‘City On A Hill’: Did Jonathan Tucker and Mark O'Brien quit Showtime show? Here's what happened to Frankie and Jimmy
Frankie Ryan (Jonathan Tucker) was hauled away on ‘City On A Hill’ for the armed bank robbery and the one ratting him out was his younger brother, Jimmy Ryan (Mark O'Brien). A working-class father, husband, and leader of a gang of Charlestown robbers, Frankie has been looking after his troubled younger brother, Jimmy for a long time now.
The role of Frankie is played by Jonathan Tucker, who was earlier seen on ‘American Gods’, ‘Westworld’, ‘Justified’ and ‘Call Of Duty: WWII’. Meanwhile, O’Brien played Billy Shore in Jason Reitman’s ‘The Front Runner’, with Hugh Jackman.
The nail-biting episode ‘Is The Total Black, Being Spoken’ ended with a major shocker as Cathy Ryan (Amanda Clayton) shot Jimmy. Now many fans can't stop wondering if Frankie Ryan and Jimmy Ryan are dead.
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Is Jimmy Ryan dead?
Fans can't seem to digest the twist. “I hate Jimmy Ryan. Like the sight of him pisses me off,” one fan posted. Another said, “While Jimmy was definitely a pill and a half, I’m gonna miss him on #CityOnAHill! I can’t believe Cathy of all people took him out like that but shout out to Mark O’Brien! Met him back in 2019 sometime after the first season ended :).”
A third chimed in, “Wait what happened to Kathy’s husband/!Jimmy’s brother?!?” One fan said, “Jimmy won't be missed....lol,” and another posted, “Jackie why would you go to Jimmy’s funeral.”
One Reddit fan, however, spilled his thoughts: “Was I the only one who thought this episode was boring and wasn’t that good? They spend way to much time on Jackie and Decourcys wives and family and not enough on the cases. The relationship problems with Sibohan and Decourcy fall flat and fail to bring any relevance whatsoever. What happened to Jenny’s mother suing them for the house? They seemed to ditch bring that up once and never mention it again.”
Is Frankie Ryan dead?
The mystery doesn't seem to die down. “Is Cathy's husband no longer on the show? I know he's in jail plot-wise but is he never returning?” one fan asked. Another confirmed: “Cathy's husband, Frankie, died in prison. She insinuated this back in the previous episode while talking to Tommy in prison, & confirmed it in this episode talking to Decourcy at the shop & Corie (Jimmy's children's mother) at the beach... Jackie telling Jenny he was thinking about having sex with her all day, & her being turned on, only for Jackie to mention her "little Irish friend" as well for a threesome, was hilarious to me. Jackie is something else.”
“I was really hoping to see a scene with Frankie in prison killing him off-screen is kind of a letdown,” one sad Reddit fan cried.
Now, that is a bit of a downer but let's take a look at the character's journey.
Did Frankie feel responsible towards his blood family?
“I care a lot about the world, and I care a lot about the character. I guarantee you there will be a project or a character or a role where you’re going to go, ‘Eh, I don’t quite know what he was going for there.’ [But] I don’t think this will be the character where you’re going to say, ‘This doesn’t quite work,’” Tucker said in an interview about his character.
When asked if Frankie feels responsible towards his blood family, or towards his gang family, he said, “It’s a blood family. Frankie makes these justifications, but part of your heart knows, the further I go to protect my family by supporting us in this criminal enterprise, the further the island moves out from the mainland. Because the great irony here is, I say, ‘I’m protecting my family, I’m saving my family, I’m supporting my family,’ but really, I’m jeopardizing them. Because at any point in time, I can get picked up and go to jail for the rest of my life, or I could get killed. Or both. And that’s really some of the duality that we have here in the show. So that duality is, I think, where we’re seeing the complexities of this character, but we also see a lot of similarities with the other two.”
What was Frankie Ryan to Jonathan Tucker?
The 38-year-old actor said in the same interview, “I could draw you a map of Charlestown, I can walk you through it with my eyes closed, every back alley, every corner, and bodega. That’s my whole life. I grew up there until I went to high school. It’s such a big part of my life, and who I am, and how I see the world, and how I was in many ways informed in terms of my character, and my perspective, things of that nature. But the investigation really is into the things you didn’t want to see in your own backyard or neighborhood... And then the meaningful stuff about trying to create and build a character.”
“If I asked you, you specifically, what I would have to know about you to play you, I feel like that’s a lot. Think about all of the things, the smell of maybe your mom’s hands, or your father’s hands when he gave you hell when you were a young kid, or going to sports games, or what smells are like in your grandparents’ house, the first time somebody broke your heart, the first time you thought you had a crush, getting into college. There’s a lot of sh**, a lot, right? So the investigation is less into what street I lived on in Charlestown, or what Boston was like in the ‘90s, and more like, who is this person? And that’s the more interesting answer to, how do you create humanity to somebody who’s robbing banks? We’re all real human beings.”
When will ‘City On A Hill’ Season 2 Episode 4 air?
‘City On A Hill’ Season 2 premiered on March 28, 2021, at 10 PM ET on Showtime with the first episode titled ‘Bill Russell's Bedsheets’. More episodes in the show follow every week on Sundays at 10 PM ET. Catch the fourth episode ‘Overtime White and Overtime Stupid’ on April 18, 2021.
Missed an episode? Catch the episodes once it premieres on Showtime’s official website or Hulu. What's more, you can also live stream it on Spectrum, Hulu LiveTV, SlingTV, Xfinity, DirecTV, YouTube TV, and Fubo TV or purchase them on VOD platforms like Vudu, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, and YouTube.