War has broken out in Atlantic City, the streets are red with the blood of gangsters, et cetera. Morale is low among Gyp's men at the Maison Derriere, and at Nucky's Lumber Yard, the Chicagoans and the Blacks are brawling like every other minute. This can't go on much longer. The big break in the case actually starts with Mickey Doyle, infuriatingly enough. He's been stationed at Overholt (Andrew Mellon's distillery) and the place looks lucrative as hell. Nucky's not exactly in a position to capitalize on it, so Mickey gives Arnold Rothstein a call and floats the idea that intervening on Nucky's behalf could be an easy way to get his hands on such a profitable enterprise. Rothstein makes Nucky an offer, and Nucky agrees.
Now, by this point, Rothstein and Masseria have already screwed Luciano and Lansky out of their heroin business (those cops last week were Rothstein's guys) and are suddenly business associates. So Rothstein is easily able to convince Masseria to pull his men out of Atlantic City. In exchange, Nucky agrees to give him 99% of Overholt. So Masseria pulls his men, on the same night that Gillian's plan to use S&M tactics to get the jump on Rosetti goes awry (he ends up shooting HER full of heroin). With Masseria's men, gone, the Maison Derriere is left wide open. But it's not Nucky's men who take out Rosetti's -- it's Richard Harrow, storming the castle to save Tommy, which he does, in spectacular fashion. Richard then drops Tommy off at Julia's, before leaving to walk the earth and live the solitary life of a killer. Or something.
Nucky and Eli are pretty happy that they don't have to shoot through any of Gyp's men at the Maison. But Rosetti's already flown the coop. Meantime, Capone and Chalky's guys ambush Masseria's men on their way out of town. Gyp makes it out alive with three flunkies in tow, one being Tonino, who escaped Atlantic City despite being hidden in a closet when the Thompsons arrive. Rosetti decides he's done with Atlantic City, and the whole east coast really. He kind of loses his mind, in a very Daffy Duck way, but he intends to head West. Until Tonino stabs him dead, at Nucky's request. Tonino then heads back to NYC to deliver an "are we done with this shit or what?" message to Masseria.
Oh, also, Nucky gets Gaston Means to blow the whistle on Rothstein's control of Overholt to Andrew Mellon, who places a call to Esther Randolph and asks her to kindly head on down to Pennsylvania and shut Overholt down.
Meantime, Margaret seeks out an abortion in Brooklyn and then refuses money from Nucky to come back to Atlantic City. So Nucky doesn't have everything back. And in the best news of the night: not a single word about Nelson Van Alden. Happy off-season!
Previously: there were about nineteen different story threads going on at once all season, and by the time Gyp Rosetti and Joe Masseria killed first Nucky's and then Margaret's piece on the side, things started to come together. Nucky fled, then regrouped, backed up by Chalky White and Al Capone's guys from Chicago.
Here's the thing: I hate Al Capone's smug fucking face, is the thing. I hate this go-nowhere storylines, his deaf kid, his hotheaded temper reminiscent of so many Sopranos jerkoffs before him. But mostly I hate his face. So it's not exactly great news that he's back in the game.
Hey so remember that movie trailer for Gangster Squad that never actually became a movie, at least not yet? Well I think they may have just sold that movie for parts because the opening scene of this episode is just that trailer. Cool-looking, starkly lit shots of gangsters wiping each other out indiscriminately. On loading docks, in alleys, at the casino, daytime, nighttime, on the Boardwalk, in the woods. It's a war of attrition, and it's tough to tell which side is winning.
Interspersed with these gorgeous images of violence are scenes of the press hounding Mayor Bader, asking him if he's lost control of the city. He stresses that this is just gang-on-gang violence, so the law-abiding people have nothing to fear. Sound reasoning, Mayor! I know I'm reassured. At one point, the reporters all start asking to hear about Nucky Thomspon so insistently that Bader finally snaps, "Let's get something straight: Nucky Thompson doesn't run this city! I do!" Followed by a textbook pause for effect, then deafening laughter from the reporters. Very cute, yes, everybody's in on the premise of this TV show, then. Bader then stomps off in a huff like he's in a Looney Tunes cartoon. It won't be the first time that comparison is made tonight.
And Mickey Doyle doesn't really count, as he's always a cartoon. But he's on the phone with Nucky and being infuriatingly glib about things given how hairy things are back in Atlantic City. Mickey's in Pennsylvania, Nucky having sent him to go take care of the Overholt distillery that he's running for Andrew Mellon. Mickey keeps hinting that Nucky should come down and take a look, before Nucky's like, "Asshole. I'm under threat of death every time I open a window. Maybe just tell me?"
All the while, Nucky's looking out to the lumber yard outside, as Chalky's men and Capone's men are getting into a series of scuffles. It's a loose coalition, I guess. Mickey finally spells it out for Nucky: Overholt is major. If he can get it up and running, Nucky will be the top bootlegger on the whole country. Nucky can't even concentrate on the implications with the fight outside getting more serious.
Outside, Nucky breaks up the fight, which -- once Chalky and Capone start jawing at each other -- seems to be because both factions had agreed to stay on opposite sides of the yard, only Chalky's guys couldn't get to the latrines on the other side. Mostly, though, as Chalky says to Nucky, it's these guys being cooped up and needing to let off some steam. Nucky gets Chalky to back down, then tells Capone that he needs Chalky's support, so cut the shit. Capone -- that awful smirking mug of his -- says maybe he'll take his men and go home. GOOD, YOU SHOULD DO THAT, AND ALSO START YOUR OWN TV SHOW THAT I DON'T HAVE TO WATCH. Nucky calls his bluff and reminds him that they had a handshake deal on this, and Capone's still making his reputation as a leader right now. He needs to establish that a deal with him means something. So Capone backs down and takes his men to the Boardwalk to see if Rosetti's poked his head out. Eli tells him to be careful of the civilians, but Capone says that's not his problem. He watches out for his guys, and Nucky cleans up the rest. BYE, HATE YOU!
Things aren't going much better at the Rosetti home base at Maison Derriere. Tonino is playing hall monitor while the men booze and lay around. They've already chased the whores away. And they don't much seem to care that they're violating Rosetti's orders by getting drunk. Poor Tonino trying to keep order. Rosetti comes in and has Tonino clear the room, as he's meeting with Masseria. The current state of things doesn't please Masseria much. He lent Rosetti 43 guys and now 12 of them are dead. And what's to show of it? Rosetti says he has the casino, the hotel, and the warehouse all under his control. But Marreria points out that Nucky is still alive and Rothstein is doing quite well in New York. Rosetti tries to disparage Nucky's crew of "shines" (black guys), but Masseria, in Italian, says these people fight for their home turf, and thus that fight harder. Ah, the ol' lesson from Vietnam that hasn't happened yet. Rosetti forcefully says he intends to keep his promise to wipe Nucky out. Masseria just pats him in the face in that way Italian gangsters do when they want to show you they're the boss.
Meanwhile, Gillian has to finesse her way past a crowd of leering a-holes in order to bring Tommy his lunch on a tray. (The lunch, by the way -- ham on white break, a dill pickle, and some Oreos -- sounds heavenly.) But Tommy is hiding in his little tipi bed fort, obviously angry that Richard has been sent away. She offers to come into the tipi and eat with him, but he stonewalls her. Rejected, she doesn't press it and tells him she understands. Well, now it's official: everyone in the Maison Derriere is sad. Seems like such a waste of a brothel.
Back in the lumber yard, Nucky and Eli Thompson take the occasion of fixing a broken-down car to talk about old times and solidify their repaired relationship. Not in anything close to those terms, of course. Nucky asks if Eli got June and the kids to someplace safe (he did) and Eli asks the same of Margaret and her kids (Nucky declines to comment). They light up cigs and begin to muse about the State of Things. "We didn't stop while the going was good," Nucky muses. "I never told 'em to pass the 18th Amendment," is Eli's missing-the-point reply. Nucky wonders what it's really gotten them, but Eli says that's to worry about once Rosetti is in the ground. Nucky is pretty pessimistic about what happens after that. Eli seems to think they can get the town running again, but Nucky's like, "You're never going to be the sheriff again." Eli, reverting back to old form, takes offense, but Nucky simply means that neither of them will ever be back in power. He anticipates that he's going to be damaged goods, business-wise. Eli tries to reassure him that he can make it back. "Just offer them something they want." Nucky doesn't know how. Eli: "You're the man with all the angles."
In New York, Arnold Rothstein gets a most unwelcome call from Mickey Doyle. Mickey plays coy about being at sea "over here," and Rothstein humors him the exact minimum amount. Mickey's all, "Three words: Overholt. Distillery. Pennsylvania." He continues that a "certain person that we both know" made an arrangement with "another certain person" (oh, Jesus, Doyle, OUT WITH IT) to run it for him. This first person, says Mickey, would probably be willing to give up just about anything to keep from losing everything. Rothstein? Is listening.
Poor Lucky Luciano. He's in a jail cell, somewhere in the city, beat up and weary. Magaddino and Moceri are working him over, interrogating him. It looks like they haven't let him sleep in days. His smile is more cockeyed than usual, and even worse, his hair is starting to curl. Get this man some pomade, for God's sake! He's starting to resemble Nick from New Girl. Normally that would be a good thing, but, needless to say, Nick from New Girl would not hold up well under these conditions. The cops are all "we are the law" about things, and Lucky eventually offers to get his hands on "50 pounds of white" to give them. His? He's all "Fuck would I give you mine for?" They really seem to want HIS stash, though. Lucky wants assurances if he does such a thing, but they tell him the best he can hope for is to take a chance that things won't get worse.
"I got the broad here." This is how Gillian's presence is announced to Gyp Rosetti. This is why you should play it cool if Nucky Thompson decides to kill your son/lover. Lessons for the future. She and Rosetti continue this dance of who's in control here. She tries to connect with him via family, asking about his daughters ("How old are they?" "Sixteen and fourteen, I think") and bringing up her little guy, Tommy. He's still being super disingenuous with her, though. She makes a play to take Tommy and leave, but he shuts her down. "You don't have to worry about me," she assures him. Gyp: "Jeez, Red, I hope not." He promises her that they're going to get everything settled with Nucky, and then "you and me, we'll show this town how it's done." He's gonna set her up, treat her like a queen, put her on a pedestal.
At this, she senses something in him, so she tries something out. "And where are you?" she asks, while she's on this pedestal. So he kneels down in front of her and says, "I'm way down below. Like a little bug crawling around on your toe." So it's like that with Gyp. "I could crush you," she says. He's, um, into it. Obvs. She asks him if that's what he'd like, but he backs off. "I'm just having some fun," he says. She assures him that people are allowed to have fun in whatever way they want, without shame. I think he'd like some shame, to be honest. "You're a pistol, Red," he says. "Then why don't you pull my trigger and see what shoots out." And ... look. I know recapping two shows at the same time causes certain boundaries to bleed into each other, but this ISN'T American Horror Story, right? That line was scripted by pariah of good taste Ryan Murphy, was it not?
Anyway, Gillian goes on. "I don't know about you, Gyp, but sometimes I wish someone would give me exactly what I deserve." At which point, anybody still residing in the Maison is forced to move out, as Gyp's giant boner will be occupying the entire first floor from now on.
Lumber Yard. Arnold Rothstein calls from New York, presenting himself as formally as possible when Eli answers the phone ("to whom am I speaking?"). He gets Nucky on the line and makes his offer: in exchange for a percentage of ownership in Overholt, Rothstein can arrange for Joe Masseria to remove his support from Gyp Rosetti. That means he'll pull all his men back up to New York. That percentage of Overholt he's asking for? 99 percent. It's a way out, he tells Nucky. It's a gouge, sure, but it's a way out. It's also Nucky's only hope for a lucrative future once this is all finished. But he hesitates mere moments before agreeing to the deal. The reasons why are hinted at after he hands up: "Big bait," he tells his brother, "catches big rat."
Well I guess every independent lady on HBO is living in Brooklyn now, because here's Margaret Thompson -- sorry, Margaret Rohan -- meeting with a Dr. and Mrs. Hollis and engaging in small talk about her place near Bushwick where she lives near her extended family. I wonder what the warehouse parties were like back during Prohibition. "Oh, you're into Scott Joplin? Yeah, he's pretty popular, I guess..." Mrs. Hollis shows Margaret to "the room," which turns out to be an examination room, confirming speculation that Margaret is here for an abortion. She approaches the topic abstractly -- "I need the doctor to bring my monthly on," she says. Mrs. Hollis is very matter-of-fact about it all. This doesn't feel surreptitious or dangerous; it's no back alley. "You can take a little time," she tells Margaret. "Come back if you'd like." I think if Margaret left the office, she might not come back. "I'm completely lost," she says, looking for an answer, but Mrs. Hollis says she never tells anyone what to do. Margaret finally asks if she is to leave her dress on. Mrs. Hollis goes to get her a clean gown, placing a hand on her shoulder as she goes.
Lucky's been freed from captivity and looks much better, rested and slick-haired again. He's in a corridor somewhere, and he's trying to explain to a stone-faced Meyer that he was collared and he made the best decision possible for them. They'll just have to pick up where they left off, and he'll cover the cost of the stash he had to give up. Lansky finally breaks his silence, only to deliver his trademark cold analytical take: "Fifty pounds. One thousand fucking dollars." Lucky can do the math. Probably wiser he doesn't say so.
The door opens, and Lansky and Luciano enter Rothstein's office, but inside is Joe Masseria, and on the table is their 50 pounds of heroin. The kids are dumbstruck. Masseria is fakely cordial to Lansky, finally willing to shake his hand but feigning ignorance of his name. "Is that ours?" Lansky asks of the heroin. "Not anymore," Masseria says. So let me try to unpack the maneuverings here. The two cops who busted Luciano and who he handed the 50 pounds to are Rothstein's men. They emerge all, "Hey, no hard feelings, right?" to Lucky. Now flush with a hundred grand worth of free product (paid for my Masseria, no less), Rothstein has more of an upper hand and has negotiated more favorable terms with Masseria. Basically, they both used Luciano as a middle-man, and Luciano effectively aced himself out of the heroin trade entirely. Rothstein has the product now, for free; Masseria still has $100,000 that Luciano will have to pay him (or else, I guess, die); and Masseria and Rothstein have now agreed to divide up the heroin trade in New York.
Lansky is furious that Rothstein would have fucked them over like that. Luciano is APOPLECTIC. He lunges towards Rothstein, screaming that it was his deal, he worked for it, and Rothstein just sits behind a desk while the real men are out in the world. Lansky desperately tries to rein him in, and finally tells him if he doesn't shut up, they're dead. Lucky's hair is all mussed again. Bad day. "You know how he gets," Lansky says, by way of apology. Rothstein shakes his head: "All this time, I thought I had some civilizing effect. But there's only so much you can teach a person before you reach the limits of his capabilities." Meyer understands that, right? Lansky nods. "It's your job then," Rothstein says, washing his hands of Luciano. He brushes the kids away with a flick of his hand and steps to Masseria: he's got a proposition to offer.
That night, at the lumber yard, Purnsley and two of his pals are pissing on a car. Seemingly one of the Italians' cars, because when Capone and his cronies return home, they take some serious offense. After some literal dick measuring between Capone and Purnsley, Capone pulls a gun. This gets Chalky's attention, and he successfully buck-buck-bucks Capone into laying down his pistol and coming at him with fists. And soon enough, everybody's got a partner! From the warehouse, Nucky and Eli emerge, firing a shotgun into the air. Nucky delivers the news that Rothstein got Masseria to pull his men from the Maison Derriere, and Rosetti doesn't know this yet. He needs to speak to Chalky and Capone in private. "You can kill each other later," he hollers.
At the Maison, Gillian shows up in Gyp's room dressed for work. Bedroom work. She kisses him on the mouth sweetly, but he stops her from undressing him. "Only I do that. Little kink of mine." So it's game on, then. Gillian asks what he intends to do to her. "I wanna break you in half," he says, "split you right down the middle, until you beg me to stop, when I won't stop." Well, she asked. And he goes on like this! "A wet spot and a hunk of hair," he says! She gets him to call her a "worthless piece of shit" who deserves everything she's gonna get, and she calls herself an ugly little animal. He makes her say it again, but this time she uses the phrase "ugly little ape," which you will not be surprised to learn Gyp takes personally. Still within the game, though.
But now she's sneering at him, and he grabs her by the throat. He walks across the room, removes his belt with a flourish, and when she's like "What? Whip you?" he cracks his neck. A drama queen in the bedroom too, I see. Gillian takes the hint and pulls the belt tight around his neck. Tighter. She leads him to the bed as he's gasping. With Gyp semi-incapacitated, however, Gillian reaches for a strategically placed syringe underneath the pillow. He's begging her to hurt him, and she seriously intends to, but as she goes to plunge the syringe into his neck, he catches her. They struggle, the belt is loosened, and Gillian is bested. "All I have is this house and that boy," she begs him. He says he doesn't blame her, and it seems like he honestly doesn't. But "somebody's gotta lose," he says, as he pumps her full of heroin. He breathes a sigh of relief and she goes quiet, but there's a commotion outside. He goes to the window to see Masseria's men fleeing to their cars and heading back to New York. Trouble at the henhouse.
Rosetti storms downstairs in a rage (maybe if he wasn't holed up in a mansion it wouldn't take him so long) and finds the five men of his who are still milling around in the great room. They tell him that the men are gone, on Masseria's orders. Rosetti doesn't even have time to work out the implications of that because gunshots are coming from the front of his house. Nucky's men? The combined army of the blacks and Chicagoans? Nope, just one guy. Richard Harrow is on his one-man mission to reclaim his surrogate son. Rosetti and a couple of his closest goons are able to hide behind the bar and then scoot out when Harrow's not looking, but for everybody else? Very bad news. Richard strides through them, blowing holes in their heads as he goes. No words, obviously. No outward emotions. This is war, after all.
Outside, Rosetti and his stragglers stumble to the car. "Where's Tonino?" one of the shouts. "Fuck him!" is Rosetti's can't-be-at-all-surprising retort. After hating the shit out of Gyp Rosetti all season, I have to admit a little satisfaction at watching him scurry like a cockroach away from danger. Which I guess means that the storyline worked at least a little, on the most basic of human impulses to see irritating people look foolish. They drive off.
Back in the Maison, it's become a first-person shooter game. If Dan Harmon were running this show instead of Terrence Winter, we would actually SEE a first-person shooter game, but that's another rant. Richard shoots a couple on the stairs (that really is an insanely long staircase), enters the corridor, and starts checking the rooms. One guy pops up at the end of the hallway -- BANG. Then another guy from the opposite end -- BANG. I keep waiting for the old lady with the baby buggy to cross the hall as an obstacle. The first guy from the end of the hallway isn't quite dead, and he rushes Harrow from behind. They struggle, they scuffle, they both reach for Richard's holstered gum, before Richard pulls out his demure little Derringer and gets him in the head. Shooter moves forward. He makes it to Tommy's room where he encounters the Boss of this level. That would be the same guy who tried to feel up on Gillian earlier in the episode. Now he's got a gun to Tommy's head. It's a tense standoff. Richard, blood all over his mask, knows that if he lowers his gun like he's being told to, he's dead and Tommy likely is too. What to do? He lowers the gun, slowly, crouching down. It's almost to floor level when he tells Tommy to close his eyes, and then, from a ridiculously low angle and with no bracing support whatsoever, Richard pulls the trigger and shoots the Level Boss through his skull. Pretty sure that's not how guns work, but what do I know? Level Complete!
Out on the road through the woods come the cars full of Masseria's men. Mercenaries to the last, they deserve neither or sympathy nor our mercy, which is a good thing because the woods are full of Chalky and Capone's men, who descend upon the caravan and light them up with gunfire. Capone is, of course, chomping on a cigar while he does it because at this point, who cares about clichés? After Masseria's men are sufficiently massacred. Chalky and Capone come together, take a cleansing breath, and agree that mass murder like this is just what they needed to not be so testy with each other. Is this what Waiting to Exhale was all about? Shoop, Shoop, fellas! And just like that, Capone and his men head back to Chicago, to deal with Dean O'Banion, Nelson Van Alden, and Season 4.
Back at the Maison, Nucky and Eli are surveying the damage and WTF-ing all over the place. They're on guard for anybody left who might be breathing, but everybody looks pretty dead. Nucky finds Gillian slumped against the wall, faded but conscious. He asks her who did this, but she's not THAT conscious. And true to TV cliché, she starts babbling in thematically resonant ways. "I went upstairs like you said to," she tells Nucky, perhaps as she did back on that night when the Commodore first had Nucky procure her for him. "The man ..." she says, "Nucky, he did something very bad to me." Nucky doesn't have time to look horrified for very long, as there's a noise at the end of the hallway. I can't imagine amends are in the cards for these two, but maybe a reminder of exactly how Gillian ended up at this wretched point in her life will keep Nucky from seeking retribution for the moves she's made against him. Nucky and Eli move towards the noise at the end of the hall, which we see is Tonino, hiding in the closet with his gun drawn.
Richard Harrow carries a sleeping Tommy, cradled in his arms, to Julia's doorstep. He asks her not to turn on the porch light so she won't see the blood on his face. She's scared by the secrecy, and when her father behind her turns on the lights, she's horrified by the blood. Richard is shamed, but he assures her it's neither his nor Tommy's blood. She wants to know what's going on, but her dad -- insistently but not unkindly, for once -- tells her to take the kid upstairs. To Fred's room, no less. We're all growing today, aren't we? Or maybe just Sagorsky. Julia looks at Richard for a moment, sad and scared and confused, and then heads back inside.
Just the two of them, Sagorsky lectures Richard (again, kindly) about how he's not to come home like this, how he had to clean himself up and not scare the shit out of Julia. It's touching that Sagorsky uses the term "home" to include Richard. He says tomorrow morning, he'll talk to Julia, and in the light of day, things will get straightened out. But Richard says, "No." He says Tommy's safe now, which is what's important, and so he heads off, walking God knows where, but maybe away from Julia and Tommy, where his killer nature can't touch them.
In Washington, Esther Randolph gets a phone call from Andrew Mellon, though she's initially dubious as to why he'd be calling her. After she assures him that their conversation is private, he tells her that "a certain business enterprise" of his has been "commandeered" by a criminal organization. He wants Randolph to shutter the premises and arrest and indict those operating it. Now, Esther knows about Overholt because Means told her when he told Nucky. So she asks him if he really wants her arresting Nucky Thompson. Au contraire, though. It was Nucky who brought this to Mellon's attention, he says. The man running the place, whom he wants arrested is Arnold Rothstein. Mellon has a little trouble with the name, so Gaston Means has to crouch down and whisper it in his ear. This guy is like the Beetlejuice of criminal influence, only you don't even have to say his name for him to appear. Which I guess is the whole point of Beetlejuice, so never mind!
Oy, this scene. So Rosetti and his two cronies have fled until the morning, making it as far as the beach at, I'm going to guess based on the episode title, Margate Sands. They're taking a break to recoup and are joined by Tonino, who I guess got away. They all take turns goggling about that freak with the mask. It IS kind of like they just survived a random horror movie. Tonino exposits that they're not going to be much welcome in New York, so maybe they should hide out in the Poconos until things die down. Gyp Rosetti, however, thinks this would be a great time to have a total Looney Tunes breakdown. He starts to imitate Nucky's voice -- flat, nasal -- and recreated the scene from the season premiere when he announced he'd only be selling to Rothstein. "Do you have any idea who the fuck I am??" he implores his pals, in the Nucky voice. He answers for them: "I'M BARNEY GOOGLE! WITH THE GOO-GOO-GOOGLY EYES!" Now, setting aside for the moment that Gyp Rosetti has been a cartoon character all season, so this is just a sadly appropriate end for him, I want to talk about this Barney Google for a second. You think he's one of those Googles? You think he might have a connection to the Google fortune? Okay, fine, I'll ask later.
Rosetti's still hollering about how Nucky/Barney Google said he never takes anything personally. This I guess is the big reason why Rosetti hates him? It's like a superhero thing, maybe, where Rosetti's greatest weakness (he takes EVERYTHING personally) is reflected in Nucky's greatest strength, making them arch-enemies for life? I guess? Maybe it's just Rosetti needed to be unhinged for the season's escalating carnage to happen. Who am I, the screenwriter? Anyway, Rosetti laughs it off and declares his intentions to head west, take over some hick town, and build his fortune from the ground up once again. To celebrate his newfound resolve, he whips it out and starts peeing right on the beach. As he does, he starts singing, "Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes..." Was that a real song? Are we gonna hear Sophie Tucker singing it over the closing credits? Anyway, when Rosetti gets to the crescendo of the chorus, he stops and cries out, on account of Tonino stepping up and stabbing him in the back. Literally. The other two don't life a finger to stop him. "I'm sorry,"Tonino says, "I gotta." Then he stabs him in the front. Rosetti gasps and gurgles and falls dead to the ground. See ya, dude. Won't miss you.
Tonino returns to the road, where Nucky and Eli are waiting in their car. Tonino says it's done. So I guess he didn't make it out of the Maison as cleanly as we thought. Nucky tells him to take Rosetti's body back to Masseria in New York, with a message: this can either be the end of fighting between them or the beginning. "Tell him I'll oblige either way." Yeah, Nucky's got his groove back. For good measure, he tells Tonino that if he ever sees him around Atlantic City again, he'll kill him himself. So that. Alone with his brother in the car, now, Nucky lays down his new mission statement: "I don't want anybody coming near us we don't already trust." Ah, the post-WWI era of isolationism. America knows it well.
In Bushwick, Margaret's asleep in her bed -- after a long night at an art gallery party, no doubt -- when she's awoken by something unusual. She reaches down below the covers and emerges with her hand stained red. In the parlance of TV and movies, this is always bad, as it usually portends a miscarriage or something worse. But in this case, it's just to signal that she's getting her period again. So Margaret made it past the abortion storyline without getting sepsis or whatever, which is good news.
After a trip to the bathroom, Margaret encounters a hat-in-hand Nucky in the hallway. She's dumbstruck, so he starts talking. He says he's willing to forgive her for whatever she felt she had to do (with Owen, obvs). He wants to start over. She doesn't belong in Brooklyn. She belongs with him. "You're spoiled for anything else," he says. He looks around at the dingy surroundings and wonders aloud what she's doing this for. To prove a point to whom? Whomever it is, they're not paying attention anymore. Margaret neither says anything nor makes a move. He pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket. She shouldn't be living like this, subjecting the children to a tenement. He hands it to her, stressing that it's just money. It doesn't mean anything. She finally speaks up at this: "Yes, it does," she says. Bluntly. Annoyed that she has to say it at all. Annoyed that he doesn't get it. She pushes past him, leaving the money in his hand.
Sad piano music plays as Nucky returns to the Boardwalk, His Boardwalk again. He looks out to the ocean, lights up a cigarette, only now, when a passerby recognizes him, he's not quite the man of the people he was before. No handshakes this time. Just a glare. Keep people away, is the new motto. Not sure how well that's gonna work out. But that's Season 4's problem.
Joe R thinks you're all wonderful for reading these and will see you season. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com.