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At some point, Vegas will have to be comfortable with expecting its viewers to be on board with the broad theme of the clash between the old ways with the new, between the sawdust and the neon, without beating us over the head with it every week. That'll give certain details a little more impact, as in the bookend sub-sub-subplot of Ralph not wanting to remove a century-old oak tree in order to dig a necessary well. The oak doesn't just symbolize Ralph's reluctance to be dragged into the latter half of the 20th century — although it does that — but, as we learn near the end, it's also a link to a more recent past, one in which his wife was still alive.
In between, we follow the same format of the Lamb boys solving a crime while Savino's ambitions of empire drive the overall arc. The case of the week meshes a little more with the ongoing saga a little more, when a maid, Estelle — who urges restraint and sacrifice in the face of pressure from the union for a wildcat strike at the Tumbleweed — is run down. Signs point to the shady union shop steward, with the Milwaukee mob trying to muscle in on Vegas turf (and "Milwaukee mob" as a concept seems hilarious by which I mean NO DISRESPECT,SIRS). But it turns out to have more prosaic roots. The maid is the offspring of a well-to-do white man and his "colored mistress," who just happens to be the housekeeper, and her murderer is a coworker who discovered her friend's secret lineage and who blackmailed her because of it. It's not just the unfairness the murderer felt in Estelle urging caution in union dealings while she had a steady secret income from her father, but in Vegas itself, where people get rich every day just for pulling a lever while she's working her ass off slinging towels and feeling like she has no shot at the pot of gold herself.
The Tumbleweed has caught Savino's eye, since he plans to develop it further with a legitimate loan so he can present it to Angelo when it's a good ways along, Savino's competing with the, snicker, Milwaukee mob on it, and he ends up with his arm in a sling while his car has fifteen bullet holes. Red will fix Milwaukee's wagon, though, and in short order there are two dead Milwaukee bodies in a trunk. That's the entire Milwaukee mob, right? Yeah, they should be good.
Oh, and Jack wants to bang Mia, which is obviously a terrible idea. On the "pro" side of the pros and cons list, though, is simply a picture of Mia, which is more than enough to tip the scales. Suddenly squiring her around town, though, is Assistant Dastardly Attorney Rich Reynolds. He might consider being a little more discreet, since Ralph caught him conferring with Savino, and then offering a half-assed explanation regarding warning Savino against a Chicago-Milwaukee war in Vegas.
Looks like Savino's going to get his loan, though, so here comes the "asphalt avalanche." We know it's coming, all right? We also know it's a slow process over decades and involves Joe Pesci popping a dude's eyeball out, and not an actual avalanche of asphalt. (Unfortunately.)
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He would dearly love to see Sam Rothstein and Nicky Santoro show up on Vegas. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Ralph stands outside at his ranch, gazing up at a huge oak tree, before heading back inside where Jack is totting up numbers on an adding machine, wearing glasses for added comic benefit. Ralph growls something about a couple of ranch hands talking about felling the oak, and Jack explains there's an aquifer underneath that'll be good for the three-hundred head of new, thirsty cattle they've got. Ralph has some kind of man-crush on the oak and insists that they put the new well in a distant parcel that Jack points out will take ten times the manpower to do, but Ralph is too busy gazing out the window at the oak to brook any more discussion or to answer the ringing telephone. Jack answers it and at this point I like to think the sheriff's office just to call and says, "Savoy" and the Lamb boys know what to do. It's like the Bat Signal!
At the Savoy, Savino's got a card-counter in his office. "Card-counting is just bad manners," Savino tells the terrified con man, but Buddy was also sending signals to a partner-in-crime at the table. Jack and Ralph show up, somewhat surprised to be asked to arrest the crooks rather than finding their bodies in an alley on the strip. "You people usually handle this kind of thing on your own," Ralph tells Savino. Whoa whoa whoa! "You people"? Let's keep this civil, Ralph! Nevertheless, they arrest the card-counter and leave, but not before Jack and Mia get an eyeful of each other's considerable genetic gifts.
Savino goes for his usual plot-advancement stroll with Red, who tells him Angelo is sending a new courier for the skim. It's Angelo's nephew and Angelo basically wants the kid to get laid. Not sure how going to Vegas will help that! Savino tells Red to "call Magda," and then outside, starts laying out his new grandiose plans. He's going to buy the Tumbleweed Club across the street, because it's got the most acreage on the strip, and advance his development plans from the outside, getting everything all tied up in a neat bow to present to Angelo (plus his usual cut). Red's less surprised about that than where Savino's going to get the money: "A bank," Savino says as he drives off, but I sort of assumed by "bank" he meant "the wallets of people I will personally beat up."
Then it's nighttime and we get a bunch of neon establishing shots of the Tumbleweed, and a couple of black maids are discussing a racist guest before the younger one begs off on a party suggested by the older one, since she's got to go to "the meeting," which turns out to be a meeting of the hotel staff union. The shop steward promises some shady guy that he "won't let Milwaukee down" and then attempts to rile the staff into a wildcat strike, at least until Estelle (the young maid from before) reminds everyone that they're six months away from their contract expiring, meaning a strike would be illegal and they could lose their benefits and jobs. "We need to sacrifice now so when the contract is up, we can get what's right," she says, to applause from the rest of the staff, including a co-worker who's a little too prominently featured to be coincidental. The union head isn't pleased.
Later, Estelle's walking home along a largely empty street before being run down and left dead on the road. After the opening credits, the Lamb boys are on the scene and judging from the tire tracks, eyewitness reports and force of the collision that it wasn't the "no-account drunk" suggested to have hit her, but a deliberate rundown. They learn that it was a blue or green car that hit her, and that she'd just run afoul of the union guy, Kovacs, so that's their working theory. They also find paint scrapings on a nearby light pole, narrowing their search to a blue car. You know, presuming it's from the car that hit her, after all.
The country twang starts up again as we watch Savino take in the cornpone ambience of the Tumbleweed. He also sees the dude who was at the union meeting last night talking to the shop steward (not that he knows this) to the dad (I think) from Boy Meets World. Savino exchanges a few pleasant insults with the guy (named Cornaro) as he leaves with his muscle and it's Savino's turn to talk the ear off the owner of the place, Mr. Hayes. Cornaro's with the Milwaukee mob, which is interested in buying the Tumbleweed piece Hayes is selling, and they've promised to make his union problems disappear. Savino warns him that Milwaukee will muscle into their share without paying Hayes a dime. Not like Savino, who wants to play it off legit! Hayes, who is I assume drunk, makes a crack about Savino paying for the development with suitcases and laundry bags, which is a little judgmental for someone who is contemplating selling to an organized crime family that have promised to make his union problem go away and all that entails. At any rate, Hayes hasn't made a decision, doesn't appear to be knocked out by Savino's casino-of-the-future plans, and Savino says he can ditch the Roy Rogers and sawdust or risk getting buried under the "asphalt avalanche" that's coming.
At the sheriff's station, the parade of former Breaking Bad stars continues when in saunters Ted Beneke, playing a guy named Randall and his son Terry, who want to offer a reward in Estelle's murder; she's the daughter of their housekeeper and was like family. "Obviously there's a lot more under the surface but we won't figure things out until later in the episode," Ralph tells them.
Ralph heads over to Estelle's apartment to check it out and discovers someone appears to be in there ahead of him and has ransacked the place. Whoever it is manages to peel on out before he withers underneath Ralph's frowny face.
He does get the license plate number, which he calls back to the station so someone can look it up, as long as they're not too busy fighting over who gets to awkwardly flirt with Mia Rizzo, who has come into the station looking for her union card. Jack pulls rank and some jaunty music strikes up as he tries to find out if she has a boyfriend, pretending it's for the form he needs to fill out. She's put much more at ease after she addresses the elephant in the room, that Jack's brother threw her dad in jail. "I am not my brother, just like you are not your father," Jack tells her, melting her completely. Probably a good idea that Jack didn't add, "Plus your father is a violent psychopath on a hair trigger who should probably just be in jail all the time." Ralph comes in and is like, "Damn, quit trying to bone Mia and get her her damn work card." Essentially. And then Dixon, doing actual police work, tells them the license plate of the car at Estelle's apartment belong to union boss Kovacs.
Savino wines and dines a banker, looking for a loan for his Tumbleweed plans, but Farwood (or something) is skeptical of Savino's assurances that this will be an entirely clean deal "You people come in from Chicago and New York and start waving your pension funds and certificates of deposit. It's not the same," says the banker, and between him and the Tumbleweed owner, nobody seems to show much of a healthy respect for the mob around here. Then Farwood talks about how good the lemonade is here and leaves, and I think Savino would like to know if "lemonade" is legitimate loan-speak for "approved."
Ralph and Jack roll through the Tumbleweed casino to arrest an agitated Kovacs, who is demanding his last paycheck. He seems to be in an awful hurry, which is good enough for a conviction in the Lamb brothers' book and they confront him with Estelle's murder. He admits to having been at her apartment but it was only to talk to her about the union thing; he swears the door was open and the place trashed when he got there. Then he says Estelle had a "white man" problem -- having been spotted with one at the Blue Note Motel -- which sounds like one of those things privileged white guys complain about when they become slightly less privileged than they were before. Ralph arrests Kovacs on a charge of "I just don't like you." He barks at an annoyed Jack to throw Kovacs in the car, because ADA Va Va Voom has showed up to talk to Hayes about possible mob involvement in the union, which could have something to do with Estelle's death. Before they can discuss things too much, some ne'er-do-wells toss a Molotov cocktail through the window and Ralph takes the opportunity to rub his body all over O'Connell's... I mean, "Protect her from the blast."
In the aftermath, she thanks him and his face gets about five percent less scowly for a moment as he lets her know t'warn't nothin'. Then he orders Dixon to find out who threw the bomb.
Up in Savino's office, Hayes already knows: it was the Milwaukee mob, giving him a warning. Savino promises to get the mob off Hayes' back if Hayes sells to him. Hayes agrees and Savino heads right over to the union office to work out a deal with Cornaro, enticing him with all the money he'll make once Savino expands the Tumbleweed the way he wants.
Ralph grills a Blue Note waitress who saw Estelle with the white guy Kovacs was talking about and so we know it's obviously either Randall or his son Terry, and that's before Jack discovers that Estelle was getting monthly $500 deposits in her bank account. That would seem to make it Randall, right?
Well, that's who the Lamb brothers are going to see, so they can ask him why he was giving her money every month and why he was spotted with her at the Blue Note Motel. They do this in front of his wife, but that's only because she ignored the Lamb brothers when they asked her to leave so they could talk to her husband privately. Randall confesses that Estelle was his daughter. Now his wife decides it's time to leave them in private.
Elsewhere, a couple of thugs do an almost comically bad job of trying to rub out Savino in a parking garage. He manages to escape with only his car freshly ventilated.
Jack and Ralph quiz Randall about his daughter on the (correct) assumption that having a kid with his "colored mistress" could end him, but Randall insists that he was going to be coming clean about to his wife and kid. He was paying her for her tuition at college, where she was getting straight A's. But then they get called away on Savoy-related business.
Speaking of the Savoy, D.A. Reynolds is already there to provide the sounding board for Savino's hit explanation. Savino figures it was Cornaro but acting on his own because no one in Milwaukee would be that stupid. Then it's time for the weekly scene where Ralph shows up so he and Savino can glare at each other once in a while and argue about who this town belongs to. Along the way, Ralph and Jack run into Mia, who wants to know if Savino's OK. "I reckon he'll bury us all, one way or another," says Ralph, who really shouldn't have to explain to his idiot brother why it's a bad idea to be making puppy-dog eyes at the mobster's daughter who works in rigged casino. Oh, and Ralph arrives to find D.A. Reynolds hanging out with Savino, and does not at all buy Reynolds' explanation that he was only there to warn Savino against a mob war.
So who can we eliminate ? Terry, I suppose, the son of the guy banging the hired help. Jack and Ralph discover he's a junkie which may not be murderer but YOU TELL ME WHAT'S WORSE, RIGHT, SHERIFF RALPH? He knew Estelle was his sister, and loved her, but after she died, he broke into her apartment to steal back some jewelry he gave her so he could sell it for drugs. The Lambs check the jewelry box that he took with him -- instead of just the jewelry -- and they discover a secret compartment that contains blackmail shots of Estelle and Randall and because I'm tired of this getting dragged out, let me wrap it up: The murderer is one of Estelle's co-workers who we've barely even seen, and she did it because it wasn't fair that Estelle was getting money just for being the unacknowledged fruit of an extramarital affair between a man and his housekeeper. Plus the extra money made it easy for Estelle to urge patience in a battle with hotel management right? Anyway, the murderer also blames it on Vegas too -- completely breaking down in the interview instead of continuing to lie as easily as she had been -- because how could you not want to kill someone when people are getting rich all over the place in Vegas, but not you? "Her daddy can't help her anymore now, can he?" she says.
And then Johnny Rizzo is there for a surprise visit under the pretence of being solicitous about Savino's arm, but what he's really there for is to chide Savino for making a move like the Tumbleweed without clearing it with Angelo first. Luckily for Savino, Rizzo is more than happy to smooth things out -- for a 50 per cent share of the Tumbleweed, of course.
And then Cornaro gets fingered for being behind the Molotov cocktail, but he disappeared. Ralph is basically "Oh well," but it turns out O'Connell's sense of law and order is even more acute than his, so he says they'll keep looking for Cornaro.
Mia pops into Savino's office to assure him she had no idea her dad was coming. He waves her apology aside, since it looks like the Tumbleweed deal will happen; he's been invited to the country club with the "Mormon banker." And then Savino gets up to cinematically stand in the shadow of the Venetian blinds and offer pearls of wisdom like "Sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward."
Then Red and a helper thug kill Cornaro and Cornaro's thug, and I think that completely wipes out the Milwaukee mob.
Back at the ranch, Jack grumbles some more about the new well being dug so far away -- like just how quickly do things happen on this show? -- and he stomps off while Ralph gazes out of the window, and via flashback we see that Ralph wants to keep the tree because of its prominent place in memories involving his wife.
Ralph's got something else on his mind: Mia. He catches up with her on Freemont and asks if she'd like to have dinner with him. It's a spectacularly bad idea this, but she has to say no because at that moment D.A. Reynolds pulls up to whisk Mia away for the evening. You'd think Reynolds would want to be a little more discreet, but I guess Jack is after the same thing he is. Reynolds says he can't believe Mia's never seen the Hoover Dam, only you know that "Hoover Dam" is actually what he calls his penis.
They peel off into the night, leaving Jack there to feel sorry for himself, instead of, say, hiring a prostitute.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Oh, who is he kidding. He'd probably ask Mia out too. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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