In this penultimate episode of Inside Men, Marcus is given the task of purchasing masks for the robbery that will be going down in a few months. While the “inside men” might need masks for the robbery in September, they’ve all been wearing masks since the moment they decided they would rob their business, a cash counting house. With this third episode, we start to see the masks these three, and the ones around them, have had to put on, showing how hard it may be to take off these masks in the end.
John is doing his best to become the UK’s Walter White, by playing off the fact that the police are watching his every move and that his wife is smelling everything in the house to try and capture the scent of the person who held her and her daughter at gunpoint. With the rush of power John is getting, he starts to flirt heavily with his secretary, getting a little too close to her when helping her operate her computer. When he calls her into his office, he makes the moves on her, and she quickly reciprocates. However, when she tells him to go slower, he leaves abruptly. John was attracted to the power that he had over her, and as soon as she took the power back, John’s attraction quickly faded.
John’s wife, Kirsty, is suspicious, yet wants to find out who threatened her husband and her family. When a visit from Marcus’ girlfriend Gina happens, Kirsty notices not only that she smells like the person who held her at gunpoint, but also sees her husband and Gina arguing. Later, Kirsty starts packing a bag for John. She knows what he has done, and she knows that he will be running away soon. He admits to the crime and that he will come back for his family. Kirsty’s mask shows that this crime has caused her nothing but horror and fear, and from episode-to-episode, she looks more haggard due to the toll this has taken on her family.
We find Marcus at the beginning of the episode without a leg after the robbery in September. As we go back to March, Marcus goes over to his mother’s house, where in a drunken state, she stabs her son in the hand. He tells her to lay down as he cleans up the house she has destroyed. In her passed-out state, she starts to choke on her vomit. Marcus begins to help her, but then watches her as she dies and then leaves her at the house. He returns a few days later to report the dead body, and he and his girlfriend Dita start to move into his mother’s house. But now Marcus realizes that he doesn’t want to do the crime; he has everything he needs. John doesn’t like this, as the two get close to blows. Later John says that if Marcus doesn’t want to help, he’ll pay for it. This most likely explains how Marcus lost his leg, and also the unusual stare they shared during the robbery. We see Marcus going to a police office to warn them of a crime getting ready to happen as well, even though we don’t know how much Marcus has told, or what he has told. Marcus has also been assigned to show around Riaz, an associate of Kalpesh’s, so that he can get the lay of the land for the robbery. By the end of the episode, we see that Marcus is back in.
As always, Chris is one stupid step away from getting them all caught. After being tasked to buy the masks, he decides to buy them all online with his credit card. When Gina basically tells him he’s being an idiot, the two decide to go on a road trip to buy the masks from various shops. Even with this smarter decision, Chris decides to try and steal a mask, and he of course gets caught. If it wasn’t for Gina bribing the shop owner, Chris could have once again brought this all to a screeching halt. Gina now wants a cut, and honestly, at this point, she deserves the money more than that idiot Chris does.
Back to September, the police have quit watching John, Marcus and Chris, since they have arrested Riaz for the robbery. As John goes to where he has stashed the money, he sits on his acquired cash like a throne and calls Marcus to come get his share. Marcus calls Chris and picks him up. When Chris asks if John knows he is coming, Marcus says “no,” to which Chris replies, “good.”
This episode sets up the confidence and the determination these three have, before everything most likely comes to a horrible conclusion for them all in next week’s episode. Watching John, it’s clear he’s become a monster. At one point in the episode he claims, “I can do anything,” a terrifying realization he has made, but one that isn’t true at all, as we see that he can’t control his secretary or his family and how they perceive him. As the final episode is coming up, it seems like the question to ask at this point isn’t if they will get caught, but simply how.