Black Rabbit Episode 5 Recap: Burning Down the House

Black Rabbit Episode 5, titled Trailblazer, accelerates the series toward a crisis as Jake and Vince Friedkin press deeper into schemes to stabilize a cash-strapped operation. The season’s looming flash-forward — a VIP party that ends in armed robbery — remains in view as the brothers chase a quick payout through high-end jewelry and staged violence. With that in mind, Jake arranges a meeting with representatives of Ben Baller to stage a Tupperware Party-style bash at the Rabbit featuring jewelry and watches worth six figures. The pitch signals a future where the Rabbit edges closer to legitimacy, even as legal trouble and violence hover just beneath the surface.

The episode details the human cost of those plans. Anna, the Rabbit’s beloved VIP bartender, is killed in her apartment when intruders force their way in. She flees to the bathroom, slips, and hits her head on the tub lip. Campbell, the detective, visits the Rabbit with more questions and later sees the men leaving, tying her death to their circle. As investigators circle, the Friedken brothers weigh raw risk against debt, fast-tracking a plan to burn their mother’s house to collect on insurance. The plan relies on a bent building inspector and a complicit fire marshal and hinges on a dangerous sense of inevitability that what’s a sure thing can still go wrong. The night also brings a moment of memory and fault: at the house, Jake and Vince talk through their father, Richard — known as Big Dick — and the ways his flaws echo in their own lives. Jake admits to Vince that they’re both trapped by bad choices, signaling that their reconciliation, if any, rests on mutual destruction.

Estelle’s drama with Wes unfolds as she weighs a breakup against a financial lifeline. She intends to buy out Jake’s Rabbit stake and asks Wes for financing to seal the deal. That same night also marks a milestone for Hunter’s birthday, with a cake shaped like the Barclays Center, tickets to the New York City ballet, and a rare moment of family reconciliation as Gen sides with Vince and contemplates attending a Mets game. The party’s warmth contrasts with the violence circling the Friedkens: Junior and Babbitt press the brothers to consider the arson plan without questions about Anna’s death, and Mancuso’s associates tighten the screws.

The celebratory mood evaporates when the threats behind the murky plans begin to reveal themselves. The goons physically incapacitate the brothers by dragging them into a car at gunpoint and driving them to the river, a brutal reminder that the city’s underworld is watching. Jake, fresh from his meeting with Ben Baller’s team, pivots toward a different form of payout: there’s a million dollars in the Rabbit in two nights’ time, with minimal security. The suggestion keeps the goons from killing them, but it also cements how far Jake is willing to go to rescue the business — at least for now. The brothers walk back to the city in their underwear, their relationship fractured but not broken, and their shared history — old tapes, a band name, and a stubborn will to survive — steering them toward an uncertain future.

Back at home, the episode revisits the siblings’ relationship with music and memory. Vince’s scratchy drum demos surface as the brothers rummage through a box of old cassette tapes, revealing their band name — Black Rabbits — a riff on their original Playboys moniker and a nod to the magazine’s leporid logo. Vince ends up gifting the tapes to Hunter for his birthday, and a recurring tack in this installment shows the band’s legacy as both solace and liability. As Junior and Babbitt tighten the noose around the Friedkens, Vince’s vintage “Death to the Pixies” T-shirt makes one final appearance before a chaotic end: it’s tossed into the East River along with a few other relics as the brothers’ clothes are stripped away during the attempted arson. The episode closes on the pair walking through the night, the past weighing heavy while the future remains stubbornly unresolved.