Your Weekend Binge Watch: The Gentlemen (Season 2)
Your Weekend Binge Watch: The Gentlemen (Season 2)
Available to watch on Netflix; 2 seasons, 8 episodes each, about 45 min.-1 hour each; Action Comedy, Crime Drama
Watch The Gentlemen (Season 2) for the continued escapades (and will-they/won’t-they) of Duke Eddie Horniman and Ms. Susie Glass in a season that expands and builds upon the plotlines established in season 1.
If you haven’t seen The Gentlemen (Season 1), do not skip it. Go watch it and then come back! If you watched season 1 but can’t remember how I felt about it, you can read or listen to Your Weekend Binge Watch: The Gentlemen by clicking this link.
And if you haven’t yet watched season 2, there will be spoilers ahead. Read ahead at your own risk! You’ve been warned!
Synopsis
Duke Eddie Horniman expands his underground cannabis empire as he and Susie Glass plunge deeper into the international criminal underworld.
Thoughts
I’m not sure what the negative hubbub has been about with Season 2 of The Gentlemen; I thought it was a strong sophomore season that built upon Eddie and Susie’s stories, their ever-growing drug empire, and their obvious chemistry, as well as several other familial and financial plotlines and conflicts established in season 1.
Season 2 also took us along for a deeper look into the other people who inhabit Eddie’s orbit: his sister and her husband and son, his mother and her complicated relationship with Geoff, his brother doing a stint in rehab with a Big Bad from season 1, and…his new love interest-turned-WIFE.
But Eddie’s not the only lead who’s (un)lucky in love. Susie Glass reconnects with a guy from her youth who ends up being more trouble than he’s worth (and gets her into some pretty complicated hot water), but I did love seeing Susie in a romantic partnership other than the will-they-won’t-they dynamic she has with Eddie (which was hinted at multiple times during this season…what can I say? I love a self-aware writers’ room).
I think what I found most interesting about this season is actually tied to Eddie and Susie’s other love interests. I don’t think they’re just red herring romances to distract from Eddie and Susie being “end game;” I believe they’re representative of what each of the characters want – whether it’s realistic or not. Eddie’s wedding to Bella comes after he’s had a near-death experience, so he wants something real - a romantic relationship on which he can build a future. Whether or not that’s true is up for debate, but he feels he can be himself with Bella and admits to her that she was the face he saw when death came knockin’ on his door. It probably didn’t hurt that Bella was also an Italian aristocrat with intimate, familial ties to the drug world in Italy. Unfortunately for Bella and Eddie, their marriage is short-lived. Bella is killed the day after the wedding by a bomb meant for Eddie, which, I admit, I didn’t love. This outcome felt predictable and disappointing. It affirmed my suspicions that Bella was just a character meant to move Eddie’s story/character arc forward without much development on her side of things. However, with that being said, it felt fair and pretty equal to the outcome of Eddie’s true other half’s romantic development.
Susie Glass finds her own romantic fling with Joe Green, a guy from her past that’s come back around. Whereas Eddie thought Bella would provide love and stability, helping him cope with life after a near-death experience, I think Susie Glass craved the simplicity of her youth. Joe Green is the stand-in for her nostalgia, for a time when she could be a bit more reckless and break some rules without doing too much damage. Her fling with Joe Green was interesting in that we saw a fun and flashy side of Susie where she could let her hair down on occasion, but as her power, independence, and influence grows (potentially to the detriment of her partnership with Eddie), Joe Green was never going to be more than a fart in the wind for Susie…especially given the fact that he screwed her over. All’s well that ends well, though! Vargas ends up agreeing to work with Susie, expanding her business and her power and influence...and it’s heavily implied that Joe Green is killed.
So, even though both Susie and Eddie deny any sort of romantic feelings for each other multiple times during season 2, and even though both of their love interests are no longer in the picture, we’re back to square one on people worshipping their relationship as “end game.”
But just because Susie and Eddie aren’t romantic doesn’t mean they’re not great partners or that they don’t love each other. I think Eddie cares for Susie but gets too caught up in his own chaos of trying to figure out his business and also become the most powerful man in the drug trade (with the newly added storyline of potential royalty succession thrown in there…hence why aristocratic Bella was also a strategic marriage even if he did love her – and in addition to her aforementioned ties to the Italian drug trade). And just like Eddie gets in his own way, I think Susie cares very deeply for Eddie, as well, which is why she faces so many dilemmas in dealing with her own blood family versus what could potentially be Eddie-as-her-family in the future.
I feel like I’ve really gotten into the romance part of things with season 2, and there’s so much more going on that it would take multiple posts to cover. It is an 8-episode season, after all, that builds upon season 1 and opens the door to season 3. But I wanted to focus on the key romantic relationships of Susie and Eddie because 1. they are the two people we are the most invested in, 2. so many people think they’re “end game,” and 3. I think they are "end game" but as business partners – not romantic ones. I don’t think they’ll ever find romantic partners that are right for them because they’re in too deep with each other, and I also think they’d be too dangerous together.
Welp, this blog post took a turn I wasn’t really expecting. I definitely didn’t sit down to try to psychoanalyze the two main characters of a fictional crime television show about aristocracy and weed, but here we are. For the reasons and rantings above, and for so many reasons more, The Gentlemen (Season 2) is worth your time. I honestly wish it had been longer. And, though no one asked, I would absolutely watch an entire show with Geoffrey as the lead. The Gentlemen (Season 2). Totally BingeReady.
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