Episode 2

Now funded by Terence, Nidge and Pauley set about neutralising Patrick Ward, who is still intent on Nidge's life. The episode opens with gangland logistics: one of Pauley's men robs a motorbike at gunpoint. Patrick, sleeping badly, patrols the halting site at dawn and hammers boards over its security. A gunman then bursts into the pub where Patrick is drinking, calls his name and fires into his back. Patrick survives because he is wearing a bulletproof vest. The attempt fails and Nidge's crew is left more exposed than before; the vest first saves Patrick here and becomes an object of dread for the rest of the series, with Nidge buying one of his own in the next episode.

Fran is turned against Nidge. He learns from Patrick that Nidge ordered the pipe bomb that injured, and in Fran's understanding effectively killed, his wife Linda, back in series 2. Fran confronts Nidge, defends Patrick to his face and goes to Patrick for a gun. Before a van errand he stops and cries, then collects the weapon.

The Gardaí close in. Moynihan and Detective Ciarán Madden work the intelligence on Pauley, and Moynihan's domestic life intrudes: his wife Tracey talks through dinners and holidays during a work conversation, and his superior refuses him more manpower. Ciarán trails Fran, catches him collecting the gun from Patrick and arrests him at a toll bridge. Moynihan buys Ciarán a celebratory drink. Elsewhere, Dublin's ordinary business continues. Aido drives the gang; Pauley holds court at the Pappin and trades pills; Nidge cannot sleep and plays a first-person shooter at his console; Siobhán, with Tommy still in his coma, is sleeping with Pauley. Moynihan attends the dentist Andrew Reddin's funeral, where the episode lingers on the coffin. The pivot comes when Nidge visits Fran in prison, a miscalculation, and the episode ends with Fran back in his cell, enraged, as Roy Orbison's "Crying" plays.

The strength is the cause and effect. Patrick survives, so Fran learns the pipe-bomb truth, so Fran arms himself, so Fran is arrested; each link is earned within the hour. The Garda bureaucracy is what distinguishes the episode: the refusal of manpower to Moynihan is a mundane obstacle most gangland dramas avoid, and it leaves Fran free to be caught later by luck rather than design.

The weaknesses are the pace and the set-piece. The pub shooting is resolved by a vest the audience has barely been told about, and the blog review of the hour found the show short of the energy of its earlier series. No viewing figure and no national newspaper review for this episode were located; reception rests on a recap and one blog, a thin record stated as such. Within the season, the hour converts the Nidge and Fran conflict from a threat into an active feud. It gives Fran a genuine grievance rather than a temperament, which makes him a threat rather than a nuisance for the rest of the season.