"5. The Sins of the Father" - Lucky Man S03E05 Review

So this week in "5. The Sins of the Father", Harry goes on the offensive with the help of Suri, Steve, and Elsa. The triad Samuel works with, the Wu Chi, is making a heroin deal in London. Samuel sets up the Albanian buyers for a shootout to eliminate the competition. One guy, Edon, escapes and when the heroin disappears (Samuel has given it to Eve, who is now on Team Samuel), Edon takes the blame.

Harry and the others aren't fooled, and figure Samuel is up to something. Meanwhile, heroin users starts turning up dead from the now-poisoned heroin, and apparently the Albanians are poisoning it to ruin the triad's reputation.

Team Harry wants to get Samuel on tape selling the heroin so they can force MI6 to disavow the man. They need money and a buyer. So Harry goes to Kamil and more or less tricks him into helping. Harry then goes to a casino and tries to gamble for the 50,000 pounds that they need to give to Kamil to make the buy.

Since Harry's luck is fading as the bracelet gets ever darker, he loses the 25,000 and then Rich's flat to a woman, Rachel, who invites Harry to a poker game. Harry decides to go through with the deal anyway taking Kamil's place and using fake money. The whole thing blows up in everyone's faces: Samuel's adoptive father and Wu Chi leader Tai Jing decides to do the deal instead of Samuel. The deal falls through when Harry refuses to deal with anyone but Samuel.

For some reason, Samuel gets Tai away and then does an entirely unnecessary drive by boat shooting, since the deal was at the docks. Suri gets him on film firing at the police, which is enough to discredit Samuel with MI6. Eve grabs the heroin but let's Harry take it. She refuses to kill Harry even when he dares her to do it, and drives off.

At the end, Harry has to make good on his gambling losses with Rachel. Since his luck has gone from bad to worse, it doesn't work and she gives him until dawn to pay up. In a fairly funny series of scenes, earlier Rich poured his heart out to Rachel about how great Suri is. Suri assumes Rich and Rachel are together. Harry tells her to go to Rich, and "Suri Bear" and Rich end up in bed together.

There are a lot of little moments. The look on Rachel's face as she listens to Rich go on about Suri is pretty funny. There's a scene when Harry is basically making his suicide run to carry out the deal, and leaves a message for his daughter Daisy saying that he loves her.

Most of the stuff with Suri and Rich is good. IMO Rich is too good for Suri, who only joined Team Harry after Elsa demoted her. Even Neve McIntosh makes a more convincing police superintendent when she's actually on the good guys' team. The creative team wisely didn't drag out her turn to the dark side.

Omid Djalili as Kamil is always good. Kamil is the closest thing to a friend Harry has outside of the police force. Darren Boyd has a lot of quiet dignity going for him as Steve. He turns down a drunken Suri's advances after she thinks Rich is with Rachel. And later he just tells Harry that he has his back during the deal. It's not a huge change, but thank goodness the character isn't the twerp he was in Series 1. Remember when he was a traitor?

Rupert Penry-Jones is ominous as Samuel, and Sierra Guillory as Eve is good as the sorta-good girl turned sorta-bad. The current plot is taking them in some inexplicable places. So the quest for the bracelets has become so all-consuming Samuel killed his adoptive father? Okay. And Eve has gone from more-or-less on Harry's side, to fully embracing Samuel's murderous tendencies, and aiding and abetting him in crime. Harry chooses not to save her (although he did go for her first, and was only thwarted by the burning rope) so Eve decides to not only kill him and remove the bracelet. But enthusiastically help Samuel kill a bunch of Albanians to steal some heroin. To help his adoptive father, who he kills at the end of the episode anyway? That seems a bit odd. I wouldn't say it's out of character, since we've never had a solid feel for Eve's character. But it still seems a bit of a stretch.

Maybe it has to do with that medical "treatment" Samuel had his doctors give her last week. For that matter, what the heck is that drug he injects himself with? When he hesitates to inject himself with it, it's Eve who gives him the pep talk and shoots him up with it. So he had her altered so she needs the drugs and turns into a sociopath, so that she'll encourage him to take the drugs and keep on being a sociopath? Again, that's a weird twist that hasn't been telegraphed anywhere I've seen.

The actual plot of the episode is Team Harry trying to get the goods on Samuel. So we're halfway through Series 3 and now Samuel is cut loose from MI6. But Samuel has Eve. Harry (James Nesbitt) is in hock to a mystery woman, and Cheung has warned him that his luck is running out and soon he'll die. Where they go from here, who knows?

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