‘Black Rabbit’ Episode 3 Recap: “Skin Contact”

Already, this is what it’s come to. What Jake Friedken will do for his brother Vince. Episode 3 of Black Rabbit (“Skin Contact”) has him standing before the bulletproof glass of a pawn shop, peeling off his watch and cashmere sweater to scrounge cash for the week’s Mancuso payment. Yes, Vince’s pinky finger was also sliced away to serve the debt. But every day his brother’s back in New York, Jake is cutting away pieces of his own life to support him. For as maddening as Vince can be as a character – Really, dude? You were drunk, high on coke, and challenged an employee to jump off the roof of the Rabbit with you, then chickened out, only for that guy to fall to the street and become paralyzed? More on that in a second – watching Jason Bateman and Jude Law interpret the deep contours of this sibling relationship is Black Rabbit’s biggest and best feature. Jake will be clouded with anger at Vince in one moment, then smile to himself at his brother’s chiding the next. They’ve probably been doing this same dance since they were little kids.

Jake’s latest flash: a fund-raiser at the restaurant for “high school kids,” or something – it’s really to generate the quick cash they both need. Jake’s gambling debt, but also to “make the books whole,” as Naveen demands. Nothing can move forward with Jake’s Pool Room pitch without a tip-top Black Rabbit ledger. At the market, Roxie and assistant chef Tony (Robin de Jesús) grouse about Vince’s return. They’re developing a menu and putting in labor just to help this asshole? He nearly killed a Rabbit employee. Tony says they’re also enabling Jake’s addiction. To his brother. 

This episode’s non-linear moment is a flashback to two years before, and the morning after Vince reneged on his cocaine-fueled roof-jump pact with Trevor (Michael Patrick Thornton), a Black Rabbit staffer. Bailed out of jail, Vince learns the man became paralyzed from the fall, and also learns he’s being bought out of the Rabbit to cover Jake and Naveen’s $500,000 settlement. Trevor won’t sue and they’ll move on, but not with Vince. The restaurant Vin angrily says he started? “You’re burning it to the ground.”

Roxie cannot coexist with Vince back in the picture. She shares what Anna told her about Jules, says they need to do better at protecting their employees, and demands the artist – a friend of Wes’s – be permanently banned. Her second demand hits Jake harder. Vince is out, or she is. Jake’s protest – “But he’s my brother” – is both painfully true and profoundly cowardly. 

The night of the fundraiser illustrates this. Trevor arrives in his wheelchair, invited by Roxie, and instead of showing any kind of remorse, you can see Vince plotting some kind excuse or deflection for what he did to this guy. Trevor tells the story of what happened to a group of staff, and holds Vince’s stare. It’s another challenge between them, and Vince is again looking out for himself. 

The entire evening at the fundraiser, Jake has hesitated to do what he promised Rox. And the more he waffles on pushing Vince out, the more his brother walks around the VIP bragging that he’s back for good. Worse, Jules shows up with Wes, who didn’t listen to Jake’s weak protests not to bring him. The two are drinking heavily at the event when Jules latches onto Mel, the Rabbit’s hostess, and feeds her bad drugs. The young woman nearly ODs right there in the bar, and despite Vince having seen the whole thing, he lies to Jake that he didn’t. 

Jake is in the security room, his finger hovering over the “Delete” button. The footage captures Jules with Mel, and from a few days before, shows him dosing Anna’s drink. Jake is facing the possibility of a police investigation, and direct evidence of his not protecting his employees, but is considering a course of self-preservation. Or Friedken-preservation; if he deletes the footage it would be another something cut away to protect and support Vince.  

With EMS outside the Rabbit, Jules rolls up in his hired car, collects Wes and Estelle, and they skedaddle. This is another suggestion of the growing divide between Wes and Jake as friends, but howabout an even more apparent cue? While Mel was nearly overdosing on Jules’ drugs, Jake and Estelle were outside on the street, marvelling over her Pool Room designs. The new project reminds them both of working together on the Rabbit build-out. They sit closer. There are quiet smiles. And two seconds later they’re making out. 

He just sucks up so much oxygen, Jake said of Vince back in Black Rabbit Episode 1. That also goes for this series itself. Even as they hustle to meet Mancuso’s debt demand, Babbit (Chris Coy), the loan shark’s other main goon, is laying the groundwork for an “insurance policy.” He gets a tattoo from Vince’s daughter Gen, they flirt a little. She likes him without any idea of his ulterior motive, to set up harming her as blackmail against her deadbeat dad’s debt. Not every problem in Jake’s life leads to Vince. But their inability to quit each other is bleeding like a stain into everything.

DJ Booth for Black Rabbit Episode 3 (“Skin Contact”):

• Episode 3 of Black Rabbit moves beyond the DJ booth to transform the VIP into a candlelit jazz club for a live performance from British singer-songwriter Raye, and her sumptuous cover of Dinah Washington’s “What a Difference a Day Makes.” The song appears on the official soundtrack to the series.

• Vince is in a suit for most of the episode, so no Sonic Youth or Pixies T’s, but we do hear Cold War Kids with “Hang Me Up to Dry” and “Just Because” from Strays, Jane’s Addiction’s comeback album of sorts from 2003.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.