Rendezvous With Death
KIN – Season 1 Episode 3 – SPOILERS
Fiona Bell as Eamon Cunningham’s estranged wife Angela
A perfect emotional storm causes the Kinsella clan to initiate a series of events that will inevitably lead to their destruction. Frank (Aidan Gillen) has issued a stern warning to his family not to retaliate against Caolan Moore (Lloyd Cooney), the guy responsible for killing Amanda’s son. Amanda (Clare Dunne) keeps prodding her husband Jimmy (Emmett J Scanlan) into going after Moore, implying that if he does not he’s a bad father.
Michael’s daughter Anna (Hannah Adeogun) turns up at Jamie’s funeral and tells him that she under no circumstances wants to talk to him about anything, ever, and is quite convincing about it. Michael (Charlie Cox), who was avoiding involvement with the family business in hopes of being allowed to see Anna again, volunteers to do the shooting after Jimmy asks him to be his getaway driver.
Maria Doyle Kennedy as Birdy and Clare Dunne as Amanda. — Dunne also stars as Sandra in HERSELF, a film she co-wrote with Malcolm Campbell.
Jimmy has a pet boa constrictor and just as that conversation with Michael is taking place, he feeds it a live mouse. The mouse is shown in closeup just before it is eaten.
In the course of conversations between Amanda and the brothers, we learn that Amanda slept with Michael (a long time ago, before he went to prison) and that someone named Allison is a source of guilt for Michael. This might be connected to the bullet holes in the wall of Michael’s home, if Allison was Anna’s mother and Michael was responsible for her death.
Eric Kinsella, nicknamed ‘Viking’, in hospital
So Michael and Jimmy head out to Frank Ryan’s Bar –which is a real place at 5 Queen St, Smithfield, Dublin — where Caolon Moore was last sighted. Michael is supposed to walk in, shoot the guy, and go out the back door where Jimmy will be waiting with the car. He tries to do this, but the rear door, which should probably be an unobstructed fire exit, is chained shut. Michael has a gun and could likely shoot the padlock, but instead he turns around and walks back through the pub and out the front door. It seems certain that the cops know who did the shooting that killed Jamie and that the Kinsellas might send someone after him, but apparently no one was watching any of these people.
Michael gets pulled in by the cops but before they can interview him he has a grand mal seizure. The doctor sent to examine him tells him to avoid stressful situations.
Eamon Cunningham has a talk with Jimmy after Jamie‘s funeral. That big stone wall is one of many things that create a prison-like atmosphere.
Amanda hears on the news that Moore had a wife and kids, and instantly begins to regret putting the hit out on him. Jimmy tells her that she has to put it all behind her. Adding to Amanda’s distress, she gets a phone call from Jenny Lawlor (Denise McCormack) the wife of the guy who procured the car for the hit. Lawlor is understandably upset because her husband was murdered for helping Amanda. Even though Jimmy and Michael are both in the soup with her, Amanda is now even more alone than she was at the start of the episode. She is horrified when Jamie’s brother tells her he thinks she did the right thing. Amanda wanted to keep her sons out of the family business, and she failed.
Jenny Lawlor
In the course of conversation with Jimmy Kinsella after Jamie’s funeral, Eamon Cunningham (Ciarán Hinds) mentions that Frank is gay. Despite his use of a derogatory term, he does not seem overly disapproving.
Most mob bosses are portrayed as cold, calculating businessmen. Not so Cunningham. He gets noticeably red in the face while talking to Frank on the phone after the hit on Moore. He has lunch with his ex-wife Angela (Fiona Bell) whom he left some years previously. She tells him she has cancer, and it’s “bad”. He seems genuinely upset at this and offers to help.
KIN is available on DVD and Blu-Ray.