It's 1920, and the passage of the Volstead Act signals the beginning of the Prohibition Era. But rather than go dry, Atlantic City, under the supervision of county treasurer/lord of the boardwalk fiefdom Nucky Thompson, raises a glass to the profitable rise of the bootlegger. Nucky is established as a sweet-talking and savvy politician. He snows the local temperance league with a bullshit story about killing wharf rats for food as a kid. But he spends most of his time lording over his town like a less-glowery Al Swearengen.
Nucky's also got his sweet side. He takes pity on destitute pregnant woman named Margaret, but when her husband finds the stack of cash Nucky floated her, he assumed she'd whored herself for it, and he slaps her around. The husband takes his grievance to Nucky, who busts him in the mouth, but cycles of violence being what they are, the husband only goes home and beats Margaret so bad she loses the baby.
Nucky holds a bootlegging summit of sorts with gangsters from New York (Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano) and Chicago (Johnny Torrio and Jim Colosimo), where he and Rothstein strike up a deal where Nucky will funnel some of his Canadian Club Rothstein's way, for a price. But Nucky sours some after Rothstein takes him for 90k at the card tables the day. (That, plus the extreme shade Luciano is throwing every which way.) Which brings us to Jimmy.
Jimmy Darmody is a WWI hero back from the trenches who's struggling to re-integrate himself into his family (wife + toddler) and Nucky's power structure. During the Nucky/Rothstein/Luciano powwow, Jimmy bonds with a grunt-ish Al Capone, and they later hatch a plan to boost the booze from Rothstein's people (via a bloody back-roads heist). At the same time, Jimmy leads the Feds (who had been playing on his conscience and Catholicism to turn rat on Nucky) to the basement distillery of Micky, a jittery "bohunk" who'd previously pissed Jimmy off. Nucky gets tipped off to Jimmy's extracurricular activities, and when he confronts him, Jimmy lays it plain: WWI made him a murderer, and since he's going to hell anyway, he might as well get all he can here. He tells Nucky he can't go on being "half a gangster" and hands him his half of the money Capone gave him for the booze. Nucky didn't ask for it, but he's got it now.
Nucky seems to take the advice to heart, at least when he sends his people to beat Margaret's abusive husband to death and drop his corpse out in the ocean.
And after Capone brings the stolen whiskey back to his boss Torrio, Torrio has Colosimo -- who had been against going into the liquor business -- murdered in his own restaurant. Which was only the historical dawn of Al Capone's rise to power, but I suppose that's a little bit down the road.
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Previously on HBO: Terrence Winter and Steve Buscemi teamed up to send Christopher and Paulie Walnuts out to wait for Godot (and a Chechnyan) in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Previously in the universe: the American public's occasional tendency towards overreaction, demonization, and Christian self-righteousness manifested itself long before we even knew what mosques were, much less why we were supposed to be afraid of them. Back in 1920, it was the demon liquor that had everybody hysterical to preserve the public good. Now... look, I'm not going to pretend that my knowledge of the Prohibition era goes far beyond that one episode of The Simpsons, but I've got Google and Wikipedia at the ready, and if I miss the odd reference to the finer points of the era, I trust you'll use your most patient tone of e-mail to let me know.
Oh wait, but first there's some kind of production snafu where the opening credits have been replaced by the John From Cincinnati opening credits. No, sorry, I'm being sarcastic, these are the real BE credits, in all their anachronistic, twangy-guitar glory. I guess this is to keep us on our toes about not expecting the Same Old Story about the 1920s. Whatever it is, it's definitely too winky-clever, no matter how many ominous bottles of liquor litter the Jersey shoreline. Not the best way to kick the show off -- though (SPOILER!) it's the only real blight on the show all hour.
So after Joe Strummer tells us to stop killin' all the bees, we iris in on a man's watch (have I mentioned Martin Scorsese directed this episode? I'll probably be mentioning him whenever there's something fancy and directorly like that; or if "Layla" comes blaring out of a far-off phonograph). The man is on a boat pushing through some evening fog. A smaller boat comes motoring out of the darkness, and Cap'n Timepiece is impatient to unload his cargo to them. And in case the crates clearly marked "Canadian Club Whiskey" didn't tip you off, one of the enterprising men on the smaller boat remarks, "Liquid gold, Boyo." For, you see, bootleggin' were a profitable racket. An' the bootleggers were often sons of the Emerald Isle. The smaller boat putters off into the mist, and after it's disappeared, the camera rises above the fog to reveal a glittering waterfront and the words "Atlantic City, 1920." Marty, that was awful majestic, right there.
From the majestic, then, to the criminally mundane, as the bootleggers transfer their cargo from the boat to a truck. The three-car convoy makes their way down a dark road, past the odd deer and a sign welcoming them to "Hammonton, New Jersey, The Blueberry Capital of the World." In front of them a ways, there's an overturned car, with the driver lying motionless in front of it. The driver of the lead car is perturbed but tells his guys to slow down. They check on the fallen driver, who's got a bloody gash on his forehead but is otherwise breathing. The bootleggers -- all five of 'em -- put the guy's car upright and drag it (and the driver) off to the side of the road. No telling if these upstanding gents are just going to leave the guy there. We'll never know, as two masked men with shotguns emerge from the trees and tell the bootleggers to get their damn hands up, a full eighty years before Jay-Z would instruct boozy New Jerseyans to do the same. As you might suspect, the poor fallen driver is in on this ambush as well. The lead bootlegger seems more irritated than afraid. "You know who's fuckin' load this is?" he demands. The shorter, mookier of the two assailants retorts that it's "pretty obvious now, ain't it?" and cracks him in the face with the butt of his gun. At this closeup of his masked face, we get a freeze frame (Marty!) and a Thematically Appropriate Voiceover:
"Coward! Monster! Vicious brute!" These are the dulcet tones of character actress Dana Ivey, and she's reading a bit of anti-liquor verse at a local temperance rally. The rest of it, pious and judgy (though also with an eye on the public good) though it may be: "Friend to thief and prostitute. Conscience dulled by demon rum. Liquor, thy name's Delirium!" Applause rings out from her audience, composed entirely women, but for one man: Mr. Nucky Thompson, county treasurer, doing his best to appear grave and keep his eyes from rolling too visibly. Dana Ivey welcomes Nucky ("the honorable Enoch Thompson") takes the podium -- in front of one banner that reads "Lips That Have Touched Liquor Will Never Touch Mine" -- and proceeds to give a speech of such clear-eyed horseshit, I'm tempted to elect him right now. Don't care what office; I hear the great state of Delaware will accept just about anybody, let's make this happen. Nucky's speech is I guess supposed to be another screed against the demon rum, and while this story of a boy whose father was ruined by alcohol and abandoned his family does meet that standard, the thrust of Nucky's tale is the boy. The boy who struggled and scraped and suffered, only to scrounge a meal full of wharf rats (Temperance Ladies: "GASP!") for his family. But they survived. The boy survived. And he grew up to be the man who stands before them today, looking shorter, paler, and with more of a Peter Lorre thing going on than you'd expect out of your charismatic local demigod, but he'll do. Nucky closes his nominally anti-booze speech with a plea for women's suffrage that is the 1920s equivalent of a windmill slam dunk.
From the back of a room, a young-ish guy -- Jimmy -- watches Nucky and seems to be taking this all in in spite of himself. In fact, as he walks with Nucky to the car afterwards, he tells his boss that he ate some desperate stuff but never rats. Nucky turns around and tells Jimmy what the rest of us could've: he should never let the truth get in the way of a good story. That's good advice, wouldn't you say, historical accuracy on TV nitpickers?
Jimmy then drives Nucky down to the boardwalk, where carnival barker types advertise showgirls on the street and the staggering masses wander from one attraction to the . Around the corner, a New Orleans-style marching band -- in very classy blackface -- leads a mock-funeral procession for a giant bottle of whiskey. I'd say "Fun's over," but nobody seems all that worried about it. Well, maybe this guy pushing a baby carriage full of scotch down the boardwalk while his wife carries their baby.
We're then spirited away from the Boardwalk to a Federal training facility where the boys Jimmy might've gone to Princeton with are training to uphold and defend the laws of the nation. "The first line of defense in the war against illegal liquor," says the speaker at their graduation ceremony. While the boys are being sworn in, a stone-faced Michael Shannon looks out over them. How that mere fact doesn't scare even one of them into running for their lives, I will never know. Michael Shannon scares me.
Over in Nucky's hotel room, we're treated to a close-up of a photo of Nucky's late wife, quite clearly portrayed by Deadwood alum Molly Parker. Clever one-off nod to HBO's programming history, or are we due some flashback action soon? Anyway, the ideal of Nucky's romantic past gives way to his tawdry present, as he wakes up alongside Floozy Lucy from last night. That awakening comes from a jittery Eddie, who tells Nucky that there is a pregnant woman here to see him. After Nucky's heart attack subsides, Eddie elaborates that she's one of the "Tempermance League" woman, which calms Nucky down some.
Down in the hotel lobby, a fairly important contingent is being welcomed to the hotel. As the men -- "Big" Jim Colosimo, Johnny Torrio, Arnold Rothstein, and Charles "Lucky" Luciano" make their introductions, Michael Shannon glowers at them from across the room as he gets his shoes shined.
Elsewhere in the hotel, Kelly MacDonald pages through an issue of Vogue (!) for a few pages before the flapper fashions bewilder her into closing the magazine. It's not hard to understand why. The 1920 equivalent of Anna Wintour would not have approved of such heavy wool garments nor the fact that she's monstrously fat. Or pregnant, whatever. While Eddie ushers her in to see Nucky, an impatient Omar from The Wire says to tell Nucky he ain't got all day. Hope you liked this week's installment of Hey! That's Omar From The Wire! Inside Nucky's office, Eddie introduces "Miss Schroeder" and pantomimes a pregnant belly, just in case Nucky forgot. Here's the dynamic: Margaret Schroeder is nervous and ashamed to be coming to Nucky hat in hand, while Nucky is extremely polite, with absolutely no trace of the concealed malice that earlier HBO anti-heroes (Tony Soprano, Al Swearengen) have exhibited. It was about here that I started to think we had something new with this guy. He puts her at ease, talking about her lingering Irish accent and his late wife (she died of consumption, leaving him no children). Margaret confesses that her husband is a drinker and a gambler and he's left their family broke. After shooing away an interrupting Lucy (whose disheveled slattern image could not be in starker contrast to Margaret's buttoned-upedness), Nucky elicits that Margaret is looking for employment for her lout of a husband. He's a baker's assistant, but only during tourist season. Nucky instead hands her a wad of cash, which of course she refuses at first. TV characters are always doing that. I would make the worst TV character. Anyway, Nucky insists and puts the money in her hand. Margaret is moved and offers to name her child after him. "Enoch? You couldn't possibly be so cruel," Nucky smirks with what again seems like genuine good humor. Look, I'm not saying the guy's a saint, but I'm intrigued that the show's designated criminal boss is still holding on to a core decency that, for example, Tony Soprano never had and Al Swearengen needed time to develop.
As Nucky walks Margaret out, he hands her off to Jimmy and insists she accept a ride home. Jimmy pulls Nucky aside and tells him that his "friends" from Chicago and New York have arrived. He also wants to speak to Nucky about something else, but Nucky brushes him off and says to meet him at the pier later.
The scene is the most bizarre and perhaps my favorite, as Nucky walks down the boardwalk -- past the photo shop and the salt water taffy -- and comes across a storefront where gawkers are encouraged to "See Babies That Weigh Less Than 3 Pounds!" And indeed, inside, a nurse is tending to a preemie, weighing it and placing it in inside a cabinet. Just going about her regular nurse duties, only there's a big glass window where tourists can pay to see these freakishly tiny babies. Nucky is clearly entranced by the sight -- you get the feeling this isn't the first time he's stared into this storefront.
Jimmy drops Margaret off on her shabby little street of row-houses. She tells him to leave her a few houses down from her own, but that doesn't stop her husband from taking notice. Jimmy watches as he harshly tells her to get inside the house, before chasing the local kids off his bumper and driving away.
Down at the docks, we see that in Atlantic City, even the fisherman have become showmen, as they sort through their haul while barker's voice calls out the various fish they've brought in ("For Neptune yields the treasure from his watery kingdom!"). Overseeing this fascinating haul is Nucky, who's joined by one Bill McCoy. They make winking small talk about McCoy's "trip up north," and then Scorsese gives us a quick flash to the opener that confirms that McCoy is our friend Cap'n Pocketwatch from the boat. They haggle over the price for this shipment of Canadian Club that's coming in (sound familiar?), and it all seems friendly between these two. Or as friendly as mutually-beneficial illegal dealings can be. As they leave the dock, Jimmy again pesters Nucky for a conversation, but Nucky again puts him off.
stop is Berns' Funeral Home, before which Nucky takes a quick nip from his flask. Which is kind of brazen considering the wake inside is full up with temperance-type old ladies, who Nucky nevertheless charms with his usual smooth talk. He even assures the widow he was a good friend to the deceased who spoke to him just last month. This is news to the widow, who says something or other about a laryngectomy, but she's still awfully flattered. Nucky then proceeds to the basement, where we come across the real reason for his visit: the illegal distillery happening quite literally underground. The stills are presided over by one Mickey Doyle, who I'm pretty sure is going to love out West at the end of this series, settle down in Utah, and end up the great-grandfather of Albie Grant. Like, picture Albie crossed with South Park's Tweak and you've got Mickey. Naturally, everybody just barely tolerates him.
Mickey brags about producing around 2,000 crates a week of some seriously bathtub gin (which, in this case, is neither gin nor made in a bathtub, so let's talk amongst ourselves). Mickey talks them through the process of faking bourbon -- involving lots of caramel coloring and grain alcohol -- and Jimmy asks if they can do scotch too. Mickey snivels that they can, only they need to add a carbonating agent for the bubbles. He hands Jimmy a drink, which goes about halfway down his gullet before he chokes it back up. Mickey cackles about the carbonating agent ... in this case, formaldehyde. Jimmy waits about half a beat before smashing the glass over Mickey's head. Nucky and the other employees break up the fight, which isn't exactly easy with Jimmy fired up. Mickey's not exactly docile either, as he pulls out a gun. Nucky pushes his arm up so Mickey fires through the ceiling, up through the floor in the funeral parlor. Hankies are clutched like you could not believe. Jimmy takes another swipe at Mickey as he's being ushered out, which I appreciated.
Back inside, Nucky's as pissed at Mickey as he is at Jimmy. "Stupid bohunk," he spits at Mickey, who takes offense. He changed his last name to "Doyle," after all. No more of this "Kuzik" nonsense -- he's an American now. And maybe it's just the Scorsese connection, but I couldn't help but think of his Gangs of New York, and how the Irish were the non-American ones back then. Not sixty years later, they're the salt of the earth and now the central Europeans are the "other." Thank god for the blacks and the Jews or else this daisy chain of white ethnic intolerance would start to get confusing. Anyway, Nucky's not so impressed by Mickey's personal rebranding. "A rose by any other name..." he sniffs. Mickey wants to know what that's supposed to mean, Nucky: "Read a fuckin' book."
Outside, a perturbed Nucky wants to know what the hell is up with Jimmy, for real. Jimmy admits it's getting passed over for Patty Ryan. "You were assistant sheriff when you were my age," Jimmy protests, but Nucky reminds him that for eight years before that he "spent night and day kissing the Commodore's ass." Look, Nucky, I liked "Brick House" as much as the guy, but ... oh, never mind. This brings up the elephant in the room that is Jimmy's three years in Europe. Contrary to Nucky's earlier words of praise for Jimmy's heroic service, he now tells him that time would've been better spent with his family (and, it's implied, in service to the local political machine). "You know who dies for their country?" Nucky asks. "Fuckin' rubes, that's who!" Jimmy doesn't exactly disagree, though he asks if he's being punished for going away. Nucky says he just wants him to slow his roll. "I'm not the same kid that left," Jimmy says, his face darkening a bit. "I seen things. I've done things." Nucky, not entirely getting it, at least not on an emotional level, makes a crack about "How're we gonna keep you down on the farm." He thinks this is hubris. Jimmy knows it's something darker. He refuses Nucky's offer of a thousand dollars; all he wants is an opportunity. "This is America, ain't it," begins Nucky, in one of Winter's more pointedly This Is HBO lines. "Who the fuck's stopping you?"
At the Schroeder home, Margaret is serving out soup and bread for dinner when her husband, the esteemed Hans, wants to know how she got herself dropped off at home earlier. Margaret reiterates her story: she felt faint walking home from church, and "Mr. Thompson" saw her and was kind enough to have his driver take her home. I'm not sure if it's the way they're lighting Kelly MacDonald or if it's makeup or prosthetics or what, but her facial features are very pronounced in this episode. Anyway, Hans grabs her by the back of the head and produces the wad of cash that he found under the mattress. She gathers up whatever strength it takes to tell him that money is for the children, but he angrily shakes her and demands to know where she got it. He assumes she whored herself out for it, but she's not saying. He slaps her, which gets the kids crying, then shoves her down and pockets the cash. So Margaret's not exactly enjoying Prohibition as much as everyone else is.
At the hotel, Nucky greets Colosimo and Torrio, in a funny moment where Nucky appears awkward in the face of their Italian manner of greeting. As they cross the threshold, they pass Michael Shannon in a phone booth. He's casing the scene with another Fed across the room. Shannon's trying to help Junior over there identify the major players, and Junior's having a hard time keeping his Colosimos and Torrios straight, much less the taxonomical briar patch that is Nucky Thompson/Lucky Luciano. Shannon pretty much exhausts his weekly supply of pained sighs in one shot here.
Upstairs, this criminal summit is underway. This whole thing gets a little tangled across the whole episode, so I'll try to keep it simple: Colosimo's the main guy in Chicago, but he's not eager to jump into the bootlegging biz, instead content to rely on the time-honored pastime of whoring. Torrio, however, sees the goldmine in liquor, so he's set up this potential partnership between Nucky and the Luciano/Rothstein tandem, who are eager to get a foothold on the liquor trade in New York. Rothstein, who claims himself a teetotaler, is composed and able to play the conversational just-us-pals game with the three older, more established men. (Rothstein also makes reference to his penchant for gambling, leading Colosimo to reference the killing he made on the recent World Series -- that'd be the 1919 World Series that he arranged for the White Sox to throw, thus scandalizing baseball and America and ultimately leading to Ray Kinsella hearing voices in his cornfield.) Luciano, however, is a hothead who just wants to get down to brass tacks: how much and how many. Nucky scoffs that the younger generation has no respect for the art of conversation, and Lucky seethes and heads to the bathroom, at which point Rothstein steps in as the good cop and makes the actual deal: the entire Canadian Club shipment for 60 grand. And Nucky says Rothstein uses his own men for the pickup. They shake on it, and Torrio offers a "salud" to them both. Michael Stuhlbarg's Rothstein is already presenting as a fascinating figure. Stuhlbarg plays him as shrewd, but also constantly aware of perceptions. Every time Lucky pops off or says something obnoxious, Rothstein subtly checks himself. You can see how a man like that could tiptoe the line between business and crime -- and as a Jew besides. He's worth watching all by himself.
Outside the hotel, Jimmy is leaning up against a car with a round-faced mook in the employ of Torrio and Colosimo. The guy has the kind of markings on his left cheek that might give a guy a nickname like "Scarface," only the way they're rendered here, he looks like he slept too long on a wrinkly pillow. Anyway, they make small talk and bond over their service in the war; Pillowface claims he was in the "Lost Battalion," though upcoming revelations put that claim into serious question. Jimmy's curious as to how much money a guy like Rothstein rakes in. Pillowface, flush with insider information and only too eager to show it off, says Rothstein's worth $10 million easy, and Luciano's sitting on half a mil at least. Jimmy is in aw. "They make that much money running card games?" To his credit, Pillowface manages not to give Jimmy shit for his naiveté, and rather just corrects him that it's mostly the gun-running and dope peddling that have made him rich. Jimmy lasers in on the fact that Lucky is the same age as him (and Pillowface) and yet so filthy rich he can buy off judges. Jimmy asks if his bosses are getting into the liquor business too. Pillowface says Colosimo wants to stick with prostitution, but Torrio's certainly interested. "I'm Johnny's muscle," he concedes, "who gives a fuck what I think?" The bigwigs exit the hotel, so Jimmy gives pillowface his regards and introduces himself. Pillowface does the same: "Al Capone." So there's that guy.
The day, Jimmy, Angela, and the kid are at the cinema, taking in a Fatty Arbuckle silent movie. To the best of my observation, Fatty is battling a familiar foe: flood pants. These were high times for Arbuckle, still a year or so away from being accused of raping and murdering a young actress. But for now, it's all about the laughs. LAUGH at that fat clown! Afterwards, Jimmy and the fam hop around the boardwalk for a bit until he's approached by Michael Shannon and his recognitionally-challenged partner. Michael Shannon, by the way, is "Special Agent Van Alden," so I guess we call him that now.
In an airy and rather unintimidating office, Van Alden and what appears to be his supervising officer ask Jimmy what an upstanding young soldier like himself is doing mixed up with a crook like Nucky. They know all about his little "fiefdom," from the election-rigging to the graft. Which they're not even interested (well, the boss isn't; Van Alden looks like he wants to take Nucky down for all of it). They're just here to talk about the liquor. Van Alden crouches down and places his ghoulish face right to Jimmy's and asks him if he's like to come work for the Bureau. I'd like to know how many times that works for Van Alden versus how many times he sends a possible asset screaming from the room in wet pants. But they must've done their homework on Jimmy, because they press his two most prominent buttons; they tell him the work is honorable (as a kid who eschewed Princeton to serve his country, the kid has some appreciation for honor) and with room for advancement (see the last ALL SCENES with Jimmy thus far). "It's a Godly pursuit," sums up Van Alden, preying on Jimmy's ... Catholicism? He looks a bit cowed as he asks for a cigarette. Uh-oh, a cigarette! The universal symbol for cooperation!
...Well, one of the universal symbols for cooperation. Another would have to be the sight of a buxom young woman riding reverse-cowgirl on a pale gnome-like man. Which is what's happening in Nucky's hotel room. He tries to get Lucy to quit calling out insipid shit like "ride 'em, cowboy," but she seems awfully committed to her dirty talk. And of course, just as Nucky's finally getting past it enough to ... you know, get somewhere, who comes knocking but ol' Cockblockin' Eddie, who is nervous about the screaming. Lucy is fed up and hops off the ... ahem, horse ... and into the bathroom, screaming back at Eddie, "FUCKING, Eddie! Not SCREAMING! We were FUCKING!" She slams the door, while Nucky takes a call from the casino. Seems Rothstein and Luciano have been gambling all night, and Arnold's up to the tune of 90 grand. They can't cover it, and Nucky springs into action. Unfortunately, he's not dressed, and Lucy's locked herself in the bathroom in a fit of pique. Nucky has to call Eddie in, and they both start ramming the door to get it open.
Let's assume this worked, because the we see Nucky, he is not in his bathrobe, as he gets the 411 from the pit boss, who is convinced Rothstein's a cheater, not that they can do anything about it, given his clout. So Nucky's got a fine line to walk as he approaches both men (who are, it should be noted, sporting twin cat-that-ate-the-canary grins). Nucky explains that it's a small house and they can't cover Rothstein's kind of action. "Your credit's good with me," Rothstein grins, which kind of lays all the cards out on the table, in terms of what he's up to here. Nucky's smile vanishes and he suggests they get to know each other better first. Lucky, as is his wont as a hot-headed Eye-talian, takes this as an insult. Nucky: "Maybe you shouldn't be listening to the grown-ups' conversation." At this, Lucky leaps to his feet, and Rothstein takes a calm but firm grip on his wrist. His voice never raises above polite volume as he tells "Charlie" to sit down. I'm serious, all eyes on Michael Stuhlbarg in these scenes, he's really something. Now Rothstein advances the terms: the casino owes him 93k. Subtract the 60k he agreed to pay for the booze last night, and Nucky only owes him 33. $33,000 Nucky is now paying Arnold Rothstein for the privilege of handing over a month's worth of Canadian Club. Nucky scowls, but he's been beat. Lucky, looking to add insult to injury (or else being kinda dumb), says this means they can keep playing, but Rothstein knows he's already won, says he won't play where he's not welcome. Nucky's all "Ain't that a shame" and orders the pit boss to cash 'em out.
Nucky remarks that it's seven years today since "Mabel" died. ...You guys. You know how you sometimes just know stuff. You're not sure how or even why, but you're just sure of it? That's how I felt the first time I saw this scene and realized I'd one day be titling a Boardwalk Empire recap "So I Says to Mabel, I Says." Maybe not this week, maybe not . But it's coming. Anyway, the biggest problem with the whiskey heist is now the Feds will be breathing down their necks. Commodore advises him to hand the Feds a scapegoat. "It's Jimmy," Nucky finally admits. The 'Dore's reaction is one of shock...and no small amount of pride. "I never knew he had it in him!" He can't get over it. He chuckles and repeats it to his dog: "Fuckin' Jimmy!"
Speaking of whom, Jimmy calls out to a passing Nucky from behind a building. Nucky's totally pissed at him, but it's telling that half of his anger is at how in-over-his-head Jimmy is. There's genuine care there that -- sorry to go to this well again, but -- Tony Soprano never had for Chris, say, and Al Swearengen took a while to exhibit. Jimmy stresses that he's got a way out of this, but Nucky is too busy mourning the loss of Jimmy's bright future. "You were smart!" he laments. "You could've made it!" Notice "making it" for Nucky is legitimacy, or at least the illusion of it. I'm sure Arnold Rothstein would agree with him. But Jimmy (and Capone and Luciano) sees the new criminal order for what it's about to become.
Jimmy sidetracks into talking about the war. The people he killed. The number of times he went out over the top and came back, alive but appreciably less of a person. "I'm going to hell, Nuck," he finally admits. And he looks at a guy like Luciano, with his suits and diamonds. "Is that what you want?" Nucky demands, incredulous. Jimmy wants Nucky to admit that HE wants it too. "At least I got the guts to take it." Nucky warns Jimmy not to underestimate him. "I could have you killed." Of course, the tone of his voice says he won't, and Jimmy says as much. "You can't be half a gangster," Jimmy says, getting to the root of it all. "Not anymore." He hands Nucky an envelope with his take from the heist. "I didn't ask for this!" Nucky hollers as Jimmy trots away. "You didn't have to," Jimmy says. A kingpin is a kingpin is a kingpin.
So if Jimmy walked away from the heist with cash, where'd the whiskey go? Cut to a chilly Al Capone as he drives his cargo-laden truck down the Lincoln Highway to Chicago.
My least favorite scene of the episode sees Nucky pass a palm-reading shop on the boardwalk. As he peers inside at yet another freak making a commodity of herself along the oceanfront. He positions himself in front of the achingly portentous window ad, which reads "What Does the Future Hold For You?" About eleven more episodes, I'd say.
So in true gangster movie fashion, the episode ends with the cross-cutting of several thematically intertwined storylines. If you'll permit me to un-twine them...
Hans Schroeder is picked up by Eli and his deputies, worked over pretty well, then boated out to the ocean and dumped, only to have his ugly corpse get brought back to shore with the day's fish haul. Meanwhile, Nucky pays Margaret a visit in the hospital. Which is about as sweet a gesture as you're gonna get from the guy who just ordered your husband be killed. Meanwhile, a voice on the radio says that Schroeder was being sought in connection with the roadside massacre of the other night. Tip of the imaginary hat to the 'Dore for that bit of advice.
In Chicago, Capone delivers the whiskey to Torrio, who you remember wants to get into bootlegging over Colosimo's objections. So what will Colosimo have to say about that? ...Uh, not much, since he's gunned down in the middle of his restaurant by one of Torrio's men. PROHIBITION!
Joe R lived through Prohibition once. It was called junior high school. NEVER AGAIN. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.
How is Boardwalk Empire like the Muppet Babies of the gangster genre? Watch vloggers Beth & Val explain: