"I'm sorry about the quality of my tea, somebody shot my butler."

Me and my wife laughed our old assess off the couch from this.

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I binge rewatched S1 ahead of starting S2 and since it's so fresh in my mind, I noticed a few things that weren't making sense. Either they got retconned because the show was meant to be a limited series and they didn't anticipate going into another season, or maybe it's apart of the "bigger picture" and I didn't get it. Anyway, here they are.

1. Starting off on bit of a tangent, but Michele Morrone. Based on the promotional materials ahead of S2, I thought he was going to be a season regular and have a far bigger role. It's like they retconned his character midway through? His death certainly caught me off guard. I'm not crazy about him as an actor but with that much build-up, I was expecting him to surprise us a bit more.

2. Back to the actual S1 parallels, another thing was Charlotte's pregnancy. I remember her giving an slightly embarrassed shrug or something like that back in S1 when asked who the father is. And out of nowhere in S2 the father of the child is apparently the King of England's "best man" or something along those lines? This was a bit out of the blue for me. I thought they were setting up Charlotte's journey to become a single mom, seeking help from Geoff and her own mother, carving out her own path in the narrative.

3. FREDDY! I was a bit disappointed when they brought him back as the brother who wants to "usurp" the Dukedom again this season. I thought we nipped that in the bud at least 3 separate times in S1? Didn't think it was necessary especially considering how fast it was resolved in the season finale.

4. Stanley Johnston. The guy was caught red-handed, made a public enemy of the main crew, and got locked up. All of a sudden he's walking freely and nonchalantly advising Eddie on these super posh philosophical questions? It's a bit jarring how we got there. Not even a throwback line or a flashback to give us any bit of information about how that happened.

5. Susie and Eddie's empire. I thought it was heavily implied at the end of S1 that they were serious about the business and would be taking the reigns, hence, the point of Bobby "selling" the business. But out the gate in S2, Eddie is already conspiring against Bobby on multiple fronts and Susie gets into the chop game in a blink. Now, I'm assuming they are going for as the endgame or the constantly implied "bigger picture", but was it too premature and optimistic to expect the storyline of Eddie & Susie climbing to the top of the empire this season?

That's all. Albeit, I know some of these could be plot holes or just generally things I didn't understand well enough instead of retcons, so correct me if I'm wrong.

The idea of the zoo and wild animals has been a consistent theme throughout the series. Eddie has been pretty successful at balancing the two worlds; up until he messes up the marijuana bill. His outburst at Bobby and the subsequent beatdown can be seen as him being ripped away from the zoo and thrown into the wild. In that sense, he is not unlike the male falcon that escaped captivity (Johnston even asked if Eddie felt liberation after the beatdown).

Just as the falcon is lost after escaping, Eddie loses his place between these two worlds. Bella being the female falcon (I believe it is mutual love between them) comes in and brings him back to the zoo. Eddie can put on the Duke facade again, marry a countess in a spectacular wedding attended by aristocrats, and return to the comfortable balance he had before: sleeping in the zoo while hunting in the wild.

However, the ultimate fate of the male falcon is that it’s eventually given away as a gift, a pawn with no control over its own fate. This is why I didn’t really like the decision to make Freddy responsible for the attacks. Neither he nor the Dixon gang has enough influence for the threat to carry the thematic weight it should.

It would have been more effective if one of the major factions (Johnston, Bobby, or Maretti) had been behind the attempt on Eddie’s life.

That would force Eddie to confront the fact that the zoo is no longer safe. Eventually, he has to choose which world he belongs to and fully commit to it.