The writers of Boardwalk Empire have quite a job on their hands. After building a slow-burn series over four full seasons with dozens of characters in play, they have the task of wrapping the whole thing up satisfactorily in just eight hour-long episodes this season. They’ve decided to do a very thorough job.
Wanna talk about it? Damn the *Spoilers** and join me below.
Early n this week, Nucky hears John Torrio, retired from Capone’s Chicago, share his own take on something Nucky’s miserable wreck of a Father said to him many years prior. “Money never did the dead no good.” Nucky turns around and imparts his conveniently self-serving version of the same idea to his icy killer of a bodyguard, amending it to allow for that one last score prior to retirement. This may well be the eventual theme of Boardwalk Empire’s final season, and by extension, the whole series.
After being present (sort of), for Joe “The Boss” Masseria’s assassination and being privy to Arnold Rothstein’s untimely passing, we are left on edge, aware that just about any one of our favorite prohibition era denizens may be next. Previous seasons held off on major deaths, sprinkling them through double-digit episodes, or just waiting until the final reel. This time around, it seems we’ll be treated to at least one gangland killing each week.
Episode 2 smartly culls the series’ depths of recognizable fictional characters and offers up Gyp Rosetti’s right hand man Tonino. You know, the guy who made a deal with Nucky that included him taking out his own boss. Rosetti went out in broad and memorable form. See below-
When Nucky makes inquiries about his own near-miss assassination in Havana, he finds Tonino working for the now most powerful boss in New York City, Salvatore Maranzano, with Lucky Luciano at his side. Luciano claims to have lost touch with his old friend Meyer Lansky, who Nucky ran into right before the failed attempt on his life. So Nucky is left to decide what’s next. His legitimate meeting with the National Council of Idioms and Platitudes suggested that “respectable” men may not do business with him again.
Duplicity is everywhere. Former lawmen Nelson Van Alden and Eli Thompson are working at the behest of Al Capone himself, and directly under the man who is helping to build the financial case against him. Gillian, as it turns out, is not actually trapped in a soft core exploitation flick out of the 1980’s, but is trading favors for favors with the typically brutish lady warden of the women’s sanitarium where she is doing time. Lansky and Luciano are, in fact, planning to double-cross Maranzano after ostensibly taking out Masseria on his behest. Tonino spills this bit of fun under duress and Nucky knows for sure who leveled the hit on him. As he exits the restaurant, Nucky has a waiter point out the charcoal sketch of his season 3 romantic interest Billie Kent and now it is Tonino who knows what is about to happen, You see, he had a hand in her death in the explosion at Babette’s.
So he ends up a corpse on Lansky’s doorstep with a Havana postcard stuck to his back and his ear cut off.
Nucky had told him he never wanted to see him again.
some fleeting thoughts and predictions:
-sex fades to fish in Eli’s dreams.
-Van Alden hates the little dog, and boy am I happy to see Michael Shannon again.
-Boardwalk Empire appears to be going there with Joe Kennedy.
-Eli reeks of urine.
-The Commodore is actually the star of Monopoly we grew up with.
-Van Alden doesn’t know why clouds float
-The fat bag man will finger George and Eli to Capone.
-I’ll be out of town next week, so I won’t be posting until Wednesday at the earliest.
Daf, if this show is even half as good as your writing, they’ve got a pretty good series here. Almost makes me wish I watched TV again!
Thanks, RB! I stay up and watch the show live, then watch it again on the DVR while composing the article. By that time on a Sunday evening, I’m a little punch drunk. I quite often go back and edit crazy typos in these articles because I insist on posting them before I go to bed. Otherwise, what will the 30 people who read it do with their Monday morning?