‘Black Rabbit’ Episode 5 Recap: “Trailblazer”

Recall the flash-forward from Black Rabbit Episode 1, when VIP revelry was replaced by violent armed robbery. While the series has since flashed back a few times, it has yet to revisit that moment, which means it’s been out here as a destination while Jake and Vince Friedkin’s cashflow problems have continued to pop off. Sham fundraisers and staff overdoses: there was a lot going on in Episode 3. But that same night offered a nod to the flash-forward, as Wes introduced Jake to Ben Baller, custom jeweler to the stars. That meeting is paid off here in Episode 5, as Jake meets with Baller’s people to arrange a Tupperware Party-type bash at the Rabbit full of high-end jewelry and watches worth six figures. Black Rabbit’s future is getting closer, but it’s one Anna, the restaurant’s fated VIP bartender, will never see.   

Anna was killed in her apartment when Junior and Babbitt forced their way in, she fled to the bathroom, slipped, and hit her head on the lip of the tub. Those guys have a plan to cover their tracks, even though they might have left something behind, and Campbell saw them leaving. But in the meantime, Jake and Vince learn of Anna’s death from Ellen Seung (Hettienne Park) when the detective visits the Rabbit with more questions. 

As the police circle, the Friedken boys also decide crime really does pay. It was Vince’s idea first, but Jake’s initial denials turn around when he realizes he needs quick cash, too: they’ll arrange for an electrical fire at their mom’s house, and collect on the insurance once it burns. With a bent building inspector and fire marshal in on the job, it’s another instance in Black Rabbit where the phrase “It’s a sure thing” is doing a ton of heavy lifting.

The arson idea sounds as janky as the look of the 1970s space heater it hinges on, but somehow it works. And while they’re at the house, Jake and Vince also smoke a J of ancient dirt weed while they lament their bar owner/gambler/alcoholic father Richard, aka “Big Dick.” (His nickname was embroidered in cursive on his bowling bag.) They got all of his worst qualities, but in a sibling split, so as Jake says to Vince, “You’re a degenerate, and I’m a fake.” It’s another moment in this series where the brothers’ arguments against one another rage until they coalesce into acknowledgment that they are one in the same. They’ll burn their past together, to make something of their future. Whether that future’s together, well…

Estelle is willing to take the gloves off their affair and make a go of it with Jake, but in the course of her breakup fight with Wes, it seems like she really just needed any way out that was offered. Estelle says his music career and outsized personality have swallowed them up. “You are good,” she tells Wes. I’m not good.” All he wants to know, though, is how many times she was with Jake, because he heard about their hookups from Roxie. Her plan since returning to the Rabbit is to buy out Jake’s share, and she needs Wes’s investment to do it. Once Estelle walks out, he angrily texts the chef that he’s into her plan. “Let’s take him out.”

With the arson money set to cover their debt to Mancuso, Jake and Vince are both flying high. A birthday party for Hunter at the restaurant includes a cake shaped like the Barclays Center, expensive tickets to the New York City ballet, and even some family bonding – Gen has come around to Vince being back, and asks her dad if he’d like to attend a Mets game with her.

It would be progress if it didn’t ignore all the other things Vince and Jake each continue to ignore, like barely addressing their supporting roles in Anna’s death, and Junior and Babbitt have some input on that. Sure, the fat check to make the debt whole is appreciated. But the goons’ version of celebrating is tossing the Friedken bros into a car at gunpoint and dragging them out to the river. They can’t have the cops’ questions about Anna leading back to them and Mancuso, so they’ll execute Jake and Vince instead. 

And here’s where the future of this series rears up again. Fresh from his meeting with Ben Baller’s representative, and with a pistol jammed into the base of his neck, Jake thinks fast. More crime? Why not? He’s already become an arsonist. “There’s a million dollars in the Rabbit in two nights’ time! Minimum security. You walk in, you take it, it’s yours.” Did Jake just arrange to knock over his own business? 

It’s a payout too tantalizing to ignore, so the Mancuso goons leave the Friedken brothers alive. But as they walk back to the city in their underwear, Jake and Vince’s relationship breaks down again. “I knew you’d do it to me,” Jake says. “Everything that is wrong in my life is rooted in you.” This is not entirely true – not even mostly true, as we’ve seen. But Vince’s return to New York and his gambling debt to dangerous people have torn open the places where Jake keeps his own bad decisions, the ones he leaves unresolved as he chases better, newer things.

DJ Booth for Black Rabbit Episode 5 (“Trailblazer”):

• We don’t hear a whole lot of jams in Episode 5 of Black Rabbit – Vince and Jake are too busy making Backdraft references while they conspire to commit arson. But while at their mother’s house, we hear some scratchy old recordings of Vince on drums, and learn their band name – Black Rabbits – was a riff off the original version, The Playboys, and the magazine’s iconic leporid logo.

• Vince and Jake also rescued a box of their old cassette tapes from the house before they torched it, and Vince ends up gifting them to Hunter for his birthday. We really wanted to see what bands or albums were in there, but Black Rabbit refused to show us. 

• And is this the last of Vince’s “Death to the Pixies” T-shirt? He’s worn it a few times throughout the season, but in their preparations to execute the Friedkens, Junior and Babbitt force them to strip, and Vince’s vintage T is tossed in the East River along with the rest of their clothes. Guess that monkey’s gone to heaven.

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.