‘Black Rabbit’ Episode 4 Recap: “No More Fuck-Ups”

It goes bad for the Bunny! That’s the hot take in Page Six as news of the overdose at the restaurant hits the newspapers, and the primo publicity the place enjoyed is replaced by lots of pointed questions. Like the writer who had been profiling Roxie for NY Mag, but is now asking questions of Anna about her Black Rabbit experience. “I think when you have a lot of money and drugs in a private playhouse, bad shit will happen.” And one of the purveyors of that bad shit, Jules, has his Michael Clayton-style fix-it man trying to limit the blowback from what he did to Anna. Outside Anna’s meeting with the reporter is the Train Daddy himself, Morgan Spector, who joins Black Rabbit as Campbell.

While Jake shows some genuine concern for Mel, as she recovers from the bad coke, his complicity in operating a workplace that is dangerous for women is not slowing his ideas for a personal brand expansion. He’s at the Pool Room for a meeting with Estelle about her designs for the project, now that he used the proceeds from the sham fundraiser to fill the holes in the Rabbit’s books. But despite her saying their makeout session was a mistake, pretty soon they commandeer a quiet corner of the Pool Room and go at it again. Only to be interrupted by Campbell, who makes threats toward Jake on Jules’ behalf. Not addressing your own role in creating a sexually toxic workplace culture, beginning an affair with your friend’s partner, continuing to string along a loan shark and his enforcers, and taking on expensive new projects even as your current restaurant comes under increased media and financial scrutiny? Yes, Jake Friedkin, you are correct. “Fuck, what a mess.”

“You’re trying to expand, and I’m trying to stay alive?” The Friedken brothers’ latest argument has Vince going older bro on Jake again, accusing him of skimming at the Rabbit while continuing to call the restaurant “his.” Vince is out here jogging at Coney Island, and trying to repair his estrangement from his daughter Gen – he’s suddenly high on life, because he thinks burning down their mom’s house for the insurance money will square everything with Mancuso, and he can slide right back into being a boss at the Rabbit. In the same way Jake’s efforts are smooth, but selfish, Vince’s are more obvious, but equally selfish. They can call each other “Fuck-up” while declaring “No more fuck-ups,” because even if they’ll never admit this, their collective fuck-ups form the dangerous weather system they’re both constantly trying to outrun. When we met these guys, it seemed like Jake had it all and Vince had zero. The sum of what they both have is closer to the mean, which is why their paths might divert but will always meet. 

After spraypainting “VILE PIG” on the front of Jules’ art gallery, Rox took a few days and drove to meet her old kitchen boss and romantic partner at the woman’s home outside the city. This is Kathryn Erbe, another nice addition to the cast in this episode, and Roxie’s time at her house is full of cooking, healing, and a little kissing while we hear pieces of their conversation. Rox’s account of it going bad at the Bunny, and Erbe’s character giving that perspective with an image-shattering assessment of Jake. “You think people come there for the failed rock star with the coke sweats? They come for your food.” The outcome of this for Rox is her realization that she wants the Rabbit in her life, just not as it is operated by Jake and now Vince.

Junior and Babbitt’s latest sweating of Vince takes place at an absent Jake’s place, which they ridicule for its ostentatious displays of wealth. Junior breaks random bottles and frames, while Babbitt tears a Ryan McGinley photograph off the wall. It’s the usual from them – Get us our money, “the whole fucking nut,” this kind of thing – but the sweat session takes a turn when a sputtering Vince mentions Anna by name. A former employee with a story to tell could make trouble for the Black Rabbit, which is already the collateral in Mancuso’s installment agreement with the Friedken boys. They will pay her a visit.

Jake saw it on tape: Jules dosed Anna’s drink. But he did nothing, and may have even deleted the footage. In this episode, when he stops Anna on the street to talk, she shuts him down. “You’re not my friend,” she says, and drops details of a few more times where he was the sexual aggressor in a Rabbit context. (Jake’s protests of “we were drunk” and “you were smiling” are awful, and more examples of his incapacity for accountability.) When Anna is visited by Campbell at her apartment, it’s with an offer: a plane ticket to Mexico with spending cash, enough to start a new life as a bartender in Tulum. A witness to Jules’ crimes removed, and the world of the powerful and their private playhouses can move on. Anna accepts Campbell’s offer. She never deserved any of this. 

Add dying to that list. We suspected Campbell, a fixit guy for rich people, wouldn’t be above teasing Anna with an escape route only to permanently silence her. But that’s not how it goes down. He’s outside, waiting to take her to the airport, when Junior and Babbitt roll up. They’re inside her building for only a few minutes. And when Campbell heads back inside, he finds Anna dead on her bathroom floor. In classic fixit fashion, he tidies his prints from her passport and takes the plane ticket and cash with him before slipping out. Things going bad at the Bunny have claimed its first life. 

DJ Booth for Black Rabbit Episode 4 (“No More F**k-Ups”):

• Episode 4 of Black Rabbit reveals that Gen lives in the Physical Graffiti building, at St. Mark’s Place in the East Village, though as a Zillennial she’s less than impressed with Vince’s Gen X Led Zeppelin resets about a double-album from 1975. Gen does give her absentee dad credit for her decision never to do hard drugs, since he was a coke addict for much of her early life.

• We also get a few song highlights in Ep 4, including Amyl and the Sniffers with “U Should Not be Doing That” (a song title that could apply to most of what Jake and Vince do), bits and pieces of the Nirvana B-side “Marigold,” and the Pixies with the Bossanova deep cut “Stormy Weather.” Stormy weather? You mean like the cloud following the Friedkens around?

• And Nick Cave catching strays! Kathryn Erbe as Rox’s former lover isn’t the only one shooting arrows at Jake’s whole thing. During an argument, Vince accuses his brother of using cash skimmed from the Black Rabbit till to buy frivolous things, like the “Nick Cave suits” he wears to not seem like a fraud.

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.