As the 4th episode of The Outlaws begins, a young Frank takes his daughter Margaret to the electronics store and steals a record player for her. He walks right out of the store with the record player. In the present, Margaret (Dolly Wells) gets the kids ready for school. Frank (Christopher Walken) believes he can scrape together some money for the bus. After the intro, Esme (Aiyana Goodfellow) and Christian (Gamba Cole) clean up the mess the intruders left behind. He claims it was just a couple of crackheads, but Esme doesn’t believe it since they looked for jewelry inside the television. Rani (Rhianne Barreto) calls Esme to see how she is doing before the big exam. Since Esme is nervous, Rani gives her advice for staying calm. Once the call ends, Jerzy (Gyuri Sarossy) takes her phone because her phone privileges have been suspended.

Malaki (Charles Babalola) stops Esme as she leaves and tries to smooth things over with her. He invites Esme to come hang out with him but she turns it down and leaves for the exam. Diane (Jessica Gunning) talks to her mother about the nunchucks in her room before she learns that DS Lucy Haines (Grace Calder) and DS Selforth (Kojo Kamara) want to check the community center because the masked robber was tracked to that building. She agrees to let them in to look around. When Margaret takes her kids to school, she learns that Tom (Guillermo Bedward) has a girlfriend. Then, one of the other mothers tries to get her to invite Lady Gabby to her upcoming school event. Margaret knows nothing about the party or Lady Gabby (Eleanor Tomlinson) being there. Esme begins freaking out before the exam and calls Rani for advice, but Rani can’t answer.

Christian sneaks into the community center to look for the bag full of money only to find it missing. Before he can escape, Diane arrives with the detectives and they begin searching the property. He hides while Diane tells DS Haines about her skills and wanting to be a police officer. She tells the detective about the accident she had while climbing the rope in gym class. Christian manages to elude them and escape without being noticed. Before Lucy leaves, she gives Diane her card and says it would help if she can keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. Esme’s nerves get the better of her so she decides to leave the exam room without finishing. She goes to Malaki’s place and hangs out with him. They talk about the serious crap Malaki does and the fact that Esme wants to earn money and respect. During the next community service meeting, Christian pays close attention to the others.

Gregory (Stephen Merchant) and Gabby talk about the festival. Then, Gabby tells John (Darren Boyd) and Myrna (Clare Perkins) she’d like to donate to charities. As John and Myrna argue, Gabby suggests they’re in love with one another although both deny it. John and Myrna approach Frank to find out what they need to do with the money. Frank explains they need to find a bent lawyer who can help them launder the money and he suspects Greg would be a good choice. John threatens to take both of them down if he goes down. Rani tells Christian about the CCTV footage of her father’s van. She admits it is hard when they think she is lying so Christian reminds her that she is indeed lying to them. The others go along with Frank’s plan. Myrna starts by luring Greg into the building so Frank can threaten him. He tells him more about the money and uses the forged signatures and other things to convince Greg to cooperate.

Greg explains he’d use an existing client’s account such as Gabby’s, pay the money into her account, and have Julie cut them a check. Malaki shows Esme his handgun and lets her pretend shoot it. She admits she likes the feeling of holding it. He turns her attention to his chocolate foundation. Rani returns home and is asked to sit with Jerzy and Shanthi (Nina Wadia). They want to know the truth about the van or threaten to kick her out. She tells them she took the van to help a friend and really good person who was forced to steal from a drug dealer. Rani is told she’ll have to get a job since she isn’t going to go to Oxford. Tom listens as Margaret ridicules Frank’s decision to throw a party in her home. Tom takes up for his grandpa until Frank is sent to his room. When he goes upstairs, he shuts the door to make it sound like he is in his room but goes into the attic instead. Tom tells his mom that grandpa has changed but she refuses to believe that.

Moments later, Frank takes the money outside to John who tells him how to smooth things over with his daughter. John drops the money off with Greg and immediately speeds away. He complains to himself about not getting help before heading inside where Spencer (Tom Hanson) jokes about him dying in a wanking and choking incident. He asks Spencer about the Twilight movies. He approaches Julie (Jayde Adams) who is a massive fan of the Twilight movies and uses that information to score points with her. He gets lucky when he says he’d be on Team Jacob and Julie agrees with him. He tells her that Lady Gabby wants the money paid into her account by the end of the day and two checks made out to John and Myrna. When asked why Gabby has so much cash, Greg pretends she gets paid in cash when doing appearances. Julie agrees to help but he’ll need approval from the compliance officer first. Greg hits a road bump when he finds that Spencer is the compliance officer now.

Frank finds Margaret in the attic looking for stuff to sell during the upcoming school sale. John goes golfing with John Senior (Ian McElhinney) and they run into Hilgard (Gerard Horan) who reveals he has teamed up with the Chinese now. To cover for the loss, John makes up a story about finding a new investor. However, he runs into another issue when his dad wants to meet with the new investor. John agrees to set up a meeting between them anyway. Frank asks Margaret about her record player, but she can’t believe he doesn’t remember what he did with it. Rani’s parents tell her to sit down and agree to let her stay with them. However, she can’t get into any trouble and must stop contacting Christian. Greg tells Spencer the new paralegal is interested in him to get him away from his computer. When Spencer goes over, Greg quickly finds Spencer’s signature and forages it on the compliance approval sheet.

Spencer returns and tells Greg that he read the paralegal wrong. He threatens to take Greg down with him if she goes to HR. Greg takes the form to Julie and rushes her to get the money deposited as quickly as possible. Malaki shows off his chocolate fountain. He asks Esme about her brother. She tells him Christian claims he ran into some money and wants to leave Bristol now although she doesn’t believe him. In the morning, Esme returns to her brother who wants to talk. He tells her the Malaki’s crew was responsible for the break-in because they were looking for money. He explains he hid the money and someone else stole it. Christian thinks he can get the money back before they run away. Esme isn’t interested and says he took her away from her mother and now wants to take her away from her friends. She wants to live her own life away from Christian. Frank goes to a travel agency and buys a plane ticket. As he looks across the street, he sees a record player and has a flashback.

He remembers taking his daughter’s record player and pawning it when she was younger. He told her he was just borrowing it although that was a lie. Malaki tells Esme about her brother stealing from him and offers to get the money back for him. However, she wants him to rent her a flat. He agrees to get Souljah (Marcus Fraser) to set her up. Next, Christian tries to figure out which offender took the money while Gabby and Greg try to come up with a name for the festival. Gabby admits naming things is really hard and that makes her think twice about having a baby or jewelry line. She tells Greg he doesn’t know her father before promising to sort it out between them. Christian tries to talk to Rani but she tries to ignore him. While they work, Diane looks around the complex. Gabby informs Greg that she set up an appointment with her dad and she is worried because she went to him with bad business ideas before.

They go back and forth until Gabby gets upset and curses Greg. Once she apologizes, they agree to meet to come up with a name for the festival. Meanwhile, Esme looks out the door peephole and sees Malaki talking to Souljah who has a knife. She suspects the worse and confronts them with the handgun. Malaki denies it when Esme asks if they’re going to hurt her brother. Spider (James Nelson-Joyce) tries to sneak up behind her, but Esme spins around quickly and shoots him in the stomach. She uses the gun to escape and finds herself running from Malaki and Souljah. Back at the community service group, Greg gives the checks to John and Myran. John tells them about his new problem of his dad wanting to meet his investor. Frank agrees to become his investor so that settles that. Christian listens to everything and likely realizes they have the money.

Esme arrives and tells Christian what has happened. She gives him the gun which he immediately hides. He tells his sister to go to the spot where they used to hide before. He promises to make it okay before pulling John aside and holding him at gunpoint. Rani walks in and walks out. Christian tells John to have the money tomorrow or he’ll hurt him and his family. Then, he takes the gun to the bathroom and hides it. When he goes back out, he confronts Rani who says she doesn’t want to know about it. Diane searches the bathroom and finds a footprint on the toilet seat. She takes a closer look and finds the gun. She lines everyone up and asks about the gun. When Diane gets to Rani, she mentions that it was a gun. Diane suspects that means Rani knows something about it. They go back and forth until Rani blames it on Christian who makes a run for it and gets away.

Margaret goes home and finds a record player waiting on her. Rani rides with her dad in the van. Meanwhile, Malaki tries to clean Spider’s blood from the concrete outside. He gets a call from the dean (Claes Bang). He asks about the money and Malaki promises he is working on it. The dean wants the head of the person responsible on a spike and it’ll either be his or Malaki’s. Greg and Gabby try to come up with ideas for the festival while Frank dances with his daughter. Tom goes into the attic and finds the one-way plane ticket for Frank and some of the money. Rani looks at the pictures of herself with Christian in the photo booth. Christian meets with Esme and tries to comfort her.

 

The Outlaws Review

The first half of episode four was a bit slow and the humor didn’t hit home, but the second half was much better. I suppose it was a necessary evil considering they had to focus on the main storyline at some point. We’re down to two episodes now and things are only going to pick up from here on out.

There are plenty of ways the series can go now. There is so much going on and everything is coming full circle. We have Gabby’s upcoming festival, John’s business potentially going under, Frank’s future, and Myrna’s advocacy. I could go on and on. Since there is a second season already planned, I doubt we’ll get a definite conclusion for each storyline.

The episode was a little weak in the beginning but quickly pulled itself together midway through. A 7 out of 10 is reasonable. All recaps of The Outlaws can be found on Reel Mockery here.