‘Peaky Blinders’ Recap, Season 5, Episode 4: Ain’t No Party Like A Shelby Party, ‘Cause At A Shelby Party Someone Dies

Things are moving fast this season on Peaky Blinders, so fast, one episode’s enemy is the next episodes’ business partner. When last we saw Billy Boys’ gang leader “Mad Dog” Jimmy McCavern he said it’s time for war but now he’s making peace with Tommy Shelby, even though he says, “It’s a pity, I was looking forward to killing you.” McCavern is played by Irish actor Brian Gleeson, and though Scottish fans take issue with his hamfisted Glaswegian accent, he imbues his character with so much thuggy arrogance, he’s a joy to hate.

Back at the pub, Tommy and Arthur are handling the family business, which includes replacing a woman’s birds her drunk husband killed and making a deal to transport SEVEN TONS OF CHINESE OPIUM! Though Arthur cautions, “Don’t fuck with the Chinese,” Tommy wants to make a deal with suitably creepy gangster dealer dude Brilliant Chang, who gets their attention by sending a gun-toting hooker to visit little brother Finn. He survives, no worse for wear, and makes his older brother’s proud by not soiling himself.

Tommy puts the opium deal to a family vote, saying the Shelbys will pull in £250,000, half of what they lost on Black Friday. Polly and Arthur are against it but when Tommy says he’ll reinstate Michael to the family business, Polly caves. She later tells Michael the good news, but he says his wife Gina wants their baby born in New York. Polly says with how much money he’ll be making, she’ll live wherever he wants her to.

Polly plays an important role this episode as Tommy uses her as the carrot on a stick to entice Aberama Gold to call off his war against the Billy Boys. Tommy asks him to let McCavern live until he enacts his big plan. In exchange, he can have Polly’s hand in marriage. Afterwards, Gold can avenge the murder of his son. “Polly wants you to propose in the proper way and then she will give you her terms of acceptance,” Tommy says. He’s to do so at a performance of the ballet Swan Lake at Tommy’s mansion in celebration of Lizzie’s birthday. “Apparently it’s about Love,” Tommy tells him. Yeah, love and death.   

In Swan Lake, a handsome prince falls in love with a beautiful princess who’s been cursed to live as a swan during the day, and assume her human form at night. Skipping ahead to the end, the prince and princess decide it’s better to be united in death than live apart. Remind you of a certain smartly-dressed gangster who regularly communes with his dead wife and blames himself for her death and has been displaying suicidal tendencies? HINT: his name rhymes with Dommy Delby.

You know who’s also invited to Lizzie’s birthday ballet? That dick Oswald Mosley. After receiving his invite, Mosley tells Tommy, by the way, I may have met your wife before, you know, back when she was a prostitute. Actually, his exact words are, “I may have came across her,” which is just…so…wrong. Like Brian Gleeson’s Jimmy McCavern, Sam Claflin’s portrayal of Mosley is delectably hateable, and it will be a great satisfaction when he finally receives his comeuppance. We also learn that Mosley’s schtupping his wife’s sister and his own stepmother. In other words, dude’s a freak. “Such rogues we are, aren’t we?” he says to Tommy. “Two men for whom forbidding is forbidden,” which is this episode’s top quote. 

Back up north for the party, Tommy meets with McCavern and we learn that Tommy wants to sell him some of the Chinese opium he’s smuggling and start a distribution network from one end of Britain to the other. “Who’d have ever thought I’d be doing business with fucking Gypsy Catholic scum,” McCavern says, clearly getting under Tommy’s skin. When McCavern says he can’t pay cash, Tommy says he’ll take a cheque as long as Mosley guarantees it, which he later does. McCavern says only a man with a death wish would double cross the Chinese, but little does he know, Tommy’s kind of got a death wish. HA! HOW’S ABOUT THEM APPLES MCCAVERN, YA BIG SCOTTISH JERK!!!

The stage is now set, literally and figuratively, for Lizzie’s birthday ballet party. However, anyone who’s ever been to one of the Shelby’s get togethers would be wise to remember, bad things usually happen at them. Most famously, Tommy’s first wife Grace caught a bullet meant for her husband back in Season 3 at one of their black tie events, so it’s something anyone should consider before R.S.V.P.’ing.

Bad vibes are all around. Polly offers Mosley “opium, cocaine and Brandy” and any maid he wants to bonk but he doesn’t like any of them. Lizzie DOES remember Mosley and lets him know what she thinks of him (not much, apparently). And when Michael tells Gina about the big opium deal she agrees to go along with it but says Tommy won’t be around forever, which is kind of weird. Weirder still, she seems to know a lot about Mosley. But weirdest of all is her “New Yawk” accent, which sounds like something from a Betty Boop cartoon and not anything that would ever come out of the mouth of an actual New Yorker.

As the episode rushes to its climax, we see a car speeding up the driveway. Who’s in it? Arthur’s estranged wife Linda Shelby. Arthur thinks she wants to reconcile but she REALLY doesn’t want to reconcile. Turns out the man she was seeing didn’t die after Arthur’s attack, he just, “has no face.” She pulls out a gun and screams, “May you Peaky Blinders all rot in fucking Hell!” Shots ring out. Someone dies. I’m not going to tell you who, but let me just paraphrase an old joke about the Lincoln assassination, “Well aside from that Mr. Shelby, how was the ballet?”

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Stream Peaky Blinders Season 5 Episode 4 ("The Loop") on Netflix