"The Black Donnellys"
By Sarah Carlson
February 27, 2007
Friday night I watched “The Departed” again -- an entertaining look at the world of Irish organized crime in Boston, brought to you by Martin Scorsese. Sunday night, I celebrated its win for Best Picture and proclaimed my love for all things Mark Wahlberg.
But last night, I watched “The Black Donnellys,” a one-hour drama brought to you by Paul Haggis, writer of “Crash” and “The Last Kiss,” and NBC's latest attempt at a comeback from its perpetual ratings slump. Perhaps this sequence of events wasn’t wise; how can you go from Scorsese to Haggis? Well, you can’t -- at least not easily. Sure, “Donnellys” and “Departed” are from different mediums, one with much stricter decency guidelines to follow, but if our culture already has so many tales of organized crime done so right, why do we need a watered-down version? With Dignam on my mind, and as a firm hater of “Crash,” me not being one who enjoys cliché-riddled melodramas, I approached “Donnellys” with skepticism.
In the pilot, we’re introduced to four Irish brothers carving out a living on the streets of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen: Tommy, Jimmy, Kevin and Sean Donnelly. Tommy is the good, artistic one; Jimmy (played by Smalls, from “The Sandlot”) is the troublemaker, stealing trucks and doing drugs; Kevin gambles too much; and Sean makes out with girls whenever the opportunity arises. In a flashback, told by narrator Joey Ice Cream, we learn that when he was a kid, Jimmy’s leg was accidentally run over during a sort-of hit and run, an event that caused him to walk with a limp, stunted his growth and changed all of their lives.
I nearly passed out from boredom several times while attempting to write this recap, so I’m going to be brief. Jimmy steals a truckload of shirts to sell to pay back Kevin’s gambling debt. Plan backfires, someone steals the shirts, Jimmy kidnaps Louie Downtown for revenge. Uh oh! Louie is the nephew of local Italian mob boss Sal Minetta, which I always heard as ‘Salmonella.’ Jimmy wants ransom money, Salmonella agrees, but on of the boss’s men, Nicky Cottero, goes hunting for a Donnelly.
Cottero finds Sean, beats the crap out of him and leaves him on the side of the road. Jimmy finds out, goes back to the family bar where they’re hiding Louie and kills him. An important Italian crime person makes a deal with Salmonella, agreeing to let him kill Jimmy instead of all of the brothers. Italian boss tells Tommy that Jimmy needs to apologize to Salmonella and go alone, but smart Tommy figures it out, calls in a favor to his cop friend and Jimmy is arrested for the truck heist, which takes him out of harm’s way. Tommy and Kevin then go to the meeting instead, where Tommy leaves his crimeless life as an art student and kills a guard, Salmonella and Italian boss to the wistful tunes of Snow Patrol. Hell’s Kitchen is so emo.
Whew! That pretty much covers it, except for the scenes where Tommy gazed longingly at childhood friend Jenny (Olivia Wilde, Marissa’s girlfriend during her lesbian phase on “The O.C.”). Jenny’s husband is dead, but no one has the heart to tell her. So, Tommy just gazes. And sketches her face on a placemat at the diner she works at. And gazes.
Now Tommy is technically the head of the neighborhood, his actions setting up an obvious feud between the Irish and Italians. But what made him kill? He was the good brother, the one who always tried to keep the others in line. Wait a minute -- another flashback just revealed that Tommy was the reckless driver in the hit-and-run that shattered Jimmy’s leg. He’s the reason Smalls is small! After that day, he left his life of crime for a brighter future, only to return to save his brother’s life.
Despite being billed as a “gritty new crime drama,” I’ve seen more suspense on “Law & Order.” When you have a show about crime families that doesn’t have language or violence, you end up with a basic cable-man’s “Sopranos.” Those characters, or those from “The Departed,” or “Goodfellas,” or “The Godfather” or you name it would eat the Donnelly brothers alive. Now that I’d pay to see.
Maybe next week’s installment will be grittier, now that the brothers have gone from petty thieves to crime bosses overnight. But just as the brothers wouldn't last long if a Tony Soprano showed up looking to barbecue some Irishmen for lunch, "The Black Donnellys" might not make it, either.
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