‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 6 Episode 6 Recap: Friends, Romani, Black Country Men, Lend Me Your Ears… 

Friends, Romani, Black Country men, lend me your ears, I come to bury Peaky Blinders, and to recap it. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones. I stole that from Shakespeare but you must admit, it sums up series protagonist Thomas Shelby pretty well. Expertly played by Cillian Murphy with a cool malice, Tommy is a bad man who wants to do good, his every charitable act overshadowed by his many victims, who haunt his dreams.

After 6 thrilling seasons, Peaky Blinders is coming to an end as an episodic series, though its creators promise a movie in the future. With the fates of not just the Shelby clan but the entire United Kingdom at stake, Tommy is rushing to tie up loose ends before he dies from an inoperable tumor he may have contracted from his daughter Ruby before she perished from tuberculosis.

The tumor, however, won’t be a problem if cousin Michael Gray (Finn Cole) gets to him first. Fresh out of prison, he plans to kill Tommy, who he blames for the death of his mother, Aunt Polly. His wife Gina (Anya Taylor-Joy) suggests that he kills off Arthur and Tommy’s sons too, which is cold, but does make sense when you consider the Shelby ability to hold a grudge.

Speaking of grudges, Lizzie’s still nursing a pretty big one after learning last episode that Tommy shagged Lady Diana Mitford, fiance to fascist frenemisis (you know, like frenemy + nemesis, yeah, just made it up) Oswald Mosley. She leaving him and Tommy’s son Charlie wants to go with her, saying “You’re not my mum but you’re more my mum then he’s my dad.” OUCH.

Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie tells Tommy’s newfound other son Duke, “It’s time you joined the family. But you’re not just going to be a soldier. You’re going to be a general someday.” Tommy assembles the Peaky Blinders at the Garrison pub to tell them he needs them to empty his home of valuables while he meets with Michael in Canada. Arthur offers up that he’s having dinner with Linda that same night at the Garrison. I.R.A. informant Billy Grade listens intently and passes the information on to the Shelbys’ enemies.

Back at the offices of Shelby Company Limited, Arthur tells Tommy he knows about his fatal tumor. Tommy says he just needs a little more time to set everything up for the future. “F**k you and your f**king plans,” Arthur replies before imploding emotionally. Some of the best writing this season has been Tommy and Arthur’s scenes together, with Murphy and actor Paul Anderson imbuing them with an affecting realism that speaks to the characters fraternal bond yet dueling temperaments.

The 82-minute episode’s action-packed second third intercuts between the various murder plots, recalling Francis Ford Coppola’s work in The Godfather movies. While Duke and the gang plan to murder Grade at Tommy’s mansion, Arthur faces of with Linda McKee and the I.R.A. in Small Heath in an epic shoot out that’s a masterful blend of cinematography and pacing. Tommy flies to MIQUELON ISLAND to complete his $5 million opium deal with Michael and Jack Nelson’s South Boston Irish crew. What he doesn’t know is they plan to blow him to smithereens with a car bomb, which might be ethnic stereotyping, but then agin, but no more so than the copious amounts of whiskey everyone’s always chugging on the show.

While Arthur avenges Polly by killing McKee and her I.R.A. gunmen, Duke faces off with youngest Shelby brother Finn, who comes to Grade’s defense. Duke kills Billy and tells Finn, “You are no longer a member of the Shelby family by order of the Peaky f**king Blinders.” Finn’s been such an inconsequential figure throughout the series, I’m not sure why the writers decided to banish him in such dramatic fashion but perhaps they intend to use him for a plot twist down the road.

On MIQUELON ISLAND, Tommy and Michael meet at the same bar where the Great Pigeon Massacre of 1933 occurred to arrange the opium drop. Tommy gets into his booby-trapped car but turns out Johnny Dogs pulled a switcheroo and the Nelson gang is blown to bits. After unceremoniously dispatching his cousin with a bullet to the eye, Tommy goes back inside the bar for a celebratory whiskey and a smoke. Alfie Soloman enters from the back room to bust balls and brag about taking over Nelson’s Boston rackets. It’s a nice comic respite from the prevailing grimness. Tommy alludes to his impending death, to which Alfie replies, “Speaking as someone who has been dead for a number of years I can only heartily recommend it.”

Tommy returns to his mansion in time to level it to make way for council estates. After ambiguously telling them he’s going away for a while, he makes his exit. A month later, we see him living in a Gypsy caravan and planning his suicide. Before he can pull the trigger, his daughter Ruby’s ghost appears to tell him he’s not even sick.
In an old newspaper, Tommy spots the physician who told him he was dying among the guests at the Mosley’s fascist all-star wedding in Berlin, which must really burn considering he was invited too! After confronting the doctor, he learns his illness was a ruse. He returns to his campsite to find his caravan on fire and rides off on his horse into the sunset, or rather, until the Peaky Blinders movie comes out in a couple years.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.