‘Suburra: Blood on Rome’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: Crime Waves

“You wanna go to war?!?” Well, kinda. The sixth episode of Suburra: Blood on Rome Season 2 may be called “It’s War,” because that’s the desired outcome of nearly everyone involved: Adelaide Anacleti’s Sinti Roma faction, who want to take Ostia by force; her son Spadino, his wife Angelica, and his friend Aureliano Adami, who want to team up to ambush Adelaide’s men, thus protecting Aureliano’s turf and handing control of the “Gypsys” to Spadino; Amedeo Cinaglia and Sara Monaschi, who want the chaos to scare the Roman people into voting for the Right, a politically advantageous development for them both. Alone among the major characters, only the itinerant mob boss Samurai wants to stop the bloodshed, to facilitate his own political alliances. But when the shooting starts, everyone gets both far more and far less than they bargained for.

Famous last words, Aureliano.

The golden child of the once-mighty Adami family suffers one of the most grievous losses in the brief turf war. A combination of personal estrangement, misinformation, and plain bad timing lead to the death of his former right-hand man and childhood guardian Romolo. Virtually alone among the leaders of the Adamis’ sub-clans, the bald-headed bulldog refuses to join Aureliano in preparing to fight the Anacleti invasion, choosing instead to go it on his own in his weird green subterranean lair.

But when the bulk of the Roma forces hit Romolo’s zone instead of the area that Angelica and Spadino believed they’d be targeting (only a couple carloads head that way, and they’re quickly rebuffed), Aureliano and Nadia do not arrive in time to save his one-time major domo. He’s as devastated as a man determined to survive both a shootout and a police mop-up operation can allow himself to be; Romolo’s son Flavio, who already resents the Adami scion for eating up so much of his father’s time over the years, is beside himself. Aureliano, lit in neon blue, trying to comfort a kid who’s mad with grief and who obviously hates him—despite whatever brief flicker of hope one might have for some kind of mutually beneficial alliance of vengeance—is one of the episode’s most powerful images.

Lele, by contrast, is only a minor factor in the fight. His role was simply to keep the cops off Aureliano’s ass long enough for him to make his preparations. While he’s standing around with Spadino waiting to see how things shake out, Samurai—who found out about the coming turf war from his radio-DJ protégé Adriano, who found out about it in turn from a too-trusting Cinaglia—has made a deal with Cinaglia’s ex-wife to alert the cops and thus quash the worst of the political fallout from uncontrolled violence in the streets.

Yet Lele becomes part of the violence anyway. Having learned from Adriano that Cinaglia is now working with the Three Amigos, Samurai rats out Lele’s murder of Aureliano’s dad, and Aureliano and Spadino’s murder of Lele’s dad as fallout from one of Lele’s schemes, to his dad’s former partner and girlfriend Mara. Deranged with grief and anger herself, she tracks Lele down and marches him toward the ocean at gunpoint, preparing to execute him.

Spadino sneaks up and puts a stop to her plan with a blow from a hunk of driftwood, but the worst is yet to come. For one thing, he now knows who killed his best buddy Aureliano’s father—their other best buddy. For another, he bears witness to Lele’s disturbing and brutal killing of his would-be killer, whom he drowns in the surf with his bare hands. Her words about his father’s shame over how he turned out seem to have upset him worse than the prospect of his own death, which in a way he’d welcome as an end to his torment.

By episode’s end, a whole lot of the plot is up in the air. How will these revelations regarding Lele’s character pan out? Did Adelaide or even Angelica leak bogus intel to Spadino in order to catch him in the act of allying with Aureliano? Did his scumbag lickspittle cousin figure out that the distraught DJ who drove up to the Anacleti compound looking for Spadino is in fact his boyfriend? Will Cinaglia be able to make enough hay out of the semi-abortive gang war to fearmonger himself into office with his conservative coalition partners? Can Samurai shore up his flagging fortunes by forming an alliance with Cinaglia’s ex—by giving her enough dirt on the guy to put him behind bars? I don’t think the answers will be pretty. But the show sure is, and it’s grippingly shot, scripted, and acted to boot.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Suburra Season 2 Episode 6 ("It's War") on Netflix