Episode 5

The fifth episode opens with a kidnapping and treats it as ordinary work. Jason Doyle is at home when an armed man in a ski mask forces his way in; a second armed man, Michael Kinsella, searches the house. Amanda is in a car, checking a route on a map. Con Doyle, Eamon Cunningham's wholesaler, then receives a text holding a photograph of his son hostage, with a map pin at the Dublin Port car park.

Con goes there and finds Michael waiting with a recording of Jason pleading with his father to do as he is told. Con protests that Jason has nothing to do with this; Michael answers that Jamie Kinsella was innocent too. Michael demands that Con take him to the storage facility where Eamon keeps his drugs. Con drives him there, tells the guard that Eamon sent him, and uses a forklift to bring down a crate; they load 60 kilograms of cocaine and 80 kilograms of heroin into a van. Michael has Con drop him at the Brock Inn and tells him Jason will call the phone behind the bar. Frank collects Michael and values the haul at more than 50 million euro.

The celebration that follows is where the trouble is planted. Jimmy urges Michael to drink; Birdy says she wishes Jamie were there; Eric says they are hitting back; Frank warns against moving the drugs immediately. Amanda draws Frank aside with the police problem: Detectives Liz Cullen and Paul Breslin have been to the dealership asking about a car involved in the drive-by in Gracefield. She tells him Eric was driving, that she covered for him, and that the detectives have threatened a warrant for the dealership's computers, which would exposé the fraud and the money laundering that keeps the family's money clean. She proposes giving the detectives a name. Frank refuses to hand in his son.

Michael, who has been having seizures, collapses into a glass door and is found by Amanda. He tells her he has been diagnosed with epilepsy and asks her not to tell anyone because he does not want pity; she tells him her feelings for him are not pity. Eamon puts a reward on the heads of Michael, Eric, Frank and Jimmy and a larger sum on the return of the drugs. Amanda tells Jimmy that Eric was responsible for the drive-by that led to Jamie's death, and Jimmy refuses to believe it. Frank gives Eric the GPS map and instructs him to tell the family's solicitor that he met Fudge after the last camera and that Fudge was the shooter; Eric refuses, then obeys. Birdy slaps him for insulting Amanda.

The episode ends with the threat moved onto the remaining children. Michael arranges to meet Anna, watches her at her dance class and leaves as a car arrives; Glen Wright watches them. Amanda drives to find a car blocking the road and another pulling in behind her. Eamon gets out and approaches her window. He tells her he knows where Anthony is, offers to let Anthony live if she returns his drugs, and gives her 72 hours to find them or Anthony will be killed.

The closing ambush is the episode's best scene and the model for the series' violence: Eamon's polite threat to Amanda, and her face, carry more than any shoot-out. The caper mechanics are the weakness; the kidnapping is efficient but familiar, and the long middle section is carried by process rather than character. What distinguishes the episode is that it is the only one of the season built around a single operation and the only one that puts the family on the front foot for a full hour. It is also where Amanda becomes the family's strategist rather than its launderer.