'Black Monday' Season 2 Episode 2 is proof that Mo's ego is his worst enemy
There’s something fascinating about watching men’s egos that drive them to places they never thought they would go to. And Episode 2 of ‘Black Monday’ Season 2 is an exercise in that.
Don Cheadle, an actor par excellence, only continues to do wonders with his role as Mo Monroe, a sleazy Wall Street trader-turned-absconding murder suspect and now (the show’s now, which is the late 1980s), a reggae bass guitarist in Miami.
Mo left New York after getting backstabbed by Dawn (Regina Hall) and Blair (Andrew Rannells). He seems to have made peace with his existence in a breezy, laid-back, beach city, playing bass in a band, smoking pot, not snorting lines of cocaine every hour, playing ‘Legend of Zelda’, and just kind of letting go.
But that such a blissful existence can only be transient, especially in a chaotic black comedy like ‘Black Monday’.
The reentry of Dawn in his life brings back the chaos. That, and the fact that Keith (Paul Scheer) lost a million dollars worth of cocaine in a sea full of sharks. Hard as it may be to believe, that wasn’t a metaphor for anything. In any case, not only does Dawn refuse to apologize to Mo for “f***ing up” his life, she also offers him a tonne of money to sell his shares in the Jammer Group, a company he started — Dawn disagrees on the singular founder of the company, but that’s beside the point.
Mo could have happily lived his life on the beach. Hair down, sipping mojitos, chilling, perhaps, even rollerblading while listening to Queen’s ‘I Want To Break Free’. But life's not fair and life is not kind. In the form of Dawn’s refusal to apologize, exacerbated by Dawn’s insistence of him stepping away from the business for its betterment, arrived a huge blow to Mo’s ego.
And what man in the history of the universe, ever since the Big Bang, has been able to take a hit to the ego and sit down quietly to lick his wounds? The answer is no one. Mo may be a great man, a smart man, a cunning man, but he is ultimately a slave to his pride.
What directions will this pride and ego take him is unclear. He tells Keith that the two of them would take on the cartel that fronted him the cocaine. Imagine the alternative history that would make for a show like ‘Narcos’ or ‘Narcos: Mexico’: Mo Monroe, in Walt Breslin-style, attacking the cartel and winning. But that is somewhat unlikely. What is likely is that Mo will, to quote Firefist from ‘Deadpool 2’, “F*ck some shit up”.
‘Black Monday’ airs Sundays on Showtime at 10 pm ET.
