Black Bird
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Its easy for him to overhear precisely because Larrys statement is accurate.
When it comes, the riot is sudden, chaotic, and widespread.
Guards are beaten down, perhaps to death.
Snitches and other unpopular inmates are stabbed with forks and have their throats slit with knives.
And this is when the riot becomes a blessing in disguise for Jimmy.
It turns out that both men come from very different abusive households.
(The finger Larry chops off is his first experience with keeping a grim souvenir from a corpse.)
Jimmys story is less bizarre but no less painful.
He idealized his dad, Big Jim, and treasured their time playing catch genuinely happy memories for Jimmy.
Jimmy asks with genuine, if morbid, curiosity.
The moments of pathos, too, extend beyond their mutual background of abuse.
At one point, Jimmy wows Larry with the story of how he was a star football player.
You both talk so big.
But the tales of football glory are all bullshit, and Jimmy quickly cops to being a benchwarmer.
Today was real fun, Larry says to Jimmy after all is said and done.
Jimmy agrees and immediately goes back to compulsively doing push-ups.
He idealized his old man enough to have conceivably made that career choice, right?
Only time, and the two remaining episodes of this excellent miniseries, will tell.
