that Samuel added. That's pretty powerful mojo, but it can't overcome even one small part of the power of Samuel's bracelet?

I'm starting to hate Suri. Yes, the footage looks bad. She uses Rich to try and find Harry, telling Steve that she's broken up with Rich but he doesn't know it yet. And then stealing his phone and planting a tracer. And then kissing him, which may or may not be sincere. Suri turns on Harry when he sends her to the heroin workshop only to discover that Samuel has cleaned it out. Except for the big black fire stains, which doesn't seem to raise her suspicions at all. Suri decides Harry is a murderer after all and tells him via phone that she's done with trying to prove him innocent.

And why does Harry send Bobby's vlog to Elsa rather than, oh, Suri? Harry has no reason to trust Elsa, even before he finds out that she's kinda/sorta working with Samuel.

I'm liking Darren Boyd as Steve more and more. This week he banters with fellow hapless officer Dan about how the triads now have a politically correct name. Or maybe it's just that Steve looks good compared to the disloyal and manipulative Suri.

Stephen Hagan also looks good compared to Suri. It's nice to see at least one person has faith in Harry. Rupert Penry-Jones and Neve McIntosh don't have much to do this week. I do like Samuel looking through the restaurant menu as he breaks the news to Harry that he's MI6.

Besides the return of Omid Djalili as Kalim, there's not much else going on here casting-wise. We do get Joey Batey, a UK TV regular guest star, as the OCD-ish Bobby. I don't really buy him and Harry bonding over their mutual afflictions, and that part of the episode seems awfully rushed. They meet, have one conversation, and Harry is soon saying that he understands Bobby's addictive behavior.

So far, what looked kind of promising with Harry's sabotaged luck bracelet has turned into a pretty standard "cop framed for crime he didn't commit" trope/plot. With all the baggage that entails. Granted, we have eight more episodes to go. But "Run Rabbit Run" is pretty mild. The show has typically worked best when it has the whole bracelet thing mixing in with Harry's more standard criminal cases. But this episode, it's all Harry uses his amazing luck (when it conveniently works) to keep ahead of his pursuers and try to unravel the frame against him, only to hit a brick wall. We hear a lot about the triads and the whole "Harry's bracelet will destroy the world", but it's all run by a vaguely Aryan white guy and there's no real focus on the backstory this episode.

There's also nothing with Samuel shooting himself up with his steroid/painkiller/whatever. Or pretending to shoot people with his finger while his henchmen blow them away. Which gave him a certain charm last week which was missing this episode. But the previews do have one shot of Samuel shooting himself in the gums with a syringe, so probably we'll get more of that next week.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?