Boardwalk Empire S2E7 “Peg Of Old”
I had a weird night.
I started by memorizing about 300 vocabulary words. Then I watched the 4th quarter of the Giants-Patriots game. Then I watched District 9. (Man, that last act was conventional.) My DVR was ready, back from the Comcast store earlier this week, and I had recorded Walking Dead for a super-duper recap. Alas, the DVR suddenly decided not to work tonight, which threw off not only Walking Dead, but my plans for Hell on Wheels. (My chat with the typically unhelpful Comcast technician ran too much into the 10 o’clock hour, in particular.)
So those will have to wait until after the GRE. I say all that to explain that my television got progressively better as my mood lightened up. During Hell on Wheels I was infuriated with Comcast and the episode did little to help; Walking Dead found me eating some Jello and liking the show’s stately pace; and finally, Boardwalk Empire capped the night with what I thought was a great episode.
All of these episodes tried to have Important talks. Rewatching Mad Men, in particular, shows how to do an Important talk well. Almost every conversation in the pilot is Important without being overbearing. Contrast that with the main conversations in Hell on Wheels, including Colm Meaney’s groan-and-laugh-inducing finale. (I’m not sure if I love or hate him yet, but that speech was overly goofy.) Similarly, take Rick’s conversations with Herschel about his role as leader, and Shane’s eulogy. Better, setting up things later or paying off past events, but still fairly surface. Boardwalk Empire, though, does great dialogue better than any drama on the air right now. Whereas Walking Dead focuses on twists for a lot of excitement (like last week), Boardwalk usually telegraphs exactly what will happen. Everything around it is just so good, it doesn’t matter - it’s still shocking.
Jimmy v. Nucky took a surprisingly violent turn tonight, but it was all laid out in an excellent scene early in episode. Jimmy’s young guns, sitting in the same seats the old timers sat in a few episodes ago, discussed what to do with their new world order. Eli comes in late, but quickly makes a splash - he wonders why they do away with the scheming and don’t just kill Nucky. (I love the only person to vocally object is Richard.) Jimmy is clearly hesitant - as he tells his mother later, this isn’t what he signed up for. When he tries to throw it in the other’s faces, asking about killing their bosses, Meyer Lansky essentially reminds Jimmy that the difference is Jimmy wants to be the boss. It’s his problem, and since the gang is all for it, JImmy can’t really refuse.
He certainly wants to, though. He obviously has respect left for Nucky. Much like last week, when he didn’t want to kill the man tied up in the butcher shop, Jimmy would rather look past the really tough decisions and go by a live-and-let-live philosophy. Problem is, in this age, that doesn’t work too well. If Jimmy changed his mind, he’d look weak, and his power would crumble. The only reason he scalped the old man was because he looked weak in the first place.
So the plan must go through. It’s an awesome scene, in part because it’s so unexpected in a few ways. Earlier in the episode, Nucky persuaded Jack Dempsey into doing a spot for RCA, who’s broadcasting the fight. This is the type of historical stuff that I feel Boardwalk Empire has slouched on in its second season, and it’s cool to see it back. But instead of watching Dempsey charm the people, Nucky eyes a woman in the audience (just as something else interesting is occurring back home). Suddenly, Jimmy steps into frame, and chillingly tells Nucky, “Doesn’t make a difference if you’re right or wrong - you just need to make a decision.” In this case, he’s right - although this philosophy overall isn’t too good, either. It gives Nucky a little warning, though, and when the gunshots come immediately after, it only pierces Nucky’s hand. The gunman is gunned down by a federal agent, who was tailing Nucky, and the reason that Nucky’s muscle wasn’t there - well, the plots are really dovetailing, aren’t they?
That muscle was used literally and figuratively away from the action this week. Our favorite little piece of Irish meat, Owen Sleater, was following a man for months and killed him in a nice little scene in a bathroom. The set and lighting were quite well done, showing the man trying to get through the jammed bathroom door and the unaware ladies walking on the ceiling. I’ve seen a lot of strangling scenes before, but that may be one of the first that made me feel as tired as the strangler. Man, I was glad when those fingers popped off.
Then he goes back to Margaret’s place and meets the woman of the house, who just had quite a couple of days. She went to Brooklyn to meet with her family, or her past family, depending on your perspective. It’s been a small subplot all season, but it worked pretty well in the foreground tonight. Margaret’s identity crisis has never really thrilled me, but the tension between her and Eamon was palpable. Her connection to the youngest, a voracious reader who self-identifies as Juliet, was also strong. So when Eamon sends her away, treating her like a whore with whore money, her sense of destruction is strong. (By the way, Boardwalk at its most showy - what a set! That’s where the HBO subscriber money is going. Wonder if we’ll see it again.)
And that’s why the final moment, one that’s been obvious for a few episodes, worked so well. As Nucky’s shot, Owen’s at home, licking his own wounds. And in walks in a devastated Margaret, confused about how she should feel about herself. There’s been sexual tension, and Margaret’s love life with Nucky is spotty at best. All Sleater has to do is spout some lines about identity in America, and Margaret’s changed her mind from not letting him take the bags to letting him in her room, and then letting him in her bed. As we’ve seen time and time again, Nucky isn’t truthful about some of the women he’s been around, although there’s no indication he’s slept with any of them. Considering the lack of commitment he can give her anyway, it’s tough to feel bad for him. And even though Margaret is sure to enjoy the slice of Owen today, she’s going to feel strong guilt when Nucky returns, injured due to his lack of bodyguard. It’s a deliciously twisted situation, one that has taken 19 episodes worth of weaving to get to.
I’ve been a critic of Van Alden and Lucy independently and a much louder critic when they’re together. But their stuff tonight was quite well done, with the right amount of Lucy griping and Van Alden self-seriousness to move things along without feeling rushed. Lucy wants her $3000, now that the baby’s out, and of course Van Alden doesn’t have it. He also doesn’t have much of a wife right now, as she’s incommunicado. She goes to Nucky, who sees an opportunity. The new prosecutor in his case, Esther Randolph, has moved into Van Alden’s office, and he wants all of the information he can get in return for seeing Van Alden’s Lucy troubles disappear. Lucy’s allegiance to the child is set when she leaves the child with a neighbor and gives Van Alden a dirty diaper and a script page on top of the phonograph.
Van Alden has a nice moment with the then-unnamed child, reading Biblical names out loud and seeing if any stick. Abigail does, and the camera cuts back and forth between the two, both unsure about their future. (Or at least Van Alden is unsure enough for the both of them.) It’s a well-done scene, one I expect made parents melt. But his best scene came earlier, talking to Randolph, giving her all of the files on Nucky his bosses ignored. He didn’t like her at first (and what was the deal with the knick-knack?), but regained his sense of duty and figured he should try and take Nucky down. It’ll be interesting seeing Van Alden playing both sides as the season continues.
This brings us back to Nucky - Randolph set up the tail on him earlier in the episode, so she indirectly saved his life. But this reminds me of my favorite character on Boardwalk Empire, one Gillian Darmody. She self-effacingly refers to her role in that young guns scene (“The men talk, the geisha retires”), but she holds a whole lot more power than almost anyone knows. Jimmy hangs onto her every word, and she continues to use her forced role as prostitute as a somewhat-positive. This episode marks another time we see her have sex with Luciano, and considering they’re of similar age and status right now in the Young Guns Criminal Empire, I bet there will be more made of that.
Jimmy questions his mother when she tells him to turn away when she’s getting dressed - he asks why she’s being so modest right now. Not only is this scene eerily reminiscent of Buster’s incestuous zip-up lines in Arrested Development, it represents a key weakness in Jimmy Darmody that’s almost entirely behind closed doors. When his mother leans in to him, I wasn’t sure that she wasn’t planning on kissing him. Jimmy turns away, partially in disgust, and she just whispers in his ear. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this is a key weakness Nucky can exploit. Now that things have turned violent, anything can happen.
This was easily my favorite episode of the season, and I can’t help but feel we’ll have many more of these kinds of episodes as the show progresses through S2 and S3. That’s a good - and rare - feeling.
