The Westies Episode 6, titled “Rad Tad,” picks up in the afterglow of Jimmy and Mickey’s big drug deal, and for about five minutes, everyone in Hell’s Kitchen looks like they’re on top of the world. That good mood doesn’t last. By the end of the hour, Jimmy and Mickey are staring down a debt they can’t pay, a supplier who’s boxed them into a corner, and a body they didn’t plan on making. Here’s everything that happens in this episode, plus my take on where the show is heading.
Hell’s Kitchen Celebrates, and Jimmy Meets Tad
The Westies Season 1 Episode 6 opens on a high note. The gang is drinking, celebrating, and riding the momentum of their recent windfall at the bar. Jimmy, feeling like he can finally exhale a little, opens up to Bridget about the crew’s newfound success. It’s the calm before the storm, and honestly, you can feel the show setting you up for a fall from the very first scene.
That fall starts with a guy named Tad Guggenheim. He’s eccentric, he’s got connections to wealthy buyers, and he pitches himself to Jimmy as the perfect middle-man. Tad claims his rich friends are always in the market to buy, and even though he got kicked out of Yale, he’s held onto those connections. He wants to start big, asking for 10 kilos right out of the gate.
Jimmy’s not buying it, at least not at that scale. He doesn’t trust Tad, and who could blame him? Eventually the two settle on a smaller test run: 1 kilo for 100 grand, assuming Tad can actually produce the cash.
Jimmy and Mickey Come Up Short, and Eamon Smells a Rat
Here’s the problem: Jimmy and Mickey have been having a little too much fun with their new money, and they’re short on their own payments. Suddenly, Tad’s offer starts looking a lot more appealing than it did an hour earlier. Jimmy goes to Eamon looking for an advance, and Eamon, ever the cynic, tells him running a business isn’t as easy as it looks. He’s also got a hunch that someone in Jimmy’s crew is skimming money off the top, and he tells Jimmy to watch himself.
Despite the suspicion, Eamon agrees to front the cash, but he routes it through a contact named Ruby Stein, warning Jimmy in no uncertain terms that failing to pay Ruby back will come with consequences. Ruby ends up covering half of what they need. From there, Jimmy tries to negotiate directly with the Dominicans and lands on 1 kilo for 50 grand, banking on flipping it to Tad for a clean profit.
The Deal Goes Sideways: Gotti Takes It All
Something’s off about Tad from the jump. He’s jumpy, skittish, and insists on doing the handoff outside in the open, which is exactly the kind of amateur move that should have been a red flag. It turns out there’s a reason for the nerves: Gotti shows up, takes the coke for himself, and reveals that Tad owes him money. Worse, Gotti makes it clear he’s the only supplier Tad is allowed to work with, and that debt is the reason Tad can’t do business with Jimmy’s crew at all.
Just like that, Jimmy’s gang is out 50 grand with no product and no leverage. When Jimmy goes back to Ruby to beg for more time, Ruby suggests the only way out is to start working with Gotti directly. The alternative, he makes clear, is that Jimmy and Mickey end up dead if the debt doesn’t get paid.
Bridget Backs Out of the Colonel Hit
While all of this drug drama is unfolding, Brendan’s crew is quietly assembling the explosives meant to take out the Colonel. Bridget volunteers to be the one who pulls the trigger, since this particular hit is personal for her. But when the moment actually arrives, protestors unexpectedly show up right outside the Colonel’s place, right as Bridget is about to detonate the car bomb. She can’t go through with it. Killing a bunch of innocent bystanders was never part of the plan, so she pulls back.
Glenn Regroups and Turns His Attention to Dukey Sullivan
Glenn, meanwhile, returns to Polk looking beaten and battered, but determined. He tells her he’s fully committed this time, no more half-measures. Flipping Eddie clearly didn’t pan out, so Glenn shifts his focus to Dukey Sullivan, another one of Sweeney’s lieutenants, convinced he can crack him where Eddie wouldn’t budge.
To build his case, Glenn tracks down a woman named Alice, who had a violent past encounter with Dukey involving assault. Using her testimony, Glenn secures an arrest warrant. He then finds Dukey in the middle of roughing up another man in an alleyway, flashes the warrant, and proceeds to beat him down on the spot.
Jimmy and Mickey Cut a Deal With Gotti, and Tad Pays the Price
Back on the drug side of things, Jimmy and Mickey reluctantly go crawling back to Gotti. He’s not interested in a partnership of equals: Gotti offers them a 25% cut while he keeps 75%, flatly refusing to go back to a 50/50 split now that they’ve already walked away from him once.
To seal the new arrangement, Gotti orders Jimmy to kill Tad. Jimmy hesitates, clearly wrestling with it. Mickey doesn’t hesitate at all. He pulls the trigger and kills Tad on the spot, closing the episode on a gut-punch of a moment that says a lot about where Mickey’s head is at compared to Jimmy’s.
The Episode Review: A Show That Can’t Find Its Center of Gravity
“Rad Tad” is the episode where the screws really start to tighten on Jimmy and Mickey, and in a lot of ways, it felt inevitable that their drug dealing side hustle was going to blow up in their faces. The bigger issue for me isn’t the plot mechanics, though. It’s that The Westies keeps shuffling its stakes and tension around without ever settling on a clear focal point. Every time I start to invest in one thread, the show jumps to another before it’s earned the shift.
Glenn is a good example of this. He’s gone from a weedy, almost checked-out crooked cop to somebody who’s suddenly effective enough to turn his whole situation around after a couple of conversations. That’s a big leap in a short amount of time, and it doesn’t quite track. From Eamon’s side, making an enemy out of Glenn seems like a genuinely bad idea, and yet Glenn never even attempts to smooth things over or explain himself. It’s a dynamic that feels like it’s being set up for later payoff, but right now it just reads as inconsistent.
Then there’s the IRA subplot with Bridget and Brendan, which at this point feels like pure busywork. It exists mostly to give Bridget something to do and to manufacture tension, but it’s just not landing. There’s very little here that made me want to lean in, and it’s pulling focus away from what used to be the show’s actual center: Eamon and the day-to-day running of the gang. Instead, the spotlight has drifted almost entirely onto Jimmy and Mickey’s drug exploits, for better or worse.
That’s a shame, honestly, because there’s real potential buried in here. The cast is doing solid work, and the initial tension between the rival gangs had real promise when the show started. But six episodes in, The Westies still hasn’t figured out how to organize all its moving pieces into something that consistently pulls you forward, and that’s holding it back from being as gripping as it clearly wants to be.
The Westies Season 1 Episode 5 | The Westies Season 1 Episode 7
