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So Jack and Mia are still a thing, huh? Good lord, Jack, have some self-respect: You’re a grown man hiding under the bed so your girlfriend’s father doesn’t know about you. It takes Mia to arrange for a meeting between her dad and Jack to come clean about what’s going on. It doesn’t go well -- and Jack blurts out the L-word -- but at least no one gets murdered… yet. More on that later.
Rizzo’s immediate reaction is to tell Savino to fire Mia, mainly because he doesn’t want the decision to be attributed to him. Given Mia’s not an idiot, she knows exactly what her dad did and has a blowout with him, telling him she’s taking another job and not leaving Vegas -- or Jack.
The murder of the week is a woman getting her groove back at a quickie-divorce resort -- stay for six weeks, leave a free woman! It’s not that important and it turns out it was the owner of the resort did it, jealous of the victim’s relationship with one of her employees. Ralph’s more important case is one that involves an old flame -- her husband got mugged, but what she doesn’t know is that he was borrowing money from loan sharks to paper over the fact he doesn’t have any money anymore, the money that he hoped would make her forget about Ralph, even though she was in turn hoping she could make him forget about his dead wife. Given that this is the first we’ve heard of her, despite being twelve episodes in, I feel safe in telling her that didn’t work. And since we haven’t heard anything of this Barbara woman before, I think she’s showing up mainly to be a potential roadblock between Ralph and Katherine.
And in the biggest news of the night, Savino figures out that Laura’s feeding information to the feds and learns of the affidavit to put a wiretap on Rizzo’s phone. He’s apoplectic, as you can imagine, but Laura challenges him to come up with a better plan to save them from the Feds. The plan he does come up with is risky: He tells Rizzo that the rat is Mia, but only because Jack is pressuring her. Rizzo has murder in his eyes, which Savino figures will get him killed, so long as Jack gets advance warning. That might be difficult, since Jack’s sexytime routine involves taking the phone off the hook.
It’s too early to see if the plan will go as he hopes, but Savino’s taking action on Laura: He’s sending her back home to Chicago, harshly telling her that when he comes back to visit his daughters, she’s not to be around. It could be worse, right? Anyway. Four dollars a pound.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Not that he often agrees with mobsters, but why do people bring kids to Vegas? Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!This episode starts off with Jack Lamb, a full-grown man and a deputy in Las Vegas, hiding under the bed of his girlfriend so her dad doesn't know he's there. I mean sure, her dad is a psycho, but at some point Jack really needs to sack up. Rizzo has come in because he wants to watch JFK's inauguration speech -- "A son of a bootlegger in office? And we helped put him there?" -- which makes this Jan. 20, 1961, and way too late in the morning for Mia and Jack not to be already at work, even in Vegas. Mia manages to get her dad out of her room, and Jack comments on how big Rizzo's feet are, and then they just start doing it again, they're so turned on.
Over at the office, Yvonne and Dixon are flirting again, because Yvonne has asked Dixon to accompany her to her cousin's wedding, mainly because she needs a warm body around so she doesn't get set up with her aunt's bucktoothed neighbor. Hey, bucktoothed people need the most love! Jack is even it, managing somehow to have extricated himself from Mia's body, and he and his nephew are both shocked to see Miss Halloran in Ralph's office. She's Mrs. Kent now, but once she was Miss Halloran, Dixon's French teacher and Ralph's girlfriend.
It seems that this Barbara Halloran left Ralph for a rich guy. Dixon seems to have animosity over her leaving his dad "high and dry." Ralph strolls in, everyone stares at him for a moment, and then he smooths his hair when he finds out who's in his office.
They greet each other warmly, and after a little awkwardness and chit-chat, Barbara explains she's here because her husband, some dude named Rick, is here on business, but was mugged last night, and had five-thousand dollars stolen. She says she wanted to report it last night, but he was reluctant, and she thinks it's because he didn't want to ask her old boyfriend for help. It doesn't take a genius so figure there's going to turn out to be a different reason.
Meanwhile, Dixon and Jack head out to investigate a murder on a deserted ranch, which might go better if Dixon could start concentrating instead of grumbling about Halloran breaking his dad's heart.
Jack takes one look at the nice clothes and manicured fingernails and determines the dead woman never put in a hard day's work in her life. Or, you know, had her nails down and got dressed up not long before she was killed, maybe. Stitching on her shirt indicates it came from the Double-N ranch, which Jack tells Dixon is a quickie divorce ranch. In other states, you need to wait a year before getting a divorce, but in Nevada, put in six weeks of sunbathing and go home a single woman. "Or in a casket," says Dixon. Hey! Quit ripping off Lennie Brisco's thing from thirty years from now!
Savino meets up with Reynolds at that abandoned gas station that I want to take many super-cool photographs at, and Reynolds tells him about the affidavit for the wiretap on Rizzo's phone, looking for info on Diane Desmon's murder. Reynolds tells an angry Vincent that Katherine O'Connell has an informant passing information from inside the Savoy's organization, but Reynolds doesn't know who the informant is. So Savino targets O'Connell instead: "Get rid of her!" he says, and then, perhaps realizing that usually has a particular meaning from a mob guy, specifies that Reynolds should fire her for insubordination. Reynolds says it would be too suspicious, and Savino drives off, vowing to find out who the informant is and taking care of it himself.
Speaking of the informant, there's Laura now, snooping through her husband's office and desk. She finds some documents that she stuffs into her purse, right before Vincent's secretary coming in. Laura, looking horribly guilty of SOMETHING, makes up a story about Vincent usually leaving her cash in there, but the secretary, who seems oblivious, says she's got the petty cash now, and Laura glides out of the office, asking her to make a hair appointment for her for tomorrow morning.
VEGAS!
Jack and Dixon the Double-N ranch, which Dixon, after looking around at the cavorting women, nicknames the "Double-D," although truth be told it's not exactly the Playboy Mansion there. They stroll the grounds with owner, who says the victim, Marjorie, was here for her third time, but didn't have any trouble with exes or guests. In fact, she was the "unofficial social director" and saw to it that guests were having a good time, because Marjorie saw divorce as liberation. The owner, laying in too much backstory to be accidental, says her own husband left her six years ago, and now she's her own boss. Meanwhile, her handyman or whatever says he saw a motorcycle outside Dawn Fields room, and it turns out Dawn and Marjorie had some sort of argument when they went down to Freemont last night. Jack and Dixon check out Dawn's room, which looks like it was cleared out in a hurry.
Meanwhile, Barbara is paging through mugshots to try to identify her husband's attacker, and the reminiscing continuing, with her saying that it could have worked out if Ralph had been willing to leave the ranch. Or if you were willing to stay, says Ralph. But she wanted to see the world, and Rick took her everywhere (that past tense is a red flag). Ralph says he's happy it worked out. Hard to tell sometimes when he's been genuine or gruff. "Oh, I don't know if I'd say that," says Barbara, but before we can delve into that, she finds a picture of the attacker, a guy named Paul Zumo.
Ralph goes to get the file, when Jack gets back, surprised to see Barbara still there. "She's not here just because of a mugger, Ralph," Jack warns him. Jack, you'll remember, was having sex with the criminal daughter of a mob boss just this morning, so I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in his romantic warnings.
At the casino, Vincent overhears Red getting something from some guy in a suit. It's completely vague and open for interpretation, so you'd definitely better overreact, Vincent!
Jack meets Mia at the casino for lunch, just as Rizzo is doing the same. "This is a bad idea," Jack mutters, as he susses out what's going on. Mia flat-out tells her dad that she's seeing Jack ("...naked," she doesn't add). "The candy-store cop?" says Rizzo in disbelief. Jack's got a surprise of his own: "I love your daughter," he says, adding that Rizzo had better get used to it, because he's not going anywhere, and he suggests calling a truce for Mia's sake. Mia tells her dad she needs him to do this for her. "We'll talk about this later," he says to Mia whilst glaring holes through Jack's skull, and then he stomps off. Mia's all, "You told him you love me? WTF?" and Jack says he thought that would calm him down. Jack's not very bright, is he?
Ralph strolls into an empty bar, where Paul Zumo and a partner are counting money that they say they earned in a poker tournament, but Ralph spins a story about how the guy they beat up last night had an aneurysm and is in a coma and likely won't make it, but the first person to talk gets immunity.
So they both start talking, explaining to Ralph that Rick came to them for a loan and put up diamonds as collateral. When they turned out to be fake, they got their money back and roughed him up. Ralph takes the money back and leaves to talk to Rick to corroborate the story. Came out of that coma pretty fast, you idiots!
Over at the Savoy, Vincent and Red are in an elevator with a child who apparently was sent to fill an ice bucket. After she gets off, Red's all, "Geez, parents! Who brings a kid to a casino?" But a furious Vincent asks if he's talking to the law, explaining that he heard Red talking to the suit. So poor Red has to admit to buying powdered rhinoceros horn because he's dating a 26-year-old showgirl and he needs a little help "to keep the spaghetti al dente." Well, now Red knows there's a rat, and we all know Red's having boner problems, so this is uncomfortable all around. Savino says Rizzo doesn't need to know about the rat, so they have to find it and take care of it before Rizzo finds out.
The elevator doors open up, and Rizzo's there, glowering at them, pulling Savino off to tell him to fire Mia. Vincent's against it -- best count-room manager he's ever had, and Rizzo's not giving him a reason -- so Rizzo threatens to fire him too, and Vincent says he'll take care of it.
Jack and Dixon find Dawn Fields at a motel having sex with a dude who outrageously turns out to be her husband. That's what she and Marjorie fought about, actually -- she wanted to go back to him, which Marjorie thought was weak. She'd come with some sort of single-woman bingo game to help them enjoy their new freedom, a card that contained spaces like "Take a Double Shot of Whisky" and "Have a Rendezvous at Work" (!). Dawn sadly has yet to cross that second one off, because when she got to "Kiss a Stranger" she realized that this wasn't what she wanted. Jack notes "Pretend to be a Working Girl," which Dawn explains was supposed to be for five minutes but no one had done it, Marjorie being the only one brave enough to even try.
The Lambs leave and since prostitutes are so rare in Las Vegas they apparently immediately find one who saw Dawn working the same club as her. She didn't care so much, but her pimp did. The Lambs go to talk to him -- not before she lets them know about her half-price discount for cops, Dixon putting more consideration into the offer than Jack -- and wind up punching him and handcuffing him to his car in the course of finding out he just wanted to scare her into getting off his turf. She got scared, all right, and ran off, leaving her purse behind, and Dixon finds a bank statement for a transfer of $25,000, making her a pretty big target for someone.
In the morning, Laura has used her hair appointment as cover to meet with O'Connell to show her proof of Rizzo's interstate bank fraud. She's wearying of the informing, and O'Connelly assures her it'll be over soon, and she thoughtfully brought some pamphlets of places they might be relocated, the top choice being, apparently, "Cabins in Maine." But Laura says Vincent won't leave, because what he's doing in Vegas is his dream. "His dream is going to get him killed. If you really want to keep your family safe, this is the only way," O'Connell tells her.
Ralph pulls up at his ranch to find a car there and Barbara riding one of his horses. He jokes about her being a horse thief, which is true, if by "horse thief" you mean "wants to have sex with Ralph." She asks him to help her down, so he can put his arm around her, and then she leans in for a kiss. He's reluctant. "Don't tell me you don't want this," she says. You're married, he points out, so she strokes his face and leaves. So I guess Ralph will just put away the horse you took out? Drop by any time!
Red and Savino are going over time sheets or whatever to see which of their employees might have been meeting with the feds, but they can't find anyone. The last one left is Hildy, the secretary, so Red turns on the charm -- and I hope he did a hit of that powdered rhinoceros horn -- and takes her out to lunch so Savino can snoop around her desk. It's in the appointment calendar the he finds Laura's hair appointments match the times in the statements given in the affidavit.
So when Laura gets back, all "Hey, want to do Chinese for dinner?" he confronts her about talking to the feds. She says she was trying to save their lives. "I'm already dead. You're dead. Our children are orphaned," says Vincent, and Laura's hokey "Cabins in Maine" pamphlets aren't soothing him because he -- not being a rat, you see -- won't testify. And if they did, they'll spend the five years being dragged in and out of court, always looking over their shoulders, worried about being plugged on the courthouse steps. Laura's defeated. "I agree with every word you said, but I don't have another plan. Do you, Vincent?"
Well, maybe just threatening O'Connell! She's surprised when Vincent gets in the car and says Laura's done talking to her. She plays dumb at first, but Savino -- sneering that she came back from New York with her tail between her legs and wants to make her mark here -- wants her to cut the crap and warns her to stay away from Laura. And that's when she pulls a pistol out on him. He's surprised but no overly worried, because it's not like he's never had a gun pointed at him before, but she warns him that this is different; she could shoot him in cold blood and never see the inside of a holding cell. "People like me can kill people like you, no questions asked," and it's her turn to warn him, against threatening her again.
Ralph visits Rick, who's sporting a nasty cut on his lip. Ralph explains about meeting with Zumo, and he knows about the fake diamond bracelet. Rick is all bluster at first --"She chose me. Move on," he says -- but eventually confesses to making a couple of bad investments, and he thought a few thousand might tide them over for a couple of months. And then it's a real sob story about how he figured if he spent enough money on Barbara, she'd forget all about Ralph, which she never did, and how he was always second choice, and all this sounds like an awfully seriously relationship, especially considering how all season we've been led to believe Ralph has been pining for his wife since she died and all. He's got the money for him. Asks how long he was going to keep Barbara in the dark.
Meanwhile, Dixon and Yvonne are partaking in more of their wacky wedding shenanigans even though no one cares, and when some actual police work is done, they find out that the $25,000 of Marjorie's was to buy the brushland where her body was found. Dixon heads to the county clerk's office to pull the deed. Jack might go too, except Ralph has just walked back in, and it's more important for Jack to bust his balls over Barbara. "Can't expect a person to stay if you don't make room for them," says
Savino lowers the boom on Mia, who is obviously surprised, and asks if this was her dad's decision. Savino says Chicago wants to make a change, and Rizzo fought like hell to keep her there. You know, if that were really the case, I think Rizzo would be telling her this, so it's not the most plausible of lies. Mia wants to know who's taking over. Why, it's ... uh ... Count Roomington from Chicago! Mia asks if it has anything to do with her and Jack, a situation that Savino doesn't seem to know anything about, but before they can get into it, Red comes in and Mia leaves.
Savino's pissed at Rizzo for making him do this, and for being an all-around disaster ever since he got there; he's either going to bankrupt them or get them killed or thrown in jail. He points out that the case would go away if Rizzo weren't around, and Red urges caution. "He's a damn animal, and I'm sick of cleaning up after him," says Savino. Red points out they'd never get permission from Chicago, and they sure as hell shouldn't do it without permission. Like a poor sap on a late-night infomercial, Savino says there's got to be another way.
Mia confronts Rizzo, who blames Savino for the firing but isn't very convincing because he also says she's better than this job and should be working in a bank. Memo to dad, she TRIED that, she points out, but couldn't even get a job interview: "Because I have your last name. It's the same reason boys didn't ask me to prom," she says. And now she has someone who isn't afraid -- so NOT the guy who was hiding under the bed at the start of the episode? -- and Rizzo's trying to take him away. She says he's sad and lonely, and is only happy when everyone else is sad and lonely. She stomps out, saying she's lined up interviews at the House of Cards and the Nugget, and is not leaving Vegas, OR Jack.
So it turns out Marjorie had signed over the brushland she just bought to Max Voorhees, the wrangler at the Double-N. The Lambs saddle up to head out there, but once again Ralph can't come because he has to deal with some bullshit from his ex-girlfriend. She essentially wants to know what he'd do if she weren't married. Well, he'd glower and smirk and dispense rancher wisdom! Barbara says she wanted to travel with him, to get him off the ranch and away from the memory of his wife, and have him all to herself. "You deserve better," he tells her. "So do you," she says. They kiss goodbye, and she drives off. I can't help but feel this would be a little more poignant if we had any idea Ralph had ever really given a thought to anyone other that his wife.
Anyway, the murder wraps up really stupidly, because Max denies swindling Marjorie out of the land. In fact, it was probably a surprise wedding gift to him. That's right, they were getting married! Jack can't believe none of the other women mentioned that. You know what's even MORE unbelievable? That MAX didn't mention it! Or seem at all distressed that his FIANCEE had been murdered! So who does that leave, out of the characters that were introduced this episode? There's only one left: The ranch owner. Yep, she was in love with Max, and jealous Marjorie was going to take him away, especially since she gets divorced like other people have birthdays. Anyway, she's arrested now.
Speaking of very, very dangerous moves, Savino comes clean to Rizzo about the rat and the affidavit, and then reluctantly tells him it's Mia. "Those are some big words, Vinnie," says a pissed Rizzo, but Savino's absolutely certain. But he blames Jack Lamb for getting to her and turning her against Rizzo. Oh, now if they could only just figure out what to do! "There's nothing to figure out. I'm going after the deputy," says Rizzo. Savino nods, and Rizzo goes off, murder in his heart. And probably in his pocket.
Red wants to know how killing the deputy will solve the rat problem. It's only a problem if the deputy gets killed, Savino tells him, and Savino's going to warn him. "If one of them kills one of us, no one will ask any questions," says Savino, so I guess he's got Katherine to thank for the strategy. Savino calls Jack, but Jack's too busy banging Mia, so he hangs up the phone. Well, so much for your brilliant plan, Vinnie.
Savino and Laura go for a ride on the outskirts of town, Laura clearly not knowing if she's going to make it home. She starts talking about the girls, maybe in an attempt to save her life, but Savino pulls over to the side of the road and tells her to get out, flashing his lights at a car down the road. He's sending her back to Chicago. "When I visit the kids, you stay with your mother," he tells her coldly. She accuses him of wanting to get rid of her for a long time, and all his life he's viewed everything in his life in terms of assets and liabilities. And when "Vinnie the Skim" wanted to go legit, a North Shore debutante was a real asset. But now anything that threatens his rise is a liability, and he'll do anything to avoid winding up a carpet salesman like his father. Vincent doesn't put up much of a fight here, and in his defense as far as assets and liabilities go, Laura's talking to the feds could -- as he reminded her earlier -- get them literally killed, which is a little more serious than a social climbing burn. "Just be grateful you can hear me say this: Goodbye," says Vincent -- and really, Laura, think of what Rizzo had done to his fiancée; do you really think you'd fare better? -- and he gets back in the car. She crosses the road to the mafia bus stop.
And then we end on the wedding, and Dixon's late but shows up dressed like a Reservoir Dog, much to the chagrin of Yvonne's ex-boyfriend, who she's trying to make jealous, or whatever -- look, whatever, just roll the credits.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. Manti Te'o has him wondering if Ralph's wife ever really existed. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel@gmail.com.